Okay, people, stop complaining about the 250 square foot studios, the ones that have a kitchen and everything. Take a look at a 90 square foot apartment:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZSdrtEqcHU
And if that doesn’t improve your perspective, a 55 square foot one:
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I often find myself involved in conversations about whether using a broker is really sensible or not. Recently, a friend said, “but you can just do it yourself, you don’t need a broker.” Well, hold on a minute, I said. There are a few very good reasons to use a broker. Here I’ll talk about the really scary ones.
First, the company I work for only uses reputable landlords with apartments that are in good condition. If you’re looking at “by owner” apartments, good luck when your landlord starts making up arbitrary rules and refusing to make repairs. I’ve heard horror stories from people whose landlords insisted on a “no guests” policy after they’d moved in, who let burst pipes go for days in order to find a cheaper plumber, and who took weeks to fix heating problems in the dead of winter. You see where I’m going with this. Brokers don’t work with these kind of landlords and owners- we weed them out.
Also in the lineup of rental nightmares are “agents” who don’t have an office, insist on meeting clients on the street, and don’t have any proper forms or identification establishing them as a licensed broker. Go ahead, meet one of these creeps on the street and give him a deposit to hold on to that great place he’s showing you. These types often bully renters into giving up some kind of cash payment. Chances are you’ll never see him or your money again.
Have you ever had a deadbeat neighbor? At my realty company, we only rent to people who have appropriate incomes and credit scores and a good rental history. This means that if you move into a building with one of the management companies that we have a relationship with, your neighbors will be upright citizens. If you rent from a landlord who doesn’t even do background checks, you could end up with the deadbeat neighbor who’s home all day and night blasting annoying music and getting loaded. Just wait until he and his girlfriend start fighting at the top of their lungs. Then you’ll really wish you’d moved into a building filled with other nice people like yourself.
As your broker, I go the distance to find you the best apartment in the city. (Especially if you are nice and laugh at my jokes…) Let’s face it, you’re not going to find those kind of special deals wading through the Craigslist slush pile trying to figure out which ads are actually real anyway. Just google “burned by Craigslist apartment ad” if you want to know the ugly truth.
I’m Miah Midtown, and I want to help you find an apartment. (Even if it’s on the Upper East Side.)
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FOR Malena Georgieva, it’s been a long trip to the Upper West Side of Manhattan. A native of Plovdiv, Bulgaria, a provincial city about an hour from Sofia, she received a degree in Soviet-style industrial management just as the Soviet Union was collapsing. Adapting to the post-Communist world after emigrating to the United States in 1993, she enrolled in a master’s program at the University of New Haven, supporting herself as a hotel chambermaid for $4.50 an hour. (“I thought, if I ever make $10 an hour, I’ll be queen of the world,” she said.) Eventually, she was hired by Deloitte & Touche, beginning a career in risk management, and her simultaneous love affair with New York City.
But Ms. Georgieva had another dream — to become an artist and designer. So she took continuing-education courses in interior design at New York University, and then set up her own firm. Two days after it opened for business in 2008, the economy took a nose dive.
Clients weren’t exactly beating down her door, so she went back to work in risk management and put her design efforts into her home, a tiny space down the block from the Dakota, on West 72nd Street. The fourth-floor apartment, for which she pays $1,750 a month, consists of a single room, just over 200 square feet, with a bed, a desk, a dining table and a couple of swivel chairs.
It is essential that they swivel — it allows them to face the dining area, the sleeping area or the living area, depending on how Ms. Georgieva is using the apartment. The Tirup chairs cost nearly $400 each at Ikea, making them far and away the most expensive furnishings in the space. Some items cost $12 (a glass cheese platter that she turned into a tabletop) or $40 (table legs, from Ikea, on which she mounted a board upholstered in imitation leather from the fabric emporium Mood). One substantial expenditure was for lumber, with which she and her father, a retired engineer who visited from Plovdiv, built the queen-size platform bed.
