Rich Bouchner New York City Real Estate

The mysterious sweet smell that swept over parts of the city more than three years ago returned on Monday night.

The city’s 311 information line was flooded with callers reporting the smell of maple syrup, or something like it, wafting across several neighborhoods, a spokesman for the Office of Emergency Management said.

Nearly all of the calls — 35 in just a few hours — came from areas in Manhattan, the spokesman said, although one caller reported smelling the sweet scent across the East River in Queens.

Department of Environmental Protection agency investigators were searching for the source of the smell late Monday night and early Tuesday morning, the agency’s spokesman said.

The strange, syrupy scent has descended on parts of New York City and New Jersey at least three times before. Beginning in the fall of 2005, people in various areas of the city and nearby New Jersey reported the scent.

Some have theorized that the smell came from New Jersey. Others theorized that it was generated by a candy factory in Manhattan. There were also fears that the odor was linked to an act of terrorism.

Officials ruled the odor harmless but never solved the mystery of its origin.

Only in New York. This is a first for me. Buyer dies..seller keeps downpayment money...only in New York.

1150 Park Avenue

In a recently settled lawsuit, the seller of an Upper East Side cooperative unit got to keep a down payment from a buyer who died before the closing.

Glen Altman was in contract to buy a co-op for $2.3 million at 1150 Park Avenue, between 91st and 92nd streets, and paid a $230,000 down payment. She was approved by the board, but before closing on the unit, she passed away.

Altman's estate wanted the down payment to be returned, but the Manhattan Supreme Court ruled that the seller could keep the money.

Ira Matetsky, an attorney at the law firm Gafner & Shore, who was not involved with the lawsuit but wrote about it in his firm's newsletter, said the seller won the suit because there was no provision in the contract stating that if the buyer died, the contract could be broken.

"In some situations, a contract contains a standard provision that if a purchaser should pass away before the closing, the contract is null and void," Matetsky said. "This case arose, and the contract didn't say one way or the other."

Altman, who passed away in 2005 at age 74, was survived by her daughter, Tracy Altman Warner. Warner, a Corcoran Group agent, and her attorney were not immediately available for comment. Altman and her husband, Edwin, who passed away in 2003, ran a wholesale diamond company called M.B. Altman Sons. The lawsuit was settled in October.

According to the lawsuit, the estate argued they were not obligated to go forward with the purchase because the contract called for occupancy by Altman only. However, there was no provision in the contract to cancel the deal.

JoAnn Schwimmer, an associate broker at DJK Residential, said she had never heard of a situation like that before. "It seems immoral," Schwimmer said of the seller keeping the down payment.

Roberta Axelrod, director of residential sales and rentals at Time Equities, said that in a few of her deals, lawyers have requested that a provision be put into a contract that would cancel the deal if the purchaser passed away.

"None of my purchasers have ever died," Axelrod said, "but the way it technically works is that unless you put it in the contract that you have the right to cancel it, the estate is bound to [the purchaser's] obligation."

If a purchaser buying a condo passed away, the estate would have to buy the unit if there wasn't a provision in the contract canceling it. In the case of a co-op, however, the estate has to be approved by the board.

The co-op board president at 1150 Park Avenue, Herbert Appel, testified that the estate did not submit an application to go forward with the sale, and if the estate had wanted to purchase the unit, its application would have been considered by the board, although an estate has never bought a unit in the building.

Matetsky the attorney said, however, that typically a co-op board -- which has stringent requirements for approval -- would not allow an estate to buy a unit as it wouldn't know who from the estate would move in.

And in a case where an estate is required to go forward with the sale, Time Equities' Axelrod said, the seller can still decide to cancel the contract and return the money.

Saw this on luxist.com. Some very nice real estate porn. I guess it pays to play for the Yankees....even if you don't win a ring!

