Archives
January 2007
Jan. 31, 2007 - Manhattan Loft Guy looks back at Manhattan Loft Guy, sees 2006
Since it is still January as I write this I can (just barely) take up the suggestion of Maureen McCabe, my Ohio blogging buddy (Discover Columbus nee Columbus Best Blog) and look back at my blogging year 2006 – obviously, my first year of blogging.
First, I would like to thank the members of the academy … errr … The Three Amigos (and the cast of thousands) at Internet Crusade, who do so much for real estate professionals all over the country.
At this point – and perhaps for a long time to come – my blog is a way for me to think out loud and to draw connections between things I see in the media or in the market. Because it is a blog, I don’t edit as much as I should, so most posts are looong. I am sure that I have still not gotten the hang of it, but it wasn’t until nearly Labor Day that I began to fill comfortable doing it.
Without further ado, here is a collection of favorite posts, in reverse chronological order.
On November 8 I wrote comparing lofts and lofts ain’t so easy / 718 Broadway as lab. It was about the kind of experience that one would never hade in an “apartment” building: I visited three lofts in the same building that are very different from each other (one is “a million miles away” from the other two). I guess the subtext is that it is hard to value lofts.
On Halloween I offered Curbed means never having to say you're sorry, in which I got to comment on Curbed.com – the big kahuna of the Manhattan real estate blogosphere. The good news is that I got a response from Lockhart Steele (Mr. Kahuna?) that scratched the itch I was feeling.
On September 16 I tested as assumption I had about one way in which Manhattan loft buyers are different from “apartment” buyers. The result was loft owners open their own doors, in which I reported that an unscientific survey of open houses for lofts priced from $2.4mm to $3mm showed that two-thirds of the buildings did not have doormen. Of course, I then went on – in my anal way – to analyze the one-third with door people. How many Upper Buyers (east or west) would pay that kind of money without getting a full door? Not many….
On August 12 I attacked one of my pet peeves in the media – the tendency to talk about The Real Estate Market as if it were The Stock Market, Timing the market when timing is everything / CNNMoney on ‘bubble-sitting’. All these seemingly smart well0intentioned people giving advice that is impossible to apply. I had a little fun (in my pedantic way) tweaking the main guy quoted. What I should have said was “the fact that I know (100%assurance) that I am going to die doesn’t help me, since I can’t tell when”. So too with an analysis of “over-priced” markets that “must” fall.
Last but certainly not least was my most pithy entry, on June 21, about how obsessed all us New Yorkers are about real estate, 'nuff said.
Indeed, ‘nuff said.
© Sandy Mattingly
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Jan. 31, 2007 - not quite a return to the white box offering / 161 Hudson loft owner will build-to-suit
how many would buy what they can’t see?
There was a time when many Manhattan loft buyers had the time, patience, resources and expertise to buy raw, primitive, blank or “white” space to turn them into something personal that served their specific needs. It is my sense that we have not had many such buyers in at least five years.
white boxes are so over
The last “white box” development that comes to mind was at 315 W 36 St in 2003, where the developer “finished” the lofts with just enough bathroom and kitchen to qualify for a Certificate of Occupancy and installed the mechanicals for central air without running any ducts. The expectation was that buyers would rip out the perfunctory plumbing fixtures, put in a kitchen and bathrooms where and how they liked, and run the ductwork for CAC after adding any walls.
any white boxes since 2003??
The first units to sell at 315 W 36 St sold in the $550/ft to $750/ft range, depending on whether they had outdoor space or had the better view (south was more open than north). It looks as though 11D sold as a white box in August 2004 for $1.09mm for 2,007 sq ft and then re-sold two years later (after having been all tricked out, one hopes) for $2.075mm.
