Posted by Jonathan J. Miller -Monday, February 6, 2006, 12:02 AM
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In Troy McMullen’s House of the Week column Geothermal New York [WSJ], he presents a $7.8M Manhattan townhouse listing with an unusual heating system, especially on an island made largely of rock.
WSJ
An unusual geothermal energy system provides heating, cooling and hot water. Pipes extend about 1,400 feet into the earth, where the temperature is always about 52 degrees, according to architect Alexander Gorlin, who writes about the home in his book “Creating the New American Townhouse.” The pipes transfer energy to the house, where two-layer-thick concrete exterior walls, filled with thermal materials, trap the energy and distribute it, Mr. Gorlin says. (All floors also have radiant heating systems.)
I suspose installation of this sort of system would be especially difficult in Manhattan with its labrynth of underground subways, water pipes, wiring, sewers and of course…rock.
Posted by Jonathan J. Miller -Wednesday, December 28, 2005, 12:05 AM
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A post in the Gothamist today Plaza Condos: Ridiculously Overpriced, was based on a New York Daily News article 4.5M for 1 bedroom: How suite it is at pricey Plaza co-ops [NYDN] (Well, actually the Plaza is going condo, not co-op.)
The days of being surprised about residential pricing are basically over. The 1-bedroom mentioned in the Daily News article was an 1,155 square foot 1-bedroom with direct views of Central Park at $3,900 per square foot. $2M for a 1-bedroom without views. Since there are no true comparables for this project, pricing must have been extremely difficult.
To those new to the Manhattan market, $3,900 is not an overall price per square foot record. However, it probably is a record specifically for a 1-bedroom unit (I haven’t verified).
The Gothamist post’s title is pretty strong language and to many, the price really is ridiculous. However, since there has been a rush to purchase small units at the Plaza, it suggests that there is demand at this price point.
You can scratch your head and be resolute in the fact that one sale like this 1-bedroom is an anomaly, but many sales like this is a market.
Posted by Jonathan J. Miller -Tuesday, December 27, 2005, 12:01 AM
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Source: Source: St. Petersburg Times
I have always found it interesting that many real estate professionals define market value as the price someone is willing to pay for a property. However this assumption can often be far from reality and is why real estate brokers and real estate appraisers can be at odds on some transactions.
The real estate broker’s job is to get the highest price for the listing they represent, while the real estate appraiser (abridged version) has the responsibility of estimating the reasonable value that a fully informed buyer and a fully informed seller would likely agree on.
What happens when the seller is located on a parcel of land that is of key importance to a larger adjacent development? Thats where reality leaves the picture.
Take this example, which occured recently in St. Petersburg Florida [St. Pertersburg Times]. A modest house was purchased for $76,000 in 1992 and underwent little improvements. The property just recently sold for $1M after being appraised for $141,200. Its a small house on 1/10 of an acre.
The property was a key parcel in a larger development plan and the seller was willing to pay significantly more for the property. A typical mortgage lender would never provide financing on this house for this value because the price paid reflects the investment value to the buyer, not market value to the typical buyer.
Posted by Jonathan J. Miller -Tuesday, December 27, 2005, 12:01 AM
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In Amir Efrati’s article Wright, Neutra and … Al Beadle? Unknown ’50s, ’60s Architects Get Big Push From Brokers; Rising Prices, Leaky Roofs [WSJ] he discusses how “the real-estate boom hasn’t just been good to homeowners fortunate enough to cash in on it. It’s also helped the reputations of a crop of architects and developers who until now were pretty obscure.
Paul Rudolph – Sarasota, Fla. – Covered porches, flat roofs. Check out his Manhattan 4-level apartment built in the 1970’s. He called and hired me to appraise it when he was terminally ill.
Architect: Rudolph
Robert Rummer – California to Oregon in the 1960s and ’70s, known for flat roofs, is big in Portland.
Architect: Rummer
H.B. Wolff – a 1950s developer in Denver.
Abrom and Benjamin Dombar – houses built with mahogany and cyprus, who were apprentices of Frank Lloyd Wright.
Howard Meyer – Dallas – Brightly painted front doors, window shades.
Architect: Meyer
Al Beadle – Phoenix – Steel frames, foundations on stilts.
