Ashok 'Shoookie' Singh

Well, my 81 year old mother was taken to the hospital on Sunday night. I received a call and found out that she had several seizures and she was in critical condition, it isn't looking good. I am terrible at hospitals, I just feel uncomfortable and I just don't like being there. THe last several times she was at the hospital for a brief stay I didn't even go. Am I a bad person?

I love my mother to death--who doesn't love their mother! This is something I never expressed to her, we just were not the touchy feely type of family that did say those things, it was just understood. My father was stabbed crossing the Washington bridge when I was three, I never knew him so I never felt like I missed him. My mother was everything to me, she left our house in The Bronx at 5:00 PM everyday to go to her job in Washington Heights as a nurse's aide for almost 30 years! When I got my license it was my mother who bought me my 1978 Toyota Corona which I bitched about because IT WAS a 1978 Toyota Corona; it was years later I would realize, what did I have to complian about, MY MOM BOUGHT ME A CAR--my friends were walking! LOL

My mother had many trials and tribulations raising me, it wasn't easy, no matter how one may look at it. I won't go into any details, since if I did you may not consider working with me.

I spoke to the hospital this morning and my Mom is in even worse condition. She had a massive stroke and her kidney fuctions have shut down. She is unresponsive to their efforts and she is on a ventilator right now. My mother signed a health care proxy after an episode she had back in October, I am torn and confused. When we signed that I figured I would never have to use it, since my Mom is strong and she will live forever to 'torture' me--lol.

I have to make a decision today, am I to let her go or delay the inevitable. This is all I could think of the last several days and it pains me much. My mother always told me that when she dies she wants me to light the fire in her mouth (Hindus believe the soul is in the head, when you cremate you light the fire in the deceased persons mouth, it is pretty dramatice, the body is actually laid on top of a pyre and someone lights it). I always laughed at this and now I find myself preparing for it.

I plan on taking her body back to Trinidad, and cremating it there, although we have lived in the US for well over forty years, I feel kind of strange to bring her back there to cremate, BUT my mother lived in Trinidad for forty years and I feel that she would want to go back home. I am sure my mother would want to go home.

Here's an interesting article I found on Zillow, I take it with a grain of salt, there still seems to be a ton of NO FEE apartments in NYC, albeit they are in the financial distirct (where studio runs about $3000 per month).

Bad news for college grads moving to Manhattan: You can't live here for under $1,300. As a rule, if you are living in Manhattan, it's not impossible, but it's very hard to find anything under $1,300 or $1400.
Rents aren't actually that much higher than last year. Average rents are up 3.62 percent from the same period last year. The average rent for a non-doorman studio is $2,077, while a doorman studio is $2,367 (last year: $1,958 and $2,337, respectively). A non-doorman one-bedroom is $2,713, while a doorman one-bedroom is $3,428 (last year: $2,590 and $3,276, respectively). It's cheaper to have a roommate, but not by much. A non-doorman two-bedroom is $3,680, while a doorman two-bedroom is $5,327 (last year: $3,590 and $5,197, respectively).

The market is almost back to normal," which means incentives are rarer. Don't expect, for instance, to be offered two months of free rent, a common practice in 2009. Also, don't expect to be allowed to put up a temporary wall. The service, which can save renters a bundle, is starting to be more closely scrutinized for legality. Now that landlords aren't so desperate, they're getting stricter about checking for permits.Renters need to get a permit. For years people didn't get permits because people were doing so many. But now, if they check, you could get fined or in trouble.

Because of the dearth of incentives, the buildings still offering them are getting special attention. The Financial District and Stuyvesant Town, where free rent deals still exist, are starting to look more attractive. If you're lucky you might be able to few other landlords are offering a month free.

So the bottomline is the market is getting better and mostlike renters need to pay a usual broker fee because most of the landlords are not paying any longer any kind of fee to the brokers to find a Ready, Willing and Able tenant.

I am sorry to repost so many of these blogs post, but they are so true and have some great information--thanks Naked Apartments!

What Does No Fee Mean?
September 7th, 2010 by The Naked Apartments Team



“No Fee!” That one little phrase makes every renter so excited, but why are only some apartments no fee? And why are the best apartments never advertised as no-fee? As a renter looking for your next apartment, you should understand the answers to these two questions.What’s a fee?

A fee is the dollar amount owed to a broker when they help you find an apartment. ‘Fee’ is the one word abbreviation for ‘Broker Fee.’ Fees are how brokers earn their living. It’s the dollar incentive for a broker to help you find your next apartment. The fee can range from 8% of the full year’s lease to 15% of the full year’s lease. (8% is the same as one month’s rent. One month = 8% of the year. 1÷12 = 8%.) Don’t think that your broker is getting that much though. The total fee is split between them, their brokerage firm, and anyone else involved in the transaction.

Does no-fee imply there’s no money in it for the broker?
When a broker helps find your apartment, there’s always a fee owed to them; it’s just a question of who pays it. If the landlord pays the fee, the apartment is advertised as no-fee. If the landlord does not pay the fee, the apartment is advertised as requiring a fee. But… if you find an apartment without a broker’s help, and go straight to the landlord, there is no fee. No broker, no broker’s fee.

