Results tagged “apartment”

Even though Bernard Madoff's Montauk home went for above its asking price, the U.S. Marshals decided to lower the price of the Ponzi schemer's Manhattan penthouse by $1 million to $8.9 million. The U.S. Marshals said, "Based on the current market and out of the better interests for the sale of the property, it was reduced," and Bloomberg News notes it had been on the market for 59 days. The home is a duplex on East 64th Street and neighbors include Matt Lauer—maybe some Wall Street bonus baby will want to trade up to a den of infamy!

Hopefully this isn't a new trend amongst muggers. The NY Post reports that after a 25-year-old man mugged a Newkirk Avenue (off Bedford Avenue) resident inside his apartment building, he decided to set up camp and live there for more than a day, even fooling the locksmith into thinking it was his apartment after the real resident called to have the locks changed! Cops eventually intervened, but, shouldn't that have taken a lot less time?

Doesn't everyone in Williamsburg know that drinking out of a plastic water bottle (or a dated Sigg bottle) will lead to certain death*? One water consumer ordered a case of Poland Spring to the mailroom recently (is this something that people do?), only to have it stolen. The bisphenol-A has clearly gone to their head, as they skipped right over passive-aggressive and penned an aggressive-aggressive note to the thief, wishing them to choke. A ransom note, declaring the water was "fine," was posted in reply. One tenant in the building says, "This goes a long way to explaining my love/hate relationship with my neighbors."

                  

Last week, the U.S. Marshals Service put Ponzi king Bernard Madoff's Montauk beach house on the market for $8.75 million—and now his Upper East Side penthouse duplex is officially for sale too. The apartment was seized in July and the Post reports it's on sale "for $7.5 million or more" with "its contents — expensive and otherwise — [to] be separately auctioned off."

The conditions inside Ming Li Sung's Long Island City apartment were so squalid that police thought the stench was surely emanating from a decomposing corpse. But when an FDNY haz-mat team kicked in the door, they were shocked to find the apartment occupied by Sung, 69, who yelled at them to get out. Instead, police took him to Elmhurst Hospital for psychiatric evaluation. His neighbors at the Ravenswood Houses say they've begged the Housing Authority for years to take action on Sing, whose apartment was so wretched that dead flies would pile up on the hallway floor. One resident, Robin McNeil, tells the Daily News, "All Housing would do was come and sweep them up," and her husband thinks the sickening stench contributed to her miscarriage in May! Yesterday, police said the apartment resembled a landfill, with rotting garbage piled floor to ceiling. When they entered the place, an "army of cockroaches" poured out into the second-floor hallway, and McNeil's husband tells the News, "The police were throwing up." Unfortunately for Sung, the mess was discovered too late to be entered in this summer's Filthiest Apartment Contest; unfortunately for the rest of us, it's lunchtime.

No one likes bedbugs—except maybe bedbug exterminators who make bank for (hopefully) getting rid of the bedbugs—and it turns out, shocker of all shockers, that potential buyers don't like them either! The NY Times' real estate section has a big article on the effects of bedbugs on deals and opens with an example of an "elegant two-bedroom co-op in an Upper East Side prewar building had drifted on the market for nine months by the time the first-time buyers laid eyes on it this spring." The buyers loved it, especially when they could get it for $50,000 less at $625,000. But then, in their "due diligence" phase, their lawyer said, "The [co-op board] minutes referenced multiple attempts to exterminate bedbugs in the building." Oh, crap.

Police are investigating the death of a 90-year-old man whose beaten and bound body was found in his apartment on East 65th Street near York Avenue. NY1 says "the man had trauma to the head, and his hands were tied behind his head." And WCBS 2 reports that the super had checked on the apartment of Felix Brinkmann, because " someone, possibly a neighbor, called to say he hadn't seen the elderly gentleman who lived alone there for days."