The agent grapevine carried the word at the time that the white box sales “weren’t doing so well” and the developer either held the prices of the last units (other new developments then were seeing a parade of pre-sale price increases) or finished them more extensively than originally planned or simply sat patiently for the final sales to occur. (Grapevines being what they are, the facts just may be different.)
build to suit
The new-today listing for #6D at 161 Hudson St intrigued me because the owner is offering to sell the 1,100 sq ft space for $1.55mm and “Owner will built to your specifications and will include top of the line oversized Viking, Miele, Subzero appliances.”
161 Hudson St was converted to condo in 2004, with the first closed sales in December and nearly all of the units were sold by Spring 2005. Nearly all of the original sales were around $900/ft, but 5D sold in April 2006 off an asking price of $1.35mm and now 6D is being offered above $1,400 sq ft.
A few smaller units (such as the “D” line) took longer to sell than the units that are 2,000 sq ft or larger, but I can’t tell if this listing for #6D with Larry Carty at Warburg is a re-sale or will be the original sale of this unit by the developer (there Is no mention of buyer paying the transfer taxes, so maybe it is a resale).
Build-to suit is an interesting choice by the owner (especially if this is a re-sale), rather than (a) sell as is, in its presumably rough state, or (b) build it out fully to what they expect will appeal to most buyers.
I can see some very expensive negotiations ahead, as The Lawyers get involved in the specifications for any build-out, and I wonder about how many buyers are interested in having these choices.
The owner will probably argue that s/he can do the work less expensively, while saving the buyer the hassles and uncertainty of dealing with contractors.
is there a Plan B?
But I suspect that there are enough buyers who will prefer to, instead, do their own work or have their own contractors do the work that the seller will need a Plan B marketing approach – how much a price reduction to buy “as is”?
© Sandy Mattingly
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Jan. 29, 2007 - un-neighborly neighbors / the dynamics of dysfunction
how do you solve a problem like Allan?
When I was president of a small Manhattan loft coop, we used to joke about having ‘the rule of one’ – as in trying to maintain a shareholder population with no more than one [jerk] at a time. Whether we were good at the admissions process or just lucky that people got socialized within a small group of “cooperating” neighbors, we never had more than one [jerk] at a time.
Once the relationships between neighbors are strained they can be difficult to repair – especially in small loft buildings -- and the coop or condo leaders can be faced with the contradictory tasks of defending themselves while protecting the social atmosphere.
The NY Post reported last week about a small war in the 175 unit condominium at 155 East 38 Street pitting a 90 year old nearly blind unit owner against the condo board of managers, the managing agent, and the condo’s lawyers. That unhappy owner, Allan Ash, employs a weapon of mass communication – having circulated to other owners more than 100 “newsletters” since 2003 with his complaints.
The Post did not give many details, but reported that the judge involved in the dispute ordered Mr. Ash to stop sending the newsletters, finding that
… Ash was improperly using his lawsuit to harass the board members with a "relentless campaign," and ordered him to stop distributing the newsletter in his building.
The New York Law Journal January 23 article about the case provided many more details (thanks Tom!), from which the intensity of Mr. Ash’s war is more apparent, in one “newsletter” he said:
"The Condominium's money has been spent for self-serving purposes for the benefit of [board] members and perhaps their close friends and for cover-up of theft and misappropriation of our funds. I am certain of one thing - [they] are immoral, lack integrity, and have committed acts which no doubt are illegal."
The court found that:
He has also called and written to board members' employers, passing on details of their alleged misdoings.
On the one hand there is Mr. Ash, condo crusader. On the other hand there are the members of the condo board of directors, the managing agent, and counsel. Other condo owners are caught, if not in the middle, then in the role of bankrolling the disputes and having to decide about continuing governance. As the condo’s counsel explained to the court, it is not so easy to find people willing to volunteer as directors in the face of these attacks:
"Quite apart from the insults and damage to [various board members], this type of diatribe and behavior by Mr. Ash has an absolutely chilling effect on the willingness of other owners and residents of the building to participate in the governance and operation of the building."
Can you put a number on the dollar cost of such bad blood? In part, yes.
Mr. Ash has already spent more than $500,000, thereby forcing the condo to spend a comparable amount of money, [the condo attorney] said.