Bobby Abreu in NYC, Estate of the Day

Posted Jan 5th 2009 1:02PM by Deidre Woollard
Filed under: Estates, Sports

Baseball player Bobby Abreu has had his apartment in One Beacon Court in New York City listed since last March but since it seems like Abreu might be soon leaving New York for the West Coast (both the Dodgers and the As have expressed interest) we thought it might be time to give him a little sales help. One Beacon Court has seen big baseball sales before, Johnny Damon had an apartment here, selling a 2,410 square foot apartment for around $8 million. But that was in 2007. Abreu's apartment is a two bedroom with a large living room and dining room and a master bath with a soaking tub. You'd be buying this one for the views more than anything else although all the finishes are as luxurious as you would expect. Abreu has had this place on the market for $7.9 million without a price cut. Back in March, Big Time Listings reported that Abreu paid $3.5 million for the property in 2005, so it seems he could lop a bit off the price and still make a profit. It seems like it's time to do so.

Could first time home buyers help lead NYC out its currnet slump? Most of my real estate clients fit this mold. Good time to be a buyer if you don't need to be a seller first.......

Move over, boomers. In the current down economy, Gen X buyers are the ones brokers want.

In a surprising twist of fate, baby boomers paralyzed by crippling stock market losses are being pushed aside in favor of these buyers, who despite their thin credit histories and predilection for borrowing from their parents, are more active in the market.

In recent years, baby boomers who were on the verge of retirement commanded much of the city's real estate buying power, from high-level executives splurging on trophy homes to suburban empty nesters snapping up city pied-&agrave-terres.

But while their boomer parents are now reluctant to buy or sell homes, younger buyers are often forced to move despite the sinking economy because of life changes like marriage and growing families, making them a key demographic in a recession.

Boomers are "in shock," said Elaine Clayman, a senior vice president and top-selling broker at Brown Harris Stevens. "We now have financial insecurity. It's a really big change."

Because boomers have "now lost a substantial amount of their savings," Clayman said, "they're no longer looking to buy property."

Or, as Michael Signet, the director of sales at Bond New York, put it, "I wake up every morning and have to take Pepto-Bismol every time I read about the stock market."

Of the few remaining buyers, many are under 40, because younger people are more likely to experience life-changing events that force them to move, said Jacqueline Urgo, president of the marketing and sales firm the Marketing Directors. "With younger buyers, it's not a discretionary purchase," she said. "You can't have a baby in a studio."

Another reason young clients are sought after in the slowing real estate market is because they're often first-time home buyers. Thanks to the credit crunch, lending restrictions have tightened across the board, and buyers in all sectors of the market are having trouble getting mortgages. But now that sales have drastically slowed since the calamitous Wall Street meltdown this fall, first-time buyers now face one less obstacle than homeowners: They don't have wait for their current home to be sold before committing to a new purchase.

"A first-time buyer doesn't have the problem of needing to sell their house to get the equity," said Jeff Li, a vice president of Staten Island-based Leewood Real Estate Group, which is marketing homes in its Estates at Opal Ridge development primarily to young families.

Another advantage, he said, is the new federal tax credit of $7,500 available to first-time homebuyers through the federal Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008. That, combined with low interest rates and falling prices, makes it a good time to buy as long as buyers have good credit and money for a sizeable down payment, he said. For many, that requires help from parents. "They'll probably borrow from their families to get their down payment," he said.

And many parents seem happy to oblige, despite their reluctance to buy new homes for themselves.

"There are a lot of parents helping," said David Kazemi, a vice president at Bond New York, who is representing a young, single man who has rented an apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, for years, but is now looking to buy a one or two-bedroom apartment in the area with help from his parents, who have cash on hand from the sale of a piece of international property.

Kazemi said parents are sometimes willing to help because they're looking for alternative investments.

"People have lost faith in the stock market," Kazemi said. "Real estate's a little more stable."

But targeting new, younger buyers requires methods that many brokers are unaccustomed to using.