All in all, she spent about $1,500. Given that she would like to open a design firm again someday, and can’t deplete her savings, her frugal decorating is just another form of risk management.
Evidence of Ms. Georgieva’s cleverness is everywhere. She discovered she could turn a guest mattress on its side and slide it between her bed and the wall, where it functions as a kind of bolster pillow. To make the sleeping area feel like a room, she had three photographs of orchids, which she took on her Canon Rebel, blown up to 6-by-6-foot images, then hung them on the walls and ceiling surrounding the bed. (Ms. Georgieva did have to cut a few inches off the photos to get them up the building’s stairs.)
“I need to check my appearance before I go out,” said Ms. Georgieva, 43, explaining the full-length mirror, a $9 item that she turned into a conceptual artwork, gluing tiny toys to its frame and painting it all white.
She hung another mirror at an angle on the wall, so that it would disrupt the boxy lines of the apartment and send light from the lone window across the room. Below that mirror is a tiny dining table that can seat four, using two stools from Overstock.com and a bench she created by putting an upholstered board on top of a rarely used radiator.
Another upholstered board became her desktop. She attached her cable box to the underside of the board, using leftover curtain rod brackets, so it doesn’t take up valuable desk space.
“I’m sure everybody has the tools at home,” she said, of her ingenious cable-box solution. “It’s just that they don’t think about it.”
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By John Gittelsohn, Bloomberg – Jan 13, 2011 12:00 AM ET
The Manhattan apartment market tightened in the fourth quarter, as the number of leases almost tripled and landlords cut concessions to renters.
New leases rose to 7,217 from 2,456 a year earlier, according to a report today by appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and property broker Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate. The inventory of listings shrank 26 percent to 3,862 units and the time on market fell 42 percent to an average of 44 days.
“We went from the pendulum being significantly in favor of the tenant to perhaps more of a balance,” said Jonathan Miller, president of New York-based Miller Samuel. “Now we’re more in the middle and that’s measured by concessions, which aren’t gone. They’re reduced and more consistent with historical use.”
Median rents increased 1.7 percent from a year earlier to $2,950 and annual rent per square foot rose 4.5 percent to $49.13, Miller Samuel reported. A report yesterday by Citi Habitats said Manhattan’s average rent in the fourth quarter rose 5.9 percent to $3,127.
About 41 percent of leases during the quarter included a concession, saving those renters the equivalent of one month’s rent, Miller Samuel reported. A year earlier, concessions usually equaled two or three months of rent and were offered to a bigger share of new tenants, Miller said.
“Rents are stable based on what’s on the lease,” Miller said. “But concessions compared with the market a year ago have largely gone away.”
Economy Picks Up
Landlords gained leverage as New York City’s economy rebounded from the plunge triggered by the September 2008 bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., Miller said. The unemployment rate fell to 9.1 percent in November, the lowest since April 2009. Private-sector employment rose 1.6 percent in the 12 months to about 3.2 million, with financial-services jobs rising by 5,900, according to the New York State Department of Labor.
Glenwood Management Corp. stopped offering rent concessions in March, said Gary Jacob, executive vice president of the New Hyde Park, New York-based company, which owns 25 Manhattan apartment buildings.
“In 2009, there was a lot of negotiating,” Jacob said. “That’s not happening now.”
Rents on the West Side saw the steepest increase per square foot, rising 12 percent to an average $55.31, Miller Samuel reported. Rents in the downtown area south of 42nd Street rose 5.3 percent a square foot to $49.86, while rents on the East Side, between 42nd and 96th streets, fell 6.4 percent to $44.94.
Attraction of Amenities
The West Side also has more new apartment buildings, which command higher rents because tenants want amenities such as fitness centers, Miller said. Emerald Green, Glenwood’s 569-unit, two- tower development that opened in late 2009 at 320 W. 38th St., is asking higher rents to new tenants attracted by a gym, pool and children’s playroom, Jacob said.
