![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Looking for apartments
Dec. 27th, 2006 11:32 amToday is the first day we're looking at a New York apartment to buy (coop or condo) with a broker in tow. We're looking at 8 (!) places in three hours.
With some luck, we'll be making an offer on one of them later this week. I'm not sure I'm ready to shell out between two and three years gross earnings (before the high New York taxes, so make that five years after taxes but before food, clothes, etc) on a large one-bedroom - but there's little choice in Manhattan. The market is down a good bit from the peak, and might go further down - but the really nice places will be gone before the market bottoms and if we're going to live somewhere for 10 years we shouldn't really care about prices dropping in the first three months.
It's certainly nerve-wrecking; the rough cash-flow projection for the first year is certainly scary (hiring movers, buying furniture, mortgage closing costs, plus general new house cash hemorrhage) . But with a year or two, as tax deductions kick in and we no longer suffer an ever-increasing rent, things ought to be less tight. And if Heidi wraps up her degree and gets back to work, we'll have no worries at all.
Update: We looked at nine places, and have narrowed it down to four possibles, of which one is new. All are quirky pre-war places, with high celilings and windowed kitchens. Our broker is getting us the financials on the buildings and then we'll decide. We may decide to pass and wait for the next batch, but we like two places so much the buildings would have to be in bad financial state for us to pass them by.
One place has amazing floor-to-ceiling nine-foot windows on three sides; it started out as a home for TB patients a hundred years ago and has great light and cross-ventilation. It's a fifth-floor walk-up though, with the laundry room in a different building in the complex.
An also-ran place is a century-old factory that was converted to artist's studios/living before the war; ten-foot ceilings, great light, but with a tiny kitchen and on a noisy street.
And then my current favorite, a prewar building on Carnegie Hill with a large kitchen, one large bedroom and a second small one that would work as an office/den, plus a quirky nook where we could have a second desk (and piles of paper) for Heidi. Once again nine-foot ceilings, and the living room has great built-in bookshelves that would hold, well, maybe half our our current collection.
It's an embarrassment of riches all designed to make me a pauper.
With some luck, we'll be making an offer on one of them later this week. I'm not sure I'm ready to shell out between two and three years gross earnings (before the high New York taxes, so make that five years after taxes but before food, clothes, etc) on a large one-bedroom - but there's little choice in Manhattan. The market is down a good bit from the peak, and might go further down - but the really nice places will be gone before the market bottoms and if we're going to live somewhere for 10 years we shouldn't really care about prices dropping in the first three months.
It's certainly nerve-wrecking; the rough cash-flow projection for the first year is certainly scary (hiring movers, buying furniture, mortgage closing costs, plus general new house cash hemorrhage) . But with a year or two, as tax deductions kick in and we no longer suffer an ever-increasing rent, things ought to be less tight. And if Heidi wraps up her degree and gets back to work, we'll have no worries at all.
Update: We looked at nine places, and have narrowed it down to four possibles, of which one is new. All are quirky pre-war places, with high celilings and windowed kitchens. Our broker is getting us the financials on the buildings and then we'll decide. We may decide to pass and wait for the next batch, but we like two places so much the buildings would have to be in bad financial state for us to pass them by.
One place has amazing floor-to-ceiling nine-foot windows on three sides; it started out as a home for TB patients a hundred years ago and has great light and cross-ventilation. It's a fifth-floor walk-up though, with the laundry room in a different building in the complex.
An also-ran place is a century-old factory that was converted to artist's studios/living before the war; ten-foot ceilings, great light, but with a tiny kitchen and on a noisy street.
And then my current favorite, a prewar building on Carnegie Hill with a large kitchen, one large bedroom and a second small one that would work as an office/den, plus a quirky nook where we could have a second desk (and piles of paper) for Heidi. Once again nine-foot ceilings, and the living room has great built-in bookshelves that would hold, well, maybe half our our current collection.
It's an embarrassment of riches all designed to make me a pauper.