Clayman, for example, realized recently that tapping her usual pool of clients wasn't generating many new deals.

"I'm not doing my normal schmoozing," said Clayman, whose current clients include a newly married young couple who must sell the bride's former home, a studio in the East 40's. "There's an instant rapport with people my own age, but am I going to do any business?" she said.

"To do business over the next five years, I have to focus on Generation X and Generation Y," Clayman said. "They are the ones that have to move. And I have to communicate with them the way they're used to communicating."

To target them, Clayman added a Gen X category to her list of contacts, started sending out e-mail blasts in addition to print mailings, and joined Facebook and LinkedIn. "I've been able to get back in touch with some of my old clients who are now having babies," she said. "It gives you a reason to keep in touch."

Clayman initially took a fair amount of good-natured teasing from friends of her 33-year-old daughter Justine after she joined Facebook. Originally available only to college students, the social networking site has surged in popularity with 20- and 30-somethings, with more than 70 percent of users age 34 or younger.

"My daughter's friends say, 'Your mother is the only grown-up on Facebook,'" laughed Clayman.

But for Clayman, the Web site is much more than a social outlet. It's a crucially important way of connecting with younger clients in a marketplace where a majority of the few remaining buyers are in their 20s and 30s.

Bond New York also has a Facebook page, Signet said, and advertises in Billboard Magazine and Variety in hopes of targeting younger audiences.

Another way to reach first-time buyers is by targeting renters, said Urgo of the Marketing Directors. Her company is using the tactic to sell units at the Setai at 40 Broad Street in the Financial District, the Atelier at 627 West 42nd Street and the Visionaire in Battery Park City.

"We're doing more rental mailings than we have in the past," she said. "We're reaching out to higher-end residential buildings and inviting them to move up to home ownership. That young audience — that's who's renting."

And of course, word of mouth is crucial, Urgo said. "The young audience talks up a purchase and refers their friends," she said. "When it's your first purchase, it's part of the cocktail party conversation."

As for older buyers, they'll venture back into the market eventually, Urgo said. "It will come back around."

http://ny.therealdeal.com/articles/the-kids-are-all-right

Few consumers realize the different fee structures that Fannie and Freddie have for various mortgages types. There are some types of loans that are virtually impossible to originate because the fees that the GSEs tack on make the rates to the consumer too high. I understand the concept of risk based underwriting...but don't higher fees that equate to higher rates end up making it even harder for a "risky" borrower (ie a condo buyer w/ a 690 credit score and 20% down) to :

1) buy or refi a home (both of which this economy desperately needs) and

2) make payments once they do move forward.

Check out the WSJ article below for a little more detail on GSE fees.

WSJ

JAMES R. HAGERTY

The National Association of Realtors said an increase in fees by Fannie Mae "imposes major new costs" on home buyers and people trying to refinance into more affordable mortgage loans.

The trade group's protest -- made in a letter to the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the regulator of Fannie and its smaller rival, Freddie Mac -- underscores growing tensions between the role of these government-backed mortgage companies in propping up the housing market and their efforts to contain heavy losses from defaults.

In an update posted on one of its Web sites Monday, Fannie raised some of the fees it charges to lenders when it buys or guarantees certain types of mortgages. The fees generally are passed on to consumers.

For instance, for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage to buy a condominium, allowing for initial payments of interest only and with a 20% down payment, a borrower with a credit score of 690 will pay fees totaling 3.25% of the loan amount for mortgages Fannie purchases after April 1, up from 1.25%. (Under a system devised by Fair Isaac Corp., credit scores range from 300 to 850. The median is about 723.)

A Fannie spokesman said the higher fees are targeted at some of the highest-risk loans, such as those allowing deferment of principal payments and those allowing borrowers to draw cash when they refinance. He said Fannie and Freddie in October canceled plans for an increase in another fee that applies more generally to mortgages. A spokeswoman for the FHFA said the agency is reviewing the Realtors' letter.