When will the landlord pay the fee on my behalf?
A landlord will only pay a fee if she/he needs help finding a tenant. It’s Marketing 101 - when you need help selling a product, advertise a promotion, a discount, a coupon, a give-away. And that’s what no-fee is: it’s an advertised give-away.

With a no-fee apartment the landlord is saying to all brokers, “tell renters that if they rent my apartment, I’ll pay the broker’s fee for them.”
Every month that an apartment goes unoccupied the landlord is essentially losing money. Assuming the average rent in Manhattan is $3,400, an empty Manhattan apartment will cost a landlord $3,400 per month. If that apartment sits on the market for 6 months, that’s a loss of $20,400… ouch. Now, when a broker helps out and finds a tenant, the landlord no longer loses money, hence, the financial incentive of a landlord to pay the fee on your behalf. The landlord would rather pay the broker’s fee for you, than risk losing another 2 months of that apartment going unoccupied. Again, by advertising an apartment as no-fee, it becomes more attractive to renters and more likely to get rented.

When do I pay the fee?
If an apartment does not need a broker’s help to get rented, a landlord won’t pay their fee on your behalf. That’s the basic reason why you rarely see a great apartment advertised as no-fee. For a great apartment, renters are willing to pay the fee themselves, which means the landlord doesn’t need to. The logic being, if you don’t rent the unit, someone else soon will. Back to marketing 101 - when something will sell right away, there’s no need for a promotion; instead, maximize your revenue. For this reason, when the NYC economy is soaring and there’s huge demand to move into the city, the number of no fee apartments will drop. And vice versa, when the NYC economy is tanking and renters want to move out, the number of no-fee apartments will increase.

Be smart: don’t limit your search to no-fee only.
If you’re the type of renter that only searches 'no fee,’ you could be missing out. You could find a great apartment that, even when including the fee, is a great deal when compared to all no-fee apartments.

To Recap:
1.Fees (aka ‘broker fees’) are what drives a broker to help you, because when you sign a new lease, they make money.
2.A fee is only owed when you use a broker. When you rent directly from a landlord, there’s no fee.
3.If the landlord pays the fee, the apartment is advertised as no-fee.
4.If you pay the fee, the apartment is advertised as requiring a fee.
5.Great deals often require you to pay a fee. Don’t limit your search to no-fee only.

Here's another great post

When you sign that fee check you may think to yourself, “wow, they’re getting a lot of money. I should become a broker!” But what most renters don’t understand is that a broker is usually not getting the full broker’s fee. And if you sign a no-fee apartment, the broker is not getting the full fee that your new landlord pays them. (Any apartment advertised as No-Fee just means the landlord pays the fee for you. Read more about this concept in our previous post, What Does No Fee Mean.)

Instead of going entirely to your broker, the money is typically split several ways. The brokerage firm that your broker works for will take the largest cut - usually 50% or more. And if someone else helped show the apartment, they also get a cut.

Why is so much owed to the brokerage firm?
1) Licensing/Legal Responsibility

This gets confusing, but hang in there. The broker you’re working with is probably not a “broker” in the legal sense of the word. They’re most likely a “licensed salesperson” who is associated or sponsored by an officially licensed broker. Your “salesperson” can only collect a fee (take a commission) because of this association, even though they hold a license and have passed the required courses. In addition to enabling their salespeople to collect fees, the brokerage also assumes some of their legal responsibility. If the salesperson violates one of the state’s real estate laws, the brokerage may also be held responsible.



2) Full support
The brokerage doesn’t make money unless their salespeople help you sign your next lease. In order to ensure that happens, a brokerage provides all the support that enables your salesperson to help you find your apartment. They may provide offline and online marketing support, training, administrative support, benefits, office space, a receptionist, telecom and internet access, etc. All of this costs money - a lot of it.


So next time you write that fee check or sign the lease on your ‘no fee’ apartment, remember that your salesperson/broker isn’t walking away with as much money as you may think.

Here's a great post from naked apartments, I think a lot of renters don't understand the economics of bypassing the broker, after allit is our job to to know the inventory and assist you in finding the right apartment!

Why Brokers Don’t Share the Address
December 8th, 2010 by The Naked Apartments Team
Respond


Renters often become frustrated/irritated/angry when a broker witholds the exact address of a building. To understand why, renters need to understand the broker’s perspective.

When a broker discloses the address of an apartment, there’s a chance the renter bypasses them in order to avoid paying a broker’s fee.

Sidestepping the broker in this way does happen and happen often, especially when fees are as expensive as they are in NYC. And it’s for this reason that most brokers will not share an address with you, especially before you’ve met face to face or signed an agreement and gone through a qualification process.

If you’re the type of renter that refuses to pay a fee, then you can easily limit your search to no-fee rentals; however, know that you will limit your choice of apartments. To land some of the best apartments in NYC, you’ll have to pay a fee. To understand why this is the case, read our explanation on the economics of no-fee.
So while it’s certainly frustrating to meet a broker in person before you find out the exact location, unfortunately, there’s just no way around it, unless you limit the number of apartments to consider.