Nor is it clear that it will ever end. The court order seems clearly to prohibit Mr. Ash from sending any more “newsletters” and his First Amendment counsel said of the court order:
"We're challenging it. We're not disobeying it."
Nonetheless, the Post article ended with this statement:
Ash said he's planning on putting out a new edition of the Gazette today.
Stay tuned….
© Sandy Mattingly 2007
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Jan. 29, 2007 - nothing says ‘motivated seller’ quite like dropped dollars / 36 W 15 St #2 on a roll
$1.75mm to $1.65mm to $1.499mm in 8 weeks
when is a loft a little like a bowling alley?
This 1,480 sq ft floor-through loft has that classic and limited Manhattan loft layout – long and narrow (in this case, 17 ft 8 inches wide), with windows only on the narrow ends and plumbing stacks limited to one bathroom – so it is set up as a 1 bedroom.
Sara Waisman at PruDE describes it as both “stunning” and “magnificent”, and it may well be. What caught my eye is a price history that I can only describe as “breathtaking”. New to market on December 5 asking $1.75mm, with a price drop to $1.65mm on January 4, followed by another reduction to $1.499mm today.
For those without a calculator handy, that’s $251,000 off in 8 weeks, or 14% less than the original asking price.
giving it a shot
The classic explanation for this kind of trajectory and history is that the owner and agent decided to ‘give it a shot’, with the original intention of recalibrating if the market did not bite. (I don’t know anything about the actual decision-making for this listing, obviously.)
There is more art than science to this approach, which requires the agent to provide a lot of feedback about market interest, or the lack thereof. Sometimes the feedback is simple and eloquent silence: no calls, no visits to open houses. Other times the feedback is a great deal of interest (phone calls and/or open houses visits and/or web hits) but nobody who is interested enough to return a second time, let alone interested enough to bid.
When done right, the owner fully understands that The Market sets the price the loft can be sold at, and the owner has the stomach to adjust quickly.
sometimes, listings are bought by agents
Sometimes the dynamic is a little different: the agent is rather too … errr … bullish about the market, which one might say results in the agent buying the listing at an aggressive price fully expecting it not to sell unless and until the price is dropped significantly. But that approach usually takes more time for the dynamic to play out than this price history indicates.
big closed-sale prices at 36 W 15 St
Past sales in this building should support a healthy price, with adjustments for the low floor and little view of the 2d floor.
The 11th floor closed at $2mm in November, about a week before the 2d floor came to market. That has four exposures (the adjoining buildings are six stories each), with views to the midtown jewels (Empire State, Chrysler, NY Life) and downtown (World Financial Center).
The 9th floor and the 5th floor sold in November 2004 for $1.815mm and $1.610mm, respectively. The 9th floor had the killer views (I saw it when it was being marketed) and four exposures, but the 5th floor probably did not.
Especially with the two year old sale of the 5th floor, one might have expected to do better than $1.6mm for even the 2d floor. But the 2d floor owner is not counting on that, it seems.
curious data + layout variety at 36 W 15 St
The 2d floor is marketed as 1,460 sq ft. All the units in the building are floor-through units, but the 9th floor was described as 2,000 sq ft, while the 11th floor was described as 2,200 sq ft. I have not seen the offering plan, so don’t know if the offering plan has any “official” measurement, but it may be that Ms. Waisman is being (unusually?) conservative in marketing the 2d floor.
The 2d floor layout on the PruDE website shows the dimensions as just under 18 feet wide and the length at about 90 ft. Subtracting the long elevator bank and common stairway probably resulted in the 1,460 sq ft measurement.
In contrast, Property Shark shows the outside building dimensions as 25 ft wide and 103 ft long. Using those measurements can result in a 2,000 sq ft total, so long as one allocates some common space to the individual unit.
But the conundrum of coop measurement is best left for another day….
© Sandy Mattingly 2007
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Jan. 24, 2007 - Counter-intuitive Sales 101 / head-scratching price change as 12 W 17 strays further north
if at first it doesn’t sell, raise the price!
