New York Voices; 302; New York City Apartment Hunt

I'm so glad to come to see them both. Me right now in all of New York and now you're going to understand why I think I think 15 million dollars. This is the lower end. Studio apartments. Christ this. Is. The sixth. New York Voices is made possible by the members of 13 additional funding provided by the forester would you go to my foundation the mormon and Rosita Winston foundation. Do your. One. VOICE. No you are. Priceless. Hello I'm Rafael Pirro mine in this edition of YOUR VOICE IS all about real estate. You know 30 years ago virtually no one lived in this neighborhood. But today try Becca. It's one of the most expensive residential areas in the city. Later in the program we'll take a tour of an apartment just a couple of blocks from here. That's going for 15 million dollars. Also visit a rental in Woodside Queens. It's just a bit more affordable at six hundred seventy five bucks a month.

But we begin with a look at gentrification and how New York City neighborhoods reinvent themselves. We focus on Red Hook in Brooklyn a neighborhood in transition. We have many of a hundred and fifty. I was born next door. I was born in that house in 1934. The ranch here used to be when I was growing up I think it was $50 a week and that was a long time ago so. When I retired the rents in the neighborhood I think was $200. I understand there are places around here getting $2000 a month rent. Twenty two years ago you had packs of dogs running around. You had people that would bring

their dogs to read books. They didn't want him anymore. He would drop them off. You would see dumping of cars and rubbish and garbage. At that time if I put an advertisement in the newspapers and my describe the property we would get calls and then they would ask me where the property was and when I mention Red Hook. You could feel it. The phone was quiet. Now it's just the opposite. With. The. Clock. On. Them. My grandma started. The famous maxim we shall meet. In the list I say. Five six years. It's been a boom. And been a boom I mean I can't tell you how many people have come into my store makes me make any real estate around any factories open anything and your house is for sale. OK. Always sign from nobody want to be and. Everybody want to come in to read a.

Lot here is like. What's left of. You old timers. Right. Now this walk is going to be the most expensive. My biggest. Labor. Rights of. My. Stay. Just in the last year and I've been here. That. Seven eight hundred dollar one bedroom is now at least twelve hundred. This place it's for sale. I want to find a tenant would be OK living month to month without a lease. So I only I only pay a thousand. Because the place is for sale. I have a window into how the outside world is doing right because people come and ride their bikes in Brooklyn Heights because they read New York

Times article. I want to find out what this up and coming neighborhood was all about when they see somebody like me you know a white guy sitting on the stoop. In front of his apartment in the New York Times. They think oh surely can't be so bad. OK let's let's talk about what has happened in Soho and when Bergen Greenpoint Dumble. There is I mean gentrification is not a horrible word gentrification brings some great changes to a neighborhood. People become more civic minded they become more active. The rents are going up there's no doubt about it there's a rancher with the push from Cobble Hill and cattle dogs and Columbia Street announced a rental. It's real. And it takes people to establish businesses here it takes people to come here and visit here and to realize that they here they survived the day and they go back to their communities they talk about it and that's what really makes the change.

In the family business you know just something you just don't get rid of. West ain't going to stay I see any reason why we're going to go anywhere. No matter what the real state's been OP has been down. OK and it was still here. I've been in his area my whole life. Like. We're. Going to. Start to eat stuff. Yes that's. Right. Twelve hundred. One. I don't really. You know make take time one. Person Libras truck driver. Were behind. Him 10 years from now I'll be going back I'll be back. And this if everything changes. This will be you say. Other than just biting the bullet and saying I love this place and I'm going to. Pay whatever they're asking. I would either leave New York or move to the next big place before gets found.

Whatever that might be. I'm joined now by Chris Bernanos real estate editor for New York magazine on the balcony of New York magazine you know we just saw a piece about Red Hook. Do you think the record is a good candidate for the next try Becca. It could be it has some of the earmarks in that. There's a lot of old industrial space from now things that supported the Brooklyn waterfront and. Old factories like that on the other hand it doesn't have subway access which is a problem. There is talk on and off of building up a trolley service a surface transit thing and of course there are the bus lines that go into. Red Hook So there's some support there. And it is there is a certain amount of proximity to. Neighborhoods that have already been gentrified the brownstone chunks of Brooklyn like couple that were held on even the slope which is further down. So you know people be close to people they know if it becomes gentrified will have people who are priced out of Park Slope going into red up there is some housing but it's largely industrial space so it would take a certain

amount of. Fixing up and renovation. To make that into housing. And. You know. It's a little trickier in terms of access. Then sell for tobacco was what might be a little slower. Chris we often hear people talking about this or that area of the city becoming the next trifecta or the next. So. What does it take for a neighborhood to transform itself into a private door so. There are a couple of things you have to have to begin with. You have to have transit access you know because when a neighborhood is getting gentrified it only involves people who work hand. In midtown in New York or in whatever the financial district is in that city. Or the. Center of the office working in that city. And that doesn't mean they have to be houses or apartment buildings obviously when Soho became Soho those last spaces where old industrial spaces but they turned out to have big windows and lots of light and heat that they turned out to be good places to live. So that's key you have to have some kind of buildings that. That. Will make good housing. Tell us what's the process by which a. Neighborhood is judged for.