About 2,500 to 3,000 new apartments are scheduled to open this year, said Clifford Finn, managing director of the new development market at Citi Habitats. The biggest is New York by Gehry, a 902-unit, 76-floor tower designed by architect Frank Gehry at 8 Spruce St. near City Hall, set to open in February, Finn said. The building was previously called Beekman Tower. Prices for the apartments have not been announced.
Glenwood started construction last month of Crystal Green, a 200-unit tower at 330 W. 39th, which it expects to open in mid-2012, Jacob said.
Tax Exemptions End
The pipeline of new apartments is shrinking because few projects have been started since the Lehman bankruptcy and others were put on hold after the state’s 421a program, which offers tax exemptions for multifamily residential projects, expired at the end of last year, Jacob said.
“As employment increases, rents are going to go up, unless there’s new construction,” Jacob said.
Median rents in Manhattan increased 1.7 percent from a year earlier to $2,950.
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Do you like drunks? Paying for other people’s share of the utilities when they stay in bed all day instead of working? Do you enjoy being embarrassed when your friends come over? Someone else’s dog pooing on your floor?
If so, one or even more roommates might be ideal for you.
However, if you prefer to live like someone who’s not going to end up in rehab or moving back in with their parents at age 30, a studio apartment is probably the best situation for you.
‘But, a studio apartment is expensive,’ you may be saying. ‘No, with my income I’m stuck living with vomiting people who like to sing Lionel Richie at 3am when I have to work early the next day, oh well.’
Wait a minute now. If you make $30,000 or more annually, chances are you can afford a studio apartment. One thing that can really help you out is to find a place where utilities are included. Is your credit terrible? Try getting a guarantor. These days, there are so many renters with bad credit that companies like Insurent have started helping people get apartments when their credit says they should be out on the street. It’s basically an insurance policy that says you won’t skip out on your lease.
And, have you looked on the upper east side recently? Give me a call.
I’m Miah Midtown, and I want to help you find an apartment.
It's 3am, what are you doing in there?!?
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From DNAinfo.com:
MIDTOWN — A five-year-old Ray’s Pizza franchise in Midtown is fighting back after an assault launched by a new 99 Cent Pizza outpost which opened across the street.
A banner advertising a limited-time 75-cent slice (as well as a 99-cent value menu for items like garlic bites) exclusive to Ray’s 1710 Broadway storefront at 55th St. went up on the east side of the block early this week.
In the afternoons since, 99 Cent Fresh Pizza Manager Imran Ahmed said he has repeatedly seen Ray’s employees flanking his storefront at 1723 Broadway, calling out “75 cents, 75 cents, 75 cents!”
“They’re trying to kill us,” Ahmed said Friday, while one Ray’s worker Geoffrey Rodriguez passed out fliers up the block. “They’re thinking we’re going to run, but we’re not…they can give a free price too, we don’t care.”
But across the street, Ray’s manager and 30-year company veteran Elsayed Elgaiar called the drama overblown.
“There’s no war,” Elgaiar said, calling the 75-cent pizza promotion a typical winter sale provoked in part by the slow economy.
On the sidewalk separating the two pizzerias, Queens resident Troy Jones, 31, took Ray’s side.
“I don’t think it’s fair,” Jones said of 99 Cent Fresh Pizza’s November move onto the block. “I think they’re trying to outscore Ray’s.”
But 99 Cent Fresh Pizza customer Randy Ramos, a 23-year-old bank manager, explained that he was willing to shell out an extra 24 cents.
“We need the flavor — the flavor across the street is different,” Ramos said of Ray’s pizza. “The crust is too soggy.”
Elgaiar argued his homemade crust makes a better pizza because, at Ray’s, he uses a gas-fired brick oven, compared to 99 Cent Fresh Pizza’s electric oven — which Elgaiar believes creates an inferior, drier crust.
