NYC Real Estate Stubbornness

This young lady did a *trade-up* in Manhattan. She listed her triplex in Gramercy and bought a penthouse somewhere else in the City.

Only she never did get rid of the first place!

In the video, note her conspicuous dumbness.



I feel like putting it down in the sevens is completely DEVALUING the apartment...

Of course it's actually the *market* that's devaluing the apartment.

It's hard to believe that this Moron lives (for now) in a penthouse apartment.

People thought Florida was devastated when its housing prices dropped 60-70%...

But just wait until NYC prices are down a mere 25%, on their way to at least a 40% peak-to-trough decline.

The Altar Of Culinary Sacrifice

My buddy informed me that his wife landed a job at Gramercy Tavern.

CaptiousNut - Wow. That's like a top-10 restaurant in Manhattan. What a great opportunity!

Buddy - Well, it's more like an *internship* and it's actually the top-rated restaurant in New York City. She's in charge of organizing the refrigerator. And it pays minimum wage.

CaptiousNut - But still it'll look great on her résumé and will be a tremendous learning opportunity.

Buddy - She has to start out at the bottom and pay her dues.

CaptiousNut- Yeah. Something will open up soon. She'll move up the food chain fast.

Buddy - But she doesn't know if she wants to work in that kind of restaurant or any restaurant for that matter. It's so crazy intense. People are always chopping off their fingertips and getting burned...

CaptiousNut - You know I was always wondering about that. I always wanted to ask these professional chefs: Chef Ramsay, Lydia from that PBS Show, et al, how many times they cut themselves chopping garlic and whatnot....And you see it all the time on Hell's Kitchen. Almost every season someone gets really hurt.

Here's the menu at Gramercy Tavern. Currently dinner is two courses and costs $86 per person. Good luck with weekend reservations!

See also - Finger Food.

NYC - More In The Black

Here's one of the more prominent differences between Boston and New York:

New York has a whole lot more BLACK HAIR!

People-wise, it's waaaaay more diverse.

The extra black hair isn't just because of Boston's lily-white Irish heritage...

It's because New York is teeming with a whole lot more Asians, Italians, Jews, Blacks, illegal immigrants Latin Americans, et al.

I think in America 2010, all one really has to do to assess the demographics of a region is check out the size of the Goya section at the supermarket. Put it this way, I had no idea that Goya made so many more products than just beans and rice until I saw the Goya aisle at a store in Port Washington.

But getting back New York's diversity...

Particularly in Manhattan, one notices how extremely heterogeneous the pairs of caretakers and children are. It's far beyond just *white kids with Caribbean nannies*. You'll see every possible permutation imaginable - and then a few more. Asian kids with white nannies; bi-racial combos you won't be able to guess in a million years; and in vitro twins galore. My wife's friend summed it up perfectly, "The kids in New York NEVER match the parents." And often they don't even match their siblings!

And when diversity reigns so wide AND deep....foreigners don't have to assimilate. I experienced this previously as a student at UPenn. And here, I've already heard about old-school *Persians* nearby who, in keeping with their cultural heritage, will smack their adult sister in public if she falls out of line or something.

THAT I have to see, and hopefully record on my camera!

As for the *black hair* abundance, maybe that explains this from my prior post - Google Diversity Training:

Ground Zero - 8.75 years later

Wow. It really has been a long, long time.

I took my kids into Manhattan ("the City") today for the first time since we moved here. We hit that breath-taking Battery Park, lingered on the playground there for a bit, met *mom* after work for dinner (pricey $12.50 burritos from Blockheads!), and then took the subway and train home as a family.

Despite a spot of rain, it was a beautiful 72 degree day with a refreshing breeze off the Hudson. And the kids did well with all the walking until about the very end. After all, their strides are HALF as long as ours!

These are the types of things a family can do when they are untethered by *school*. Tomorrow should be just as nice; and around lunchtime we're going to a state park to meet up with our new, local homeschool co-op.

Where It Ended

Pretty cool submission - and description - on Flickr.

I'm just wondering how this guy got a shot of The Great Lawn with nary a soul in sight!