Architect: Beadle
Homer Delawie – San Diego – Hillside homes on posts, floor-to-ceiling glass-walls.
Architect: Delawie
Paul Hayden Kirk – Seattle – Japanese-influenced design like Shoji screens, courtyards.
”
Architect: Kirk
Most of these characters never became as famous as their contemporaries,
Richard Neutra and John Lautner, who were known for free-flowing spaces
and avant-garde theatrics (the living room of one Lautner house was built
to rotate on a turntable and become a patio).
“That’s mostly because “midcentury modern,” or MCM, was cutting-edge in the 1950s and ’60s but dated quickly and lost its popular appeal as buyers returned to more traditional features.”
“Moreover, its sleek, futuristic look was widely copied and over time became associated with cheap cartoonish knockoffs. Then, a new wave of architects came along who considered modernism “bland and boring,” says Thomas Hines, a professor of history and architecture at the University of California, Los Angeles. “They wanted to make allusions to the past.”
“Now, real-estate brokers and preservationists are resuscitating the reputations and homes of some lesser-known mid-century figures.”
And why not? With a heightened interest in real estate, it follows that many would seek to understand houses for their architecture as much as their function as shelter. The brokers recognize this as a marketing opportunity, a hook to sell these properties for their clients.
My dealings in New York with Paul Rudolph and a few other unusual properties has made me realize that, although the general consumer may not be interested in them, there is definitely a market segment that is completely wild about them. It was my experience that the limited marketability of these residential properties were made up by the premium their enthusiastic fan base would pay, usually resulting in a pricing offset.
Posted by Jonathan J. Miller -Tuesday, December 20, 2005, 12:01 AM
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Courtesy of Satellite Imaging/New York Magazine
One of the reasons to love Manhattan is clearly Central Park. New York Magazine asked us to venture a wild guess as to what Central Park was worth in the article Reasons to Love New York: Because We Wouldn’t Trade a Patch of Grass for $528,783,552,000.
So there is no confusion, this is a purely hypothetical, far-fetched, non-scientific wild guess based on so many caveats (and done in about 3 minutes) that reality doesn’t enter into the equation so we are not violating any licensing requirements…got it?
After the dust settled, here’s the math used.
Webmaster’s Note: Its quite possible, and highly likely, that the net value of all of Manhattan would be less after Central Park was developed. A very high level of inventory that might take decades to absorb would be created, but assuming instant absorption, units facing the park would lose their views, proximity to the park would not matter anymore and a cultural and recreational resource would be lost to all homes in Manhattan. In other words, it would likely be bleak on the real estate front.
Imagine Central Park on the real estate market [The Real Deal]
Appraised value of Central Park: $528,783,552,000. Sell! [Curbed]
Update
Central Park: $528.8 Billion [The Walk-Through]
Posted by Jonathan J. Miller -Monday, December 19, 2005, 9:24 AM
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I was reading the New York Times new real estate blog The Walk-Through for the first time this weekend and thought they have done a nice job with it.
One of their posts Build Big, Live Small [The Walk-Through] featured a link to an article about a 710 square foot house occupied by an architect who builds large houses for his clients [LA Times]
I couldn’t help but notice the irony of the display ad in the LA Times post for closets [seen to the left - name edited out to protect the guilty]. 710 sq ft houses…closets…is that synergy or what? 
Posted by Jonathan J. Miller -Monday, December 19, 2005, 12:01 AM
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A rousing “Yes!” to the 3 questions that burn inside each and every one of us:
Q: Are there castles in the US?
A: There are more than 300 castles in the US. [DupontCastle.com]
Q: What does a castle cost and it it considered luxury housing?
A: You can get one for about $1.5M – I saw this listing for Wentworth Castle for sale in New Hampshire which is also in the “300 castles” link above.
Q: Do people still build castles?
A: For only $300,000 – $350,000, you can build this castle yourself in about 10 years.
Here are some questions answered by the owners of DuPont Castle in West Virgina.
Posted by Jonathan J. Miller -Monday, December 19, 2005, 12:01 AM
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Source: Friends of the Highline
In New York, urban renewal took the form of an elevated 22-block long section of train tracks to be turned into a future park called The Highline and has spurred new residential and commercial development. Thats the result of the efforts of an organization called Friends of the Highline [thehighline.org] and the New York City government.