The 3,000 square-foot East Side apartment belonging to Marc Dreier, the once prominent attorney who pleaded guilty to a $700 million fraud involving fake promissory notes, was auctioned off yesterday—and the winning bid was Berkshire Hathaway executive Ajit Jain's $8.2 million offer. Bloomberg News notes that's "21 percent less than what [Dreier] paid two years ago" and that "The last recorded sale at Beacon Court was a 3,058 square-foot unit on the 49th floor," which sold at $12 million in May. Dreier's apartment is on the 34th floor and boasts a huge terrace. The proceeds of the sale are being split by personal bankruptcy creditors and the U.S. Attorney’s office—Dreier did have a $5 million mortgage after all. The $8.2 million sale includes items inside the apartment, such as nine pints of Haagen Dazs, "a half-eaten raspberry peach pie, a collection of Christian Liaigre furnishings and seven pairs of black Ermenegildo Zegna shoes, mostly size eight." While signing the paperwork, Jain reportedly said, "Right now, I'm having buyer's remorse." These days, Dreier is sort of familiar with remorse.

This week's NY Times Real Estate cover story is about "accidental sellers"—people whose "life has gotten in the way — in the form of a job upheaval, imminent offspring, holy matrimony or the dissolution thereof." There are various anecdotes (like the couple who hasn't sold their Brooklyn place and are now in Switzerland where cost of living is really expensive), and the one that caught our eye was the dilemma of artist-art professors Elizabeth Demaray and Hugo Bastidas: They are expecting a baby next month and, if their two-bedroom condo at 116th and Lenox Avenue doesn't sell, they have outfitted the walk-in closet as a nursery. Why? Because Bastidas uses one of the bedrooms as a studio: "The 1,200-square-foot space is not big enough for the couple, his canvases, a baby and an exceptionally vocal Bengal cat that must be sequestered in its own bedroom at night if the humans are to sleep." Demaray says, "If we wind up staying, we’re going to have to find a studio space for both of us, probably somewhere toward Lower Manhattan or possibly Jersey City. But the cat won’t work in the closet." See the couple and their cat in this picture—looks like Bastidas is practicing his baby carry with the cat!

A couple more details from the U.S. Marshals' seizure of Bernard and Ruth Madoff's $7 million East 64th Street penthouse. According to the AP, "Disgraced financier Bernard Madoff's wife asked to stay in her $7 million Manhattan penthouse and wanted to take a fur coat with her before federal marshals seized the property. A federal official informed of Ruth Madoff's departure from her apartment Thursday tells The Associated Press that when marshals said she couldn't take her coat, she left carrying just a straw bag." However, her lawyer tells the Post, "This cheap effort to smear Ruth Madoff is meritless. And it was she who forfeited the furs last Friday as the publicly filed stipulation states." And the marshals do say she left voluntarily with all the apartment's contents there, including "$18,000 worth of bedding and $382,000 in rugs and curtains."

Guess Ruth Madoff is on the streets—the U.S. Marshals have seized her and her husband's East 64th Street penthouse apartment. The AP reports, "U.S. Marshal Joseph Guccione said Thursday that the marshals were at the property pursuant to a court order." Newsday explains that Ruth Madoff gets $2.5 million as soon as she vacates the Upper East Side duplex, which is worth $7 million, so maybe that's why the seizure happened so soon after her agreement giving up her three homes last week. However, it's been tough for her to find an apartment—apparently landlords aren't interested in having such a notorious tenant. Update: The U.S. Marshals say that they arrived at noon and that Ruth Madoff left all personal property, "We have possession of their furniture and everything in it." Her lawyer said, "Ruth moved out voluntarily pursuant to prior agreements we had reached with the government," but did not offer Madoff's forwarding address.

What's an aging pop star to do when banished from her Wiltshire estate? Madonna has purchased a new place on the Upper East Side, as we know, and has now ordered the architects to replicate her Ashcombe country home feel room by room. Since she thinks it's bad karma to snag any of the possessions from her House of Divorce, she is having her people find replicas around New York instead, because that's what people with money choose to do with it. She's come a long way from her 234 East Fourth Street digs—originally “the architects were under the impression she wanted the place modernised. But Madonna said if she wanted some hipster apartment she never would have bought this place on the staid Upper East Side." The Mirror also notes that her Madgesty has been talking to friends about bringing some chickens in to the new abode, to make her kids feel more at home, of course. [via Curbed]

