Rent board fattens city tenant’s wallets – just a bit!

On June 24th, the NYC Rent Guidelines Board adopted renewal lease guidelines for rent stabilized apartments, lofts and hotels.

One million rent-stabilized city tenants caught a break last night when the Rent Guidelines Board voted to hike rents by 2.25 percent and 4.5 percent for one- and two-year lease renewals, the lowest increases since 2002.

According to the NY Post, “They threw a bone to the tenants and threw the owners into the water,” fumed Jack Freund, executive vice president of the Rent Stabilization Association, which represents 25,000 landlords.

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Painting your NYC apartment used to be easy… now you need to know the rules!

New York City has always had the one of the strictest lead-paint laws in the country and now according to a new Environmental Protection Agency, there’s a new regulation put in place as of April 22nd which has contractors and building managers concerned.

Since April 22nd, all professional renovation projects in apartments and homes built before 1978 (when the use of lead in paint was banned) that test positive for lead have had to meet federal guidelines and be performed by workers certified in lead-safe practices.

The new rule “The Renovation, Repair, & Painting Rule” requires owners to follow lead safe work practices when disturbing a painted surface (sanding, demolition, renovation, repair, etc.) in pre-1978 housing (“target housing”) and child occupied facilities. The rule will change make a remarkable difference in the way property managers, renovation and remodeling contractors, maintenance workers, painters and other specialty trades do business in housing built before 1978 and child occupied facilities. It includes new training requirements, additional notifications and disclosures, new work practices, new clearance requirements and expanded records requirements. Property managers and owners should be diligent in making sure their building staff and outside contractors thoroughly understand their obligations under the new EPA rule.

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Some Presidents affected by housing crash, yet more New Yorkers plan to buy homes

U.S. presidents live in homes that most people dream about. Yet, according to Forbes Magazine, it seems that a few presidential manses have shed value in the economic downturn.

Zillow reported that the value of President Obama’s home in Chicago is off by 20%.

Even the value of Camelot, the Kennedy compound in Hyannis is reported to be down 25% to 30%,” says Amy Massey-Weider, who runs the Century 21 Shoreland real estate brokerage in nearby Hyannis. The news is good for those who dream of buying a little slice of the shores where the Kennedys live and play.

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Whole Foods Coming to East 57th Street

After a major budget cut, and a reduction in size of a Whole Foods Market slated for East 57th Street, the city and the World-Wide Group cut the ribbon on a $500 million, 900,000-square-foot mixed-use development as reported by The Real Deal.

The project which was initiated in 2008, fell apart when the economy turned bad.

Then World-Wide and the New York City Educational Construction Fund regrouped, slashing the budget by $100 million, reducing the size of Whole Foods space and cut the amount of excavation required by 30 feet through the redesign of the entire retail space and the space for two schools.

New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein told the Real Deal that "The partnership between ECF and the World-Wide Group, is ECF's largest ever, and is a model for how the public and private sectors can work together to help our communities."

The development at 250 East 57th Street will roll out in two phases.

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Manhattan condominium sales continue to pick up momentum

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, March, condo sales activity more than doubled, rising 101.2% compared with a year earlier. This was reported to the WSJ by the RPX index designed by Radar Logic Inc. Sales in March were down 6.6% when compared with a month earlier.

The report goes on to say that existing unit sales increased 154% in March from a year earlier, and that new unit sales declined 25% in March.

According to Radar Logic, there was also a shift towards sales for small and inexpensive condo units in the $400,000-$600,000 range.

They say that condo prices, as measured by square foot, were down 14.9% in March compared with the same month a year ago.

Radar Logic also reported that prices declined in seven of the eight neighborhoods they tracked. The biggest decline was on the Upper East Side, where average prices fell 28.8% to $925.93 a square foot.

The only neighborhood that posted an increase in prices was the East Village/Lower East Side, where prices per square foot rose 1% to $903.64.

Despite the large year-over-year increase in sales activity, Radar Logic reports that sales remain low in comparison to the top sales activity in 2007.