But the 5th fl at 12 W 17 St, offered for sale by Frans Preidel at Brown Harris, has just been increased in price from $2.7mm to $2.8mm. I don’t get it.
if at second it doesn't sell...
This baby has been offered for sale since May 2005 (that is Two Thousand FIVE), starting at $2.6mm. After ten unsuccessful months on the market they raised the price $100k. After almost another ten unsuccessful months on the market, up it goes another hundred grand.
Neither of these price moves was big enough to change the target market of buyers (which is sometimes offered as a rationale for price increases of languishing listings), so I am confused.
Best I can come up with, with all due respect to Mr. Preidel, is that this seller wants to be “on the market” but this seller does not want to actually sell.
I have the vision in my head of Yul Brynner, arms crossed, saying “tis a puzzlement”.
© Sandy Mattingly 2007
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Jan. 22, 2007 - NY Times on Seller Stress Syndrome
how hard is it to stay ‘show ready’ for months?
There was a big article in Sunday’s NY Times Real Estate section (The Home That You Can’t Call Your Own) that dealt with the stresses that sellers live under while their Manhattan loft or apartment is offered for sale.
battle metaphors (invasion and Marine barracks)
Teri Karush Rogers did a nice job in getting so many sellers to bare their souls (and their angst); to top it off she closed with a nice quote from me (later on that). Rogers set the scene, contrasting the (obvious) pain of moving to the (insidious) pain of preparing for strangers with money that you want traipsing through your apartment, opening your closets and cabinets:
Tethered indefinitely, they must endure invasion (and banishment) at an hour’s notice, countless rejections by strangers, scrutiny of voyeuristic neighbors and, more frequently these days, the erosion of their own expectations.
Battle fatigue can set in quickly under the strain of keeping one’s home in the meticulous condition of a Marine barracks.
relationship metaphors (searching for a mate)
One seller, Melissa Alcruz, compared her three-month ordeal with a search for a mate. “You have to make the apartment look good, but you can’t look too fussy or high maintenance — your house can’t look like a museum,” said Ms. Alcruz, 37.
Homebound by a difficult pregnancy, Ms. Alcruz nevertheless compulsively cleaned her floors and windows each day while enduring more than a dozen showings and two open houses per week and swallowing backhanded compliments like, “Wow, they did a really great job for a so-so apartment.”
skirmishes, but toddlers may be beyond metaphor
When it comes to controlling clutter, initially and before each showing, parents of young children engage in an ongoing skirmish against action figures, Legos and Exersaucers. It can involve a grueling daily slapstick routine of hiding and retrieving toys, highchairs and strollers.
“We literally took luggage carts of toys down into the lobby of the building every Sunday for open houses — toys, ottoman, laundry baskets, everything we could possibly move out of the apartment — and we would bring it back up” from a storage closet in the lobby on Sunday night, said Ms. Ain, who has a 21-month-old daughter and lived through four months on the market.
“During the weekday showings, I would scramble to get the big toys and stroller out,” she said. “It became very harried. I happened to have a toddler who was not a great sleeper, and I was very emotional and overwrought.”
choices, always choices
Personally, I find that sellers are much better at doing ‘the drills’ that are required, and do them more willingly, if they understand from the beginning that the agent is not making Rule To Make Their Lives More Difficult. When the sellers understand that the readiness of the loft or apartment can be a factor in helping them sell more quickly and/or at a higher price, they “get it”, and they choose it.
It can come to appoint where the sellers are near exhaustion with the effort – or just having a bad day or week. If they have covered all this before, it is easier for the agent to ask the seller how they would like to proceed: do we take it off the market for a while, or do we cut down on appointments for a while, or do we pay to have some housekeeping help for a while, or …?? Most people, if they can get a good night’s sleep over it, continue to make the compromises necessary. Or they are encouraged (not by the agent, exactly, but by the market’s feedback) to drop the price if they can’t maintain the condition.