If memory serves me, the Feds wired Ivan Boesky and he tried to get Michael Milken to say something incriminating on tape.

Unlike the movie, it didn't work in real life.

Only A Moron Couldn't See It Coming

Manhattan Shows First Cracks

As the US housing slump deepened over the past three years, Manhattan’s real estate market seemed immune. Instead of crumb­ling with the rest of the nation, prices continued to rocket. Sales surged and new condominiums found multiple bidders. For a long while, Manhattan property was in an orbit all of its own.

But there are growing signs that this last bastion may be giving way. New York City, the seemingly indestructible foundation of the nation’s luxury property market, has this year begun to shown signs of strain. In the second quarter, traditionally the hottest property season, sales slumped 38 per cent to a five-year low, according to the Corcoran Group, the city’s largest residential real estate group.

According to Miller Samuel, a New York residential real estate appraisal company, some 6,869 apartments were for sale in Manhattan in the second quarter. That is 11 per cent more than the first quarter – and a full 31 per cent more than the second quarter of last year.



What's really amazed me is how few people, pundits, analysts, et al. have talked during the past few years about the gigantic real estate bubble in New York City. It seems present-tensers have been indoctrinated with the notion that NYC will always be insanely expensive, that its real estate will never *go down*.

BUT, there were at least two, perhaps three real estate busts in New York in just the 1970s. The culprit back then was a fiscal budgetary crisis. Fast forward to today, what the bleep do you think this portends - Wall Street Tax Revenue Down 97% ???



My prediction all along has been that homes will, broadly speaking, bottom out at 1998 prices. If that's true then Manhattanites will suffer a 50% haircut on their condos and co-ops from today's nosebleed levels.

Think I am crazy?

Well, I've already seen comps in Naples, FL selling at below 2000 prices. Just wait until mortgage rates hit 7% and 8%...

Lastly, I'll mention it again. That 1998 national housing price point coincides with the 1988 peak from the last housing bubble. So not only did it take a full 10 years for shelter to re-start appreciating, if my prediction of 1998 levels comes true, then Americans won't have enjoyed any net housing appreciation for about 22 years.

Why Are Humans So Immune To Good Advice?

Upon learning that I had previously lived in New York, a local young lady here in Boston asked,

YoungLady - I am planning a 'girls weekend' in Manhattan. Do you have any ideas for our trip?

CaptiousNut - First of all, park your car(s) in Connecticut and take the train in. You won't need them in the City. It's expensive to park. You'll get lost left and right...

And I gave her some more sage advice. One thing I had to disabuse was her fear that after seeing a show, that at 10:00pm she thought all the restaurants would be closed for dinner. Pause here so all the NY'ers can laugh!

Fast forward to today. I bumped into her this morning.

YoungLady - We went to New York last weekend. I guess we should have taken your suggestion to use the train.

CaptiousNut - Uh, oh. What happened?

YoungLady - It was a disaster. Especially getting out....we couldn't find 95-North so we just got on 95-South and figured we'd turn around.

CaptiousNut - [chuckling] Did you go over into Jersey? Over the GW bridge?

YoungLady - We went everywhere. [laughing herself]

CaptiousNut - Why again didn't you take the train?

YoungLady - We were going to but when we got to Connecticut I asked the girls in the car if we should 'just drive in' and they said 'yeah'.

There you have it. Forsake the advice of a wise man who's lived in NYC for the impulse of some never-been-anywhere AirHeads in the back of your car!

I even remember imploring the YoungLady to take the train. I told her it wasn't just for convenience but a very relaxing, scenic, enjoyable ride. I could just sense that I had to sell her on the train.

In this world, you really do have to twist someone's arm to help them out.

Barry Ritholtz wrote a great blog on what to do (and not to do) in New York City:

A New Yorker's Guide for Tourists: 20 Ways to Make Your Stay in New York City More Enjoyable

If you are seriously planning a trip, make sure you read the comment section of Barry's post as well.

Now, getting back to the query of this post - why are humans so immune to good advice?

I really don't know. My research is ongoing and incomplete.