Larry Bogante, a senior sales associate at DJK Residential, took a client — an executive who wanted to live close to his office — to see a $3,600-a-month one-bedroom apartment on frenetic 34th Street during the height of full-tilt rush-hour traffic. “I was hesitant to show it to him at that particular time,” Bogante said, “but I did it anyway.” And did the client take the apartment? “Of course.”
Such is the nature of real estate in New York City: Traffic noise is considered an accepted if aggravating part of living here, but location and space, it seems, really do trump everything and will often supersede noise as a factor in whether an apartment is a viable — or valuable — living space.
“Some people are so attuned to noise that they can’t live in certain places no matter what the price,” says Janice Silver, executive vice president of sales and marketing at Bellmarc Realty. “Even higher floors can be noisy because noise echoes off neighboring buildings. Still, noise is the last thing that is discounted; realtors discount for location, space and views, but generally not for noise.”
In fact, some apartments on busy thoroughfares can be more expensive than those on quieter blocks. On East 86th and East 79th streets, for example, one-bedroom apartments in buildings with doormen (which tend to dominate these wide blocks) typically rent for $2,750 and upward and walk-ups for $1,650 and up, while a walk-up apartment on a nearby side street might start as low as $1,550. (However, depending on the street and the building, some prices are comparable.)
On the East Side in particular, units on crosstown blocks are often sought out because they are close to subways, which are limited in that area of the city.
“In terms of rentals, it’s kind of two-sided,” explains Manhattan Apartments agent Rosemarie Minniti. “People don’t usually like to be on a main floor on a main avenue, but around 86th and Lexington they deal with it because of proximity to the subway.” Says David Fields, a senior planner at Nelson/Nygaard Consulting Associates: “The proximity to transit is more important than vehicular speeds and volumes in the urban parts of New York City.”
Even when apartments on major thoroughfares are traded at a slight discount, external factors that may be seen as potentially detrimental and that may drive down prices can be the very same ones that are helping to sell the units. The Corcoran Group marketed condominiums on Brooklyn’s Union Street, a main drag, at a slight discount because the building was in front of a bus stop, which turned out to be a plus.
“They all sold quickly because they were close to shopping, the bedrooms were in the back, and people were drawn to the bus stop. Traffic is not a negotiable point because it’s all about location,” says Deborah Rieders, a senior vice president at Corcoran.
On busy avenues, some newer buildings have been designed to keep traffic noise at bay. On Sixth Avenue in the high 20s, for example, the Aston has dealt with the problem of noisy lower-level apartments by expanding ground-floor retail space upward — sometimes as much as three floors — then putting a gym above the stores and then making some lower-floor apartments into duplexes, which increases their value (these apartments rent for up to $5,000).
However, most brokers say that if a building has enough amenities — such as views or a gym — and the apartment has the layout the client is seeking, traffic noise can definitely be tolerated. Bellmarc sales associate Lena Datwani cites The Foundry, a building with loft-style apartments on 23rd Street between 1st and 2nd avenues, as an example of great space triumphing over earsplitting city noise. The building is around the corner from Bellevue Hospital, and ambulances speed down 23rd Street regularly, but the Foundry’s apartments — a two-bedroom sells for around $800,000 — are snatched up as soon as they become vacant.
There is also the cure-all of soundproof windows. “If you love an apartment but it’s too noisy, you can always get double-paned windows,” says Silver. Joseph Benz, president and broker at Metrospire, handles properties in the East Village, including several along Avenue A and Second Avenue. Even along these heavily-trafficked streets, he says, “in renovated units you can’t really hear anything because the windows are thick.” In fact, soundproof windows have in some ways become a real estate equalizer, making apartments in high-traffic areas easier to move or, in some cases, adding to the value of an already highly saleable unit. The most desirable apartments on Park Avenue are those that face the avenue because they get the most light; however, they also get the most noise.
“But now with soundproof windows, that’s become a non-issue,” says Jonathan Miller, president and CEO of appraisal firm Miller Samuel.
Traffic noise is an elusive factor in the value of a property, and attitudes toward it can be a matter of individual perception. For real estate appraisers, it is not considered a specific line-item adjustment, but rather “part of the overall consideration of the building’s location,” says Miller.
The city’s noise level is something that Miller says is taken into account when pricing an apartment, but people have their own ideas about what constitutes an ideal living space. “If you have two identical apartments, but one is on a side street and one is on the third floor and faces an avenue, gets good light and is soundproofed, there is still the perception that the one on the side street is a better apartment, and with that perception comes a higher price. But if you live on a crosstown street, some of the penalty for dealing with noise is lessened by the fact that you get more light. It’s a very theoretical concept, and there’s no way to extract it.”
Or, as planner Fields puts it, “I don’t know of any studies tying the New York real estate market to traffic because people acknowledge that there is traffic in New York City.”