Source: Friends of the Highline
From Wikipedia, the story goes:
“The West Side Line, also called the West Side Freight Line, is a railroad line on the west side of Manhattan, New York, USA. North of Penn Station, at 34th Street, the line is used by Amtrak passenger service heading north via Albany. South of Penn Station, a roughly 1.5 mile (2.4 km) section of the line, popularly known as the High Line, is elevated and has been abandoned since 1980. The High Line (40°44.9′N 74°0.3′W) is in a state of extreme disrepair, although the elevated structure is basically sound. Grass and trees grow along most of the line, making it a natural oasis in urban Manhattan. There is a movement by community residents to turn the High Line into an elevated park similar to the Promenade Plantée in Paris. In 2004, the New York City government promised to invest $50 million in the proposed park. On June 13, 2005, the U.S. Surface Transportation Board granted a “certificate of interim trail use”, allowing the city to remove the line from the national railway grid.”
“The southernmost part of the High Line has since been demolished; as of mid-2005, the rest of the High Line is owned by CSX, which acquired it after the 1998 breakup of Conrail.”
There’s a really good podcast that can be downloaded from Smart City, a great resource for innovative thinking on urban development: Smart City: New Uses For Old Railroads
Highline under construction in 1930s
Roughly the same spot today
Additional photos
Friends of the Highline Photo Gallery
Forgotten Subways & Trains
[LTV Squad: Urban Exploration](http://ltvsquad.com/Locations/urbanexploration.php?ID=86
http://www.oldnyc.com/highline/contents/highline.html)
MOMA Exhibit
Additional background
Future of the Highline (Design Trust 2001) [pdf]
Reclaiming the Highline (Design Trust 2001) [pdf]
Posted by Jonathan J. Miller -Friday, December 16, 2005, 12:30 PM
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Source: The Washington Post
“Uncle Tom’s Cabin” summons visions of racial brutality in another place and time. But Uncle Tom’s Cabin stands today in Rockville, shaded by a row of trees from the speedway that is Old Georgetown Road.”
Its now for sale according to a story in Marc Fisher’s column [Washington Post].
He writes:
“Its owner, Hildegarde Mallet-Prevost, died in September at 100, and her family is selling the three-bedroom colonial (literally) with the attached log cabin that was once home to Josiah Henson — the slave whose 1849 autobiography was the model for Harriet Beecher Stowe’s classic novel, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”
“A century and a half later, an Uncle Tom has come to mean a black man who obsequiously seeks white approval or betrays his race. But the cabin in North Bethesda, just south of the city of Rockville, is also a symbol of the strength and savvy that enabled Henson to rise from slavery to build a pioneering life of learning and achievement.”
I was really surprised that a typical house has been adjoined to a property with historical significance. I imagine that the property would be difficult to establish a value for.
Posted by Jonathan J. Miller -Thursday, December 1, 2005, 9:44 AM
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Source: NYT
In our obsession with housing, an approach to design as discussed in the article Heavy Metal Jacket With a Luxe Lining [NYT] comes in the form of a shipping container with walls that unfold.
His is not a new idea, but he pushes it to the extreme.
“Adam Kalkin, an architect and artist who is unveiling his Push Button House, a shipping container with motorized walls that unfold like an elaborate Murphy bed to reveal an unexpectedly muted interior with the refined furnishings one might find in a Park Avenue apartment of patrician taste, complete with a couch from George Smith and a lacquer chandelier.
“It works like a flower – you push a button and the thing transforms itself,” Mr. Kalkin said last week as he puttered in the 8,000-square-foot factory he rents in Kenvil, N.J., while welders and electricians finished up the Push Button House before loading it onto a flatbed truck for the trip to Miami. “All the finishes inside are milky and human and delicate,” he added, “all trapped inside this heavy mechanical box.”
There is a whole cottage industry for this type of housing. Here are some other designs:
Jennifer Siegal [NPR]
Lot-ek
Container City
Treehugger Blog
A tongue-in-cheek comment posted on Treehugger:
Fabulous idea but what happens when you wake
up to find you and your bedroom in Singapore?
Heavy Metal Jacket With a Luxe Lining [NYT]
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