Agents often under-estimate what is required to keep a loft or apartment “show ready”, especially if there are toddlers or teenagers involved. Some folks are intrinsically neat, but most of us are not.
I has one loft listing for which I did a showing while the teenager (home from school mid-afternoon) was asleep in his room instead of at the library as expected. We left that door closed that day.
I had a seller audibly exhale once we were done with showings, gasping that she could now leave her underwear out again if she wanted to. Sellers are wonderful, God bless ‘em, and almost always hold it together.
Back to the big finale of Rogers’ NY Times article….
If the agent understands that the sellers are under great stress and can tell when they are ready to blow, the agent is more equipped to handle the situation positively.
when all else fails
So when I see a seller is in the red zone, I would rather they not limit appointments or reduce their attention to being “show ready”. I would rather they blow at me (even if I have to lie to myself that is nothing personal ;-)
Sandy Mattingly, an associate broker at Coldwell Banker Hunt Kennedy, encourages his clients to dump their angst on him.
“Part of the agent’s role is to be a blotter for that so they can get it out of their system and go back to running on a smooth level,” Mr. Mattingly said.
Does that feel better? Now let’s sell the loft….
(C) Sandy Mattingly 2007
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Jan. 17, 2007 - more price pain on 16 St /if you knew then what you know now…
4 W 16 St #8A drops a serious dollar
I blogged about #8A at 4 West 16th St after a September price drop (puzzling price policy / slow death near Union Square) that turned out to be too little. On the market since April; started at $1.35mm; dropped to $1.275mm in June; and dropped again to $1.225mm in September (death by small price drops…). The owners display a possible New Year’s resolution as they have dropped the price since the New Year to $1.075mm – a healthy (and serious) $150k hit.
The loft is only 1,300 sq ft with only 1 bathroom, and a kitchen photo that (to me) says “original”. Still, that is $115k higher than the last sale shown on Property Shark, the slightly larger (1,400 sq ft) #9B (also 1 bathroom and original kitchen).
That is a 20% reduction off of the original #8A asking price, with many calendar pages burned since April. Hard to say if that is enough of a price change in the current market, but the change should make an impression on attentive buyers.
crappy New Year?
The run-up to that decision probably did not make for a very happy holiday season.
© Sandy Mattingly 2007
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Jan. 16, 2007 - IRS rules for coops – beware the 80/20 rule
what does happen if a “coop” has too much income?
I was intrigued by the fact that several Curbed commentators fastened on the low (no) maintenance in commenting on the post and I resolved to offer a post about that issue. 2007 is here, so I can cross one resolution off the list.
IRS rules permit “pass through” benefits to coop shareholders
In brief (and in a non-lawyerly way), coop shareholders get certain benefits that shareholders in other kinds of entities don’t get. Microsoft shareholders don’t get to deduct from their own income taxes the real estate taxes that Microsoft pays, but coop shareholders do. Coop shareholders get to take a pro rata share of the coop’s expenses for real estate taxes and on an underlying mortgage, as if they were making the expenditures directly. But they only get the benefits if the coop is correctly organized and if certain rules are met.
The pertinent IRS rules require that at least 80% of the income of the coop be from shareholders as opposed to being from outsiders, such as commercial tenants or garage licensees. If that test is not met in any year, the shareholders are not entitled to the pass-through deductions they would otherwise be entitled to.
As a result of this test, some coops charge below market rents to their tenants because the 80/20 benefits to shareholders are deemed to be more valuable than the additional rent that could be charged. Other coops spend a fortune on lawyers and accountants to figure out ways to deal with the “problem” of having “too much income”.
put condops out of our mind for today
(Some day I will talk about true “condops”, which are not really “coops with condo rules”, as many people say. True “condops” are two-unit condominiums, where one condo unit is the ground floor commercial tenant paying a huge portion of common charges and the second condo unit is a full multi-unit residential coop. But that complicated story is for another day.)