This morning yet another NYC family made the unsettling discovery that a snake had slithered into their apartment. (That's right, another—previously on home snake invasions: "Mom, there's a Boa in the couch!" and "Honey, there's a python in the pipes!") Maria Dominguez, a 37-year-old flower shop worker and mother of three, spotted the five-foot long, tan-colored snake (not pictured) under a living room table around 7 a.m. today. She tells the Daily News, "I don't know how it got there. I woke up, and the snake was just there." Dominguez herded the kids into a bedroom and called 911, which dispatched Emergency Services Unit cops to take the snake into custody. They managed to trap it with a broom and a plastic bag, and gave it over to Animal Care and Control, which is testing to see if it's venomous. The crisis was over in about an hour, and it's not known where the snake came from or how it got in. But Dominguez says "I want to move now," which suggests the work of a disgruntled neighbor who's just sick of her noisy kids.

There's good news for the famously decaying Windermere, a complex of three 1881 apartment buildings in Hell's Kitchen that was landmarked in 2005. The Japanese owner of the structure, Masako Yamagata, has finally agreed to a settlement with seven tenants who had to be evacuated in 2007 because of the extreme decay. They'll collectively share $2.6 million in exchange for relinquishing claims on their apartments, and Yamagata has also agreed to pay $1.1 million in civil penalties to the city for failing to maintain the building. A judge had issued a court order last year requiring Yamagata to repair the landmark, but the city had been unable to enforce it because he was in Japan. Once a buyer expressed serious interest in purchasing the Windermere, Yamagata finally settled so he could unload it for an undisclosed sum. The buyer has promised make all necessary repairs to the complex, which was popular with single working women and artists at the turn of the 20th century. When it opened, it was known for its technological marvels like the hydraulic elevator and telephone.

Not too many people are buying $40 million homes with grottos these days, but Madonna's never been a conformist. The NY Post reports that her Madgesty has just purchased a four-story, Georgian-style townhouse on East 81st Street, complete with 13 bedrooms, 14 bathrooms, 2-car garage, 3,000-square-foot garden, 9 fireplaces, an elevator and a wine cellar with a grotto. If you need some jealousy-inducing visuals, Curbed has photos. She'll be doing extensive renovations before moving in, however, and in the meantime is looking for an English-style manor in Westchester or on Long Island. A source tells the Post that, "She's trying to recreate London in New York City." Recently the Material Girl tried to acquire a new 4-year-old but was told she had to live in Malawi for 18 months in order to do so. She already owns land there, possibly for a future school, and has asked a family home be built there as well. Related: Watch the Angelina vs. Madonna baby-off from SNL earlier this month.

After not hearing from her for two days, the worried parents of a 26-year-old woman went to her West Brighton apartment and found her dead. The Staten Island Advance reports Caroline Wimmer was "beaten nearly beyond recognition and apparently strangled with an electrical cord" of a hair dryer.

From Scar Jo's snot to entrepreneurial virgins, eBay's got it all! So why not (formerly) valuable NYC apartments? Desperate brokers have now started using the auction website to let online shoppers in on an "amazing opportunity to own in Manhattan." Last year a studio apartment downtown went up on eBay with a price of $529,000, attracting zero interest. But this new offering has at least attracted one bid: $350,000 on an East Village two-bedroom that's priced at $425,000 on the broker's website. (Curbed cynically speculates that the lone eBay bid is merely a fake starter bid placed by the broker himself.) But a second eBay listing for an apartment in Hell's Kitchen, a one bedroom with an asking price of $325,000.00, has thus far received zero bids. With two days left on the auction, there's still plenty of time to jump on this "amazing opportunity" for ownership—or dare we say pwnership? [Via Curbed/Urban Digs.]

According to a report from Marcus & Millichap, the Real Deal reports the rental apartment vacancy rate will be 4.7% next year, "topping the previous record of 4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2003," thanks to "mounting job losses driv[ing] renters from the city." Which may mean more bargaining power for renters—if they want to go where there excess supply is expected, like Long Island City, Midtown West, the Financial District and southeastern Harlem. Further, homeowners who can't sell their homes may opt to rent them out, creating extra inventory. Some other data: The vacancy rate was 2.1% in 2007 and 3.4% in 2008.