What. Tends to be the first way is is. Artists without money who need a lot of space to work. And if you need a lot of space and you don't have money you go to a neighborhood that's. Often. Empty or abandoned or just very poor that has. Spaces that are not being used. So anyway the artists come in. And. If they are successful obviously there will be galleries and things. What then happens is people who want to be around the artists start to arrive it's people who work in the creative industries you know in New York it's it's publishing and art dealers and. People like that. And they. Move. To the neighborhood because they like the creative atmosphere and they start to. Bring the businesses that would support a neighborhood like that like cafes and. Restaurants and. Shops to these neighborhoods that often had no shopping. And then when those services come it becomes a residential neighborhood and you start to get people who have more money like investment bankers and. Second in time they move in

and then suddenly the artist unless they are very successful and wealthy artists can afford to live there anymore and they have to go stake out a new neighborhood. And that has happened a cellphone now is there an upside to gentrification for people who aren't wealthy. Yeah there is I mean it does bring. Life into a neighborhood that was often. Poor or just. Sort of. Quiet weather with much going on that means there's money coming in you know the new cafes and restaurants. Do you mean. There's just money in the neighborhood therefore the services will be better you know garbage pickup will probably be more regular streets probably cleaner. Most of what the crime rate usually goes down. What are your candidate for the next trendy neighborhood. It's hard to say. Because a lot of the neighborhoods that would be gentrified in New York have been hit by the sort of running out of undiscovered territory but people been talking for a long time but Bedford-Stuyvesant. Because there's a great stock of brownstones and it's not the crime ridden neighborhood that it was say 20 years ago. I mean there's still it's still poor and there's still you know a lot of blocks that are pretty rough. But it also has good subway

access of us and that's important. And. And it happens to have great architecture to the brownstones with terrific. And that will attract people. And then Queens a story a history. Lesson definition to that is traditionally a Greek neighborhood for the past 30 or 40 years. It's now up. Other immigrant groups are coming in you know you see sort of like Dominican restaurants in between the great restaurants. And but it's also a mix there are some. Middle class people. Yes. But in this office I fell into a story right. There. And it's it's sort of. It's a nice mix right now. Harlem is probably the biggest candidate for General Dayton of all because it's really big. For starters there's miles and miles of brownstones up there. And it's has great access for all the happy I mean it's closer than brownstone Brooklyn it's closer than a lot of pieces of Manhattan. Itself. To midtown. And there's a lot of housing up there and at this point it's still an expensive old brownstone prices especially in sort of little enclave little tight little neighborhoods. Are rising very dramatically. But it is you

know I mean it's the next step beyond Sixth Street for a lot of people and I mean obviously there are still problems with. Poverty and crime and drugs and the things that befall. Urban neighborhoods that are having a rough time of it. But there is maybe the most potential of all to Chris we're talking about the New York City housing market in just a minute. But first let's take a look at a couple of reports here from the city recently. I'm so glad to come to see the most neat apartment in all of New York and now you're going to understand why I didn't buy for a million dollars. Here you enter a majestic. Block. Unlike any other in the Bakken area. This is the lower end. Of. The studio apartment. The price of this carbon is.

200. Square foot. And it's very low carbon. If this is the rotunda here is where you have actual tiles that are indigenous to this building are going to fill the need for 93. And then above us we have Tiffany. And if you go on back you will find your double. Wine cooler. Somebody called into my office and said you're part of the House and the strength of what you like to come with the Queen's was words queen. So I've never heard the things that live in Manhattan all my life. Is there a queen size. Well. You know we will end this. There are 23 windows throughout the apartment and they have been triple glazed and the walls are soundproof so that you are totally protected from outside sound and the

outside including your neighbors are protected from whatever noise you're making in your apartment. The apartment. Right adjacent to the number seven train you can hear the song. On it affects the price. When we're showing the apartment in the sun from other states they think that the software will just run into the park and they have this expression of my God it's going to just fly into your apartment and kill them. Over here is the kitchen which is really a delight. It is missing. Absolutely nothing. This is a special dish washer called. Fisher. And it is basically for your stemware for your champagne glasses. I've never seen. Quite such a big refrigerator. This is a really old approaches full of antiques. Eventually