Since the “maintenance” at 55 Greene Street is zero, that “coop” is probably not a qualifying cooperative housing corporation for IRS purposes since the shareholder income (zero) cannot be 80% of the total income of the building. (Even if there is no underlying mortgage, they pay something in real estate taxes, and something to keep the lights on and the building clean.) So unless there is something specific and technical about 55 Greene St that I am missing, the shareholders there should not be entitled to pass-through deductions under the IRS rules.
why should AMT burdened shareholders care?
It may not matter much to shareholders if they can’t deduct building mortgage and real estate taxes on their personal tax returns, especially if their income puts them into the Alternative Minimum Tax level – at which all deductions are heavily discounted in value. For these folks, the balance between high rental income and not-so-meaningful pass-through deductions may fall overwhelmingly on the side of the high rental income. But there is more to consider.
without 80/20, no home mortgage deduction (and maybe no home mortgage)
When I contributed to the Curbed commentary I suggested that the 80/20 issue would not impact a shareholder’s ability to deduct interest on their own individual mortgage or to benefit from the $250k / $500k non-recognition of gain enjoyed by American “home” owners.
on further review … oops
I am pretty sure I was wrong about that. (Consult your tax adviser.)
After thinking about it some more, talking to some bright lawyers, and reading a NY Times Q+A column that touched on this, I can see that all the IRS benefits to coop shareholders (the analogy of coop shareholders to homeowners) depend on the 80/20 rule.
So the mortgage deduction will not be available. And when the “coop” shares are sold, all the gain should be recognized and taxed at normal rates, without the seller being able to get the benefit of “non-recognition” of $250,000 or $500,000 of the gain.
And I have been told by one mortgage broker that banks won’t offer “coop mortgages” to shareholders that cannot meet the 80/20 test. If they can be financed at all, the shares would get a commercial loan (usually at higher rates and with higher down payments). If they can be financed at all.
more a problem than a quirk
I have not yet had a buyer interested in one of these “coops”, so I have not had to think about this issue until noting (in passing) 55 Greene (and a few other buildings) as low-or-no maintenance “coops”.
I have not noticed in the marketing of “coops” in these buildings any special caution about this topic, but maybe I haven’t been paying attention, or maybe I have not been close enough to get the “special” disclosures.
I like to think that I am as sophisticated about lofts as any Manhattan agent. I wonder if I have been alone in my ignorance up to now, or if I still have the company of many agents who work with buyers and sellers of lofts.
I think I have a lot of company on this.
a loft problem
Curiously, this issue is not likely to be relevant to “apartments” as opposed to lofts, and then only to a specific and narrow sub-set of loft buildings.
Coops in traditionally residential neighborhoods were likely to have addressed these issues when they were formed, even with the coops on commercial streets such as on the avenues with enough foot traffic to attract high-paying tenants. (Or the original sponsors sold the commercial space separately from the residential coop portion.)
But smaller coops (like 12-unit loft buildings) don’t have a lot of flexibility financially, like 200 unit coops may have.
more a SoHo loft problem
And the coops with the greatest likelihood of attracting AAA commercial tenants these days are in and near SoHo, where it is not only conceivable but do-able to have a commercial tenant pay so much rent as to carry the entire building’s expenses (as at 55 Greene St) or nearly so, as in other buildings nearby.
Newer conversions or constructions were probably done as condos (no 80/20 issue with condos), but lofts that were legitimized as residential spaces in the early waves of the late 1970s and early 1980s were probably formed as coops. ‘Back in the day’ the last thing those coops worried about was “too much income”, but times have changed.
I don’t know enough specifics about the finances to say that any of these buildings *has* this problem, but I have seen listings lately for lofts with low-or-no maintenance at several buildings in or near SoHo.
Unit 2 at 652 Broadway is for sale for $2.75mm for 3,300 sq ft with maintenance of $548/mo. I don’t see anything in the listing that specifies that none of the maintenance is deductible, or that there may be an 80/20 issue.