Two years ago The NY Times visited the changing landscape of Harlem; at the time Maya Angelou told them about her part-time neighborhood, saying, "The hope is there. The minute you look down a street and see a Dumpster, you know that's hope." Earlier this year the paper revisited 125th Street and focused in on long time residents and their apprehension about gentrification and the changes afoot that many cannot benefit from. This was around the same time two more Starbucks entering the neighborhood sounded alarms.

Last week the NY Times' House & Garden section took a look at the mysteries planted by an architect in a ritzy Fifth Avenue apartment. This week, The Hollywood Reporter and Variety report that Paramount has purchased the rights to the article for a feature to be produced by J.J. Abrams. Writers Maya Forbes and Wally Wolodarsky have already been hired to adapt the piece into a film.

       

Tonight is the housewarming party, so to speak, for the Tenement Museum's new apartment and the opening of its first tour since 2002. This one is titled, The Moores: An Irish Family in America. They tell us that "it’s taken about 6 years from concept to completion for this particular project. That includes research, planning, fundraising, designing, bringing the upper floors up to code, purchasing artifacts for the apartment, developing content."

West Village residents may need to get ready for an onslaught of British paparazzi: Rumor has it that Heather Mills, ex-wife of Beatle Paul McCartney, is buying an apartment at 173 Perry Street.

The police charged a man, who found his girlfriend stabbed to death in a Chelsea apartment, with criminal mischief after he threw a chair out of a police station window. Robert Camarano, 60, was being questioned about Michele Hyams' death, and the Post reports that he is an "ex-con with a lengthy rap sheet."

The owners of the rooftop Ronald McDonald have stepped forward! We received the following email today from one of them (Ali), telling us:

That's my apartment featured in your Ronald McDonald story; it actually was not stolen; my roommate [Michael] saved it from McDonald's garbage one night and then lugged it up five flights of stairs. He's a hero if you ask me.

The Turtle Bay crane collapse took 7 lives, flattened a townhouse, and battered three other buildings, but the calamity’s toll doesn’t stop there: Two tenants returned “home” to find their roofless 19th floor penthouse looted of jewelry and electronics worth $30,000 or $80,000, depending on whether you believe the Post or the News.

The Real Estate Group of New York released its Manhattan Rental Market Report and writes that given the "continued softening" of the rental market and diminished demand, one- and two-bedroom rental prices have dropped, anywhere between 2-5%. However, studio rentals are up (driven by people trading down from bigger spaces to save money, oddly enough) and in the grand scheme of things, given the nutty NYC real estate market, rentals can still ridiculously expensive (see graphic above).

It's a walk-up, but the price is right. City squirrels are enjoying the goodwill of concerned citizens and the Parks Dept., who cooperated to install squirrel houses in City Hall Park. Mark Garvin had five of the boxes, which measure about a foot around, built with soft pine for several hundred dollars a piece--city real estate insanity extends to the trees!

School teacher and aspiring novelist Matthew Thomas won the jackpot in the New York apartment lottery when he scored his Upper East Side studio apartment, around the corner from Elaine’s, for just $14,000. Literally; the man won the right to buy the apartment in a lottery that makes available a minuscule number of apartments to people with incomes under $49,625. The units are part of 24 Mitchell-Lama co-op buildings in Manhattan and most applicants wait a decade for a shot at one.

If you've been following the Julian Schnabel-branded apartment building, Palazzo Chupi, then you might be interested to learn that the remaining two units went on the market today. What's not good enough for Bono and Madonna may just be good enough for you! So if you've had your savings earmarked for that perfectly pink West Village apartment that you can call home, The NY Times has the listing and Curbed has the floorplan; here are some highlights:

A con artist has been using Craigslist to scam gullible apartment seekers out of hundreds of dollars, according to the Daily News. Nothing new here, except this time the scheme so sketchy it’s hard to feel too sorry for the victims. Using the alias JoAnn Rinaggio, a compulsive check bouncer named JoAnne Smith has been posting listings for a fully furnished two-bedroom with a balcony in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. This amazing place can be yours for only $950 – less than half the market value!