For his part, Ahmed emphasized that 99 Cent Pizza only cooks a few pies at a time. Any slice that sits out for more than 20 to 30 minutes is thrown out, in order to preserve the texture.
Ultimately, it’s the business and residential community near the Broadway block between 54th and 55th St. block who will choose the superior slice.
“Between us and him is the customer,” Elgaiar said of Ahmed. “They can see who is better quality.”
Midtown pizza
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The Duke Ellington Orchestra made the A train famous, and today riders on the A can enjoy a variety of performances by some amazingly skilled musicians.
The A train runs along 8th Avenue in midtown and is one of the fastest express trains (I happen to live on the A and am perhaps a bit partial…) In honor of the most culturally significant train in the city, I’d like to share a video of my favorite A train musicians:
I’m Miah Midtown, and I want to help you find an apartment.
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Living with your cat in a studio apartment.
When my cat and I moved in together, he would sometimes sit next to the front door and gripe me out over our lack of living space. Sure, he was better off than all those cats living in city dumpsters and dodging traffic, but try explaining that to him. As time wore on, my cat and I began to struggle with each other for what little space there was. (I felt that I should get at least half of the bed while we were sleeping, for example, while he felt he was entitled to curl up in the center.) Things became a little tense when he started running over my face during the early morning hours as I slept and his natural urge to chase something took hold.
a basic cat walkway
One day I was trudging wearily past a lumber yard after another sleepless night, and something struck me. I had a lot of unused ceiling space. I rushed home and set to work on my genius plan to carve out extra living space where basically there was none.
After a few trips to the lumber yard, the hardware store, and the fabric shop, my magnum opus was finally complete: the glorious cat walkway.
What you do is buy lengths of wood and just fasten them to the wall using regular shelf brackets from the hardware store. You can cover the wood pieces with fabric or carpet. Just think of it like you’re installing bookshelves, only your cat will be sitting on the shelves instead. The more you make, the happier your cat will be, and the better you’ll sleep. Now, if you want to get fancy, you can use rustic branches and twine like I’ve used here. You can even choose designer fabrics. Just make sure to bring home swatches first.
I’m Miah Midtown, and I want to help you find an apartment.
the author's very attractive cat
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Hello readers! I’d like to introduce myself. I’m Miah, and I specialize in renting apartments in Hell’s Kitchen. A lot of my clients are people moving to Manhattan and renting an apartment for the first time. That can be really exciting, but it can potentially involve heartbreak.
Vacancy rates in Manhattan are extreme- only 0.59% of the apartments in Tribeca and SoHo are on the market. That’s 6 out of every 1000 apartments. With millions of people renting in New York City, competition for those apartments is fierce. Don’t be disheartened, though, as an expert in the Manhattan real estate market I can assure you that there are ways you can get an edge on the competition.
Get started. As warm weather approaches (specifically around March 1), there will only be around 10,682 apartments coming available. Again, with millions of New Yorkers looking, that’s not a lot of apartments. One way you can increase your buying power is by finding an apartment before everyone else starts looking. Don’t wait until the spring rush starts- be smart and find your new place when more options are available.
Be prepared. Another way to give yourself an advantage is to be prepared. Have your financial documents ready. If you have to take a couple of days to get bank statements and letters of employment ready, someone else will have taken your apartment and you’ll be back to square one.
Be financially prepared. Have you set aside funds for deposits and fees? I can tell you with absolute certitude that the half dozen other people who are looking at the same apartments as you, are ready to complete an application that day. If your broker has to wait around while you get your money in order, you’ll lose out on the apartment you want.
Know what you want. If you’re running all over Manhattan looking at twenty different apartments, by the time you get to the last one, most of them will be rented. Tell your broker what you’re looking for, and let them use their experience and connections to find the best deals for you.
I’m Miah Midtown, and I want to help you find an apartment.
Hell's Kitchen at night
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Miah Midtown 