Unit 11F at 476 Broadway is for sale for $2.995mm for 2,250 sq ft; not only is there no maintenance, “even Cable T.V. is paid for”.
did smart lawyers find a way at 458 Broadway?
Maybe there is a clever way around this, as the 7th floor at 458 Broadway sold two months ago (the listing is still available on the web) off an asking price of $2.65mm for 2,500 sq ft with a maintenance of $3,000 per month but there is “quarterly income from the retail ground floor store”. (Our building notes say the monthly maintenance is “almost completely offset” by the rental income.) Maybe they pay monthly maintenance out of one pocket and receive quarterly rental income in another pocket in some way that washes (do not say “launders”) this money.
there is nothing wrong with this, of course, if…
… everyone who is supposed to know about this knows about it when they are supposed to know about it. Maybe they do.
But maybe not. Did I mention you should consult your own tax adviser?
© Sandy Mattingly 2007
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Jan. 16, 2007 - please don’t bite the blogger
Angry Agent attacks author with animation and ardor, but no ammunition
I picked up the phone one day last year to catch an earful from an Angry Agent. After the (anonymous, here) AA identified him or herself, I barely got in a “how are you?” when I got blasted, starting with a heated “where do you get off talking about my listing?”
I have no idea how the AA knew I had blogged about his/her listing, but the AA did not seem to be in a mood to chat. (I had used a loft listing of the AA to make an observation about pricing and the Manhattan loft market, using information from the inter-firm data base and the AA’s own web site.) Instead of answering me when I asked if I had gotten any factual information wrong, the AA sneered at an informal adjective I used in describing some aspect of the listing, called me “unprofessional” and a few other things, said s/he would call my manager to complain, and –despite my efforts to maintain an even tone and continue the conversation – hung up on me.
I immediately walked around to my manager’s office and discovered she was not there. By the time I completed a brief email to her about the call she was about to get, my manager had already spoken to the AA. (Suffice it to say – as between me and my manager – I am still blogging.)
As far as I can tell, the AA was angry because I talked about the listing in public. In re-reading my commentary, I don’t see anything I said that is critical of the AA, the owner, or the loft. (I would quote from my blog post, but I don’t need to make the AA any more “A” with me than s/he already is.)
to the Principal’s office
I was a bit taken aback by the hurried call, as it was like being called in to the Principal’s office to get yelled at without being given a chance to explain, and having your parents already knowing everything (from the Principal’s side) before you got home. Puzzling and unfair, but not so bad (once the onslaught wore off). It is not like I missed dessert or anything….
I sent the AA an email that afternoon, saying – among other obsequious things – “I certainly intended no disrespect to you or your seller in my blog commentary and – so far as I can tell from our listing information – I provided no information that was incorrect. The one thing you quarreled about (my reference to “[adjective deleted]”) is a fair characterization on my part – I believe – considering … [explanation of adjective omitted here]”. I invited the AA to call or email me back to discuss, but the AA has declined to do so.
I conclude that some people don’t get “blogging”. I conclude that the AA is not among my target audience. I worry that the next time I have a buyer interested in a listing from this AA, I will have trouble getting an appointment (how unprofessional would that be?).
what might the Anons of Curbed do to the the AA?
I conclude that the AA will go ballistic if ever one of the AA’s listings is discussed on Curbed.com, but that is not my problem.
Mostly I conclude that I need a thicker skin.
© Sandy Mattingly 2007
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Jan. 1, 2007 - REBNY portal pot still perking / bad plan or just bad communications?
REBNY play defense in communicating with members about the portal
They did not do it because I blogged about the “public web portal” but it so happens that REBNY circulated a memo to its residential division members soon after my last post about it.
The tone is very defensive; the content is disturbingly vague and contradictory. Looks as though they rushed it, just as it continues to look as though they rushed the whole plan.
The document is a set of Qs + As, to be updated “regularly”, they say. The cover memo is signed by the heads of the Residential Division, Diane Ramirez of Halstead and Fred Peters of Warburg.
what’s the point?
REBNY says the open portal is designed to
give the public what is necessary to help them narrow their property search and to either drive them to a REBNY members seller’s broker or enhance their ability to work efficiently with the buyer’s broker they have already selected.
what’s the answer?
There are some very significant decisions that have not been made yet, including about cost, vendor, and content.
REBNY has taken a lot of flak about pricing the portal at $7,000 for large firms and $3,000 for small firms and they look like they have completely abandoned that structure for … something very different but undefined.
From a two-tiered system, REBNY will have a four-tiered fee structure for firms (presumably based on size??) and a “surcharge” for agents. Indeed, they claim not to know what the system will cost overall, basically saying that the cost will depend on what the vendors say.
Nine vendors have been asked to submit proposals, including new-kid-on-the-web-block Trulia.
keeping the story straight is harder than it should be
If you think the Q+A would be clear you’d be wrong.
Whether consumers would be able to sign up to get information about future listings that fit their criteria seems like a pretty basic question about the portal. REBNY is not sure whether the portal will have one, but says it will “recommend” to the vendor that this feature be included.
Why the uncertainty? Is there any doubt that consumers will get pretty pissed pretty quickly if they are forced to return and re-enter their search criteria time after time after time??
Will the consumers see floor plans? In one place, the answer is clearly “no”; in another place the answer is “most likely no”. Is there any doubt that consumers will get pretty pissed pretty quickly if they don’t see such basic information (even NYTimes.com has floor plans for most real listings).
Will the portal carry rental data? How much more basic can that question be that it hasn’t already been answered? Well, in one place the answer seems to be a firm maybe (“we will be reviewing this very soon”); in another place in the same Q+As the answer seems clearly to be yes (the portal will include “[a]ll the exclusive sale and rental listings that appear on our present RLS” system)
driving traffic elsewhere
Since the stated point is to drive consumers to selling agent’s websites, it is logical to provide bare-bones information only. Whether that is a smart choice or not is a different question.
For my listings, if I expect potential buyers to see them first on this portal, I want them to be attracted to the listing info – just as I would want them to be attracted to the listing regardless of what medium they first saw it. I am not sure that this portal will do that, as the number of photos, the scope of the description and the amount of listing information have not yet been defined (the Q+A says there will be “some photo(s), description, and listing information”).
If this thing is expected to be like Realtor.com is in the rest of the country (the first place nearly everyone goes for listing information), I want my superior marketing to shine through so that everyone does click through to my firm’s listing. If I am a small firm with a bare-bones site of my own maybe I want everyone’s listings on this portal to look a little dreary. But if I am Corcoran (or CBHK) or any firm that has spent a fortune on their web presence, I want a lot of that experience available at the first point of contact for consumers.
Hmmmm… maybe there is a fight there….
who wants this thing? everybody??
The Ramirez-Peters cover memo says that the entire 13 member Board of the Residential Division voted for this portal. That includes representative of The Establishment, of course (Halstead, Warburg, PruDE, Corcoran, Stribling, Sothebys, Bellmarc and Brown Harris are all represented) as well as some smaller firms (Cornelia Netter and Barbara Fox from their eponymous firms, as well as a few others).
But not all the campers are happy, as Ramirez and Peters admit.
Some members requested to meet with staff and Board of Director members to get a better grasp of the project and four times these members were accommodated. Unfortunately, there are those who would like you to believe that no dialogue, movement or compromise to date has taken place; that is not true!
time-lines are tricky
On the one hand, the “results of this planning effort” for the portal will be reported to member firms in the middle of January. On the other hand, the vendor is expected to be selected in late January. It seems that REBNY is waiting for the vendor to tell them what he system will cost and what some of the features will be. Seems like a messy process,
Seems particularly messy to be airing the messiness before it gets cleaned up.
Wonder what’s really going on here….
© Sandy Mattingly 2007
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on matters of interest to Manhattan coop or condo loft apartment dwellers, buyers, sellers, and others, especially about New York City real estate
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