change. They're not around anymore. The other is like because they think it's still work it's better than you. Because they don't make them like this anymore. And here we are this is a master bedroom and then if you keep going you'll enter the dressing room which I think is unique unto itself because each one of the closets has been. A cedar backed. And feel free to open one up. The owner didn't miss it. Thank you. Not a thing that even though hardware has a heart it's just really quite incredible and this is a cluster and a lot bigger and are enormous also of course most of the time these closets are cut in half to make space to open the apartments bigger So this is a little bigger than all. There's a quiet simple elegance about the bathroom. Well that's a tiny little shower. Yes. And it has all kinds of parts that can massage. It has. A

sound system. This is the boss room. It's a. Remodel to some extent. They make sure that the leaks are there's no leaks in the tiles. This is basically a. Normal regular low end type of Basra. You can afford a 50 million dollar apartment. You're probably be way way way off. That's where you're way below you know you're just on the surface of it. Learn yourself with the. Ruffles all day. That's you know that becomes your life. Where would you write this in all these parts. Do you remember the movie 10. Yeah you're number Bo Derek. Yeah. That's where it is. A 10. By 10. Who buys a 50 million dollar apartment in Manhattan.

Anybody with 50 million dollars really. I mean it used to be old money and it's not anymore it's it's all sorts of different people largely because of the stock boom of the past 10 years are people who made a killing on on tech stocks and things like that and they just there's a lot more money flying around the city in the U.S. even though the markets down here. You know it if you played it right you got out a year ago and and then you have this wad of cash that you got to do something with. Right. And the average income in New York. I'm not mistaken since. 1980. And the happening time anyway has quadrupled the sell ability of an apartment that's five or 10 or 15 million dollars is a lot to. A lot more potential buyers than it used to be. The high and low into the market are they moving in the same direction. They weren't after 9/11 to the very very tip top of the market I'm talking about farms that plus $50000000. Kind of froze for a little while it went cold for longer than the rest. And the recovery that has happened since. You know the end of. 2001. Has been to a great extent driven by small

apartments. It seems to be the sort of. Mid-level investor somebody with a little money in the stock market wanted to yank it out because the stock market is doing badly and so they can't get out they. Put a downpayment on apartment. And. You know sink it into someplace that is clearly going to hold its value because apartment prices are not going down. The very top of the market froze for a while I think because people have more money at stake they just didn't know what to do. And now that market has largely recovered to it was just slower to come. You know Chris after 9/11 there were dire predictions about the real estate market in the city. What happened. Well the the dire predictions did not come true. The most basic reason seems to be that you know that the mass exodus from New York didn't happen. I mean everybody had friends who said that first day that's it I'm leaving town. I don't know your friends but none of mine moved. Nobody I know left. So the basic. Number of people who want apartments. Didn't

change and there are still fewer apartments than there are. People still coming here. Yeah people are still moving in. This is. Said. I always call this the I call the friends effect because it was there. For 10 years on NBC in primetime there has been. A sitcom that effectively is an infomercial for New York. There. It's it what it tells people is if you want to be hip. And in your 20s or early 30s and be a young hip person has a good time living you should probably do it in New York and before friends it was Seinfeld now it might be sex in the city. You know they all add up to a powerful draw for the city. For young people to come here. What are your predictions for the future of the real estate market. It's hard to say. Of course the stock market continues to be in real trouble. There are always questions about the future of the city. There are still a lot of young people want to come to New York. There are still a lot of professionals who want to be in New York. It's fairly bright unless something radical happens you know what what drove the last. The problems of say the crime and drugs in the

70s and 80s was that. City lost a lot of money as an economic force because the manufacturing base was leaving. Now the city has to a certain extent been redefined as a as an information capital a financial capital a place for. You know creativity and culture. And. That's not going away that's to a large extent how a lot of cities have redefined themselves. People want to live there not because they have to work there but because they want to be there to go to concerts and museums and art galleries and things like that. That's not changing. The life of New York City is full of transformations old factories become apartments

manufacturing neighborhoods give way to dot coms and the landscape of the city continues to change. One current debate is over the future of another left over from the city's industrial past the elevated freight railroad on the West Side of Manhattan. I remember the first time I came up here it was. The Badger. It was an Alice in Wonderland experience. You go through that keyhole and suddenly you're in another world that you never imagined existed. Walking the rails is a rural experience and here you are in the middle of Manhattan having a rural experience. I've worked primarily with the American landscape. My approach has been to look at the landscape to find a kind of beauty as it truly exist.

Looking at the landscape for what it reveals about. The human moment. Past. And the present human moment I mean this is the surface of the earth and what we do with it tells us an awful lot about ourselves. The Highline is an out of use rail via docked that was built in the early 1930s to lift freight trains off the street. It was thought that transportation forms would be a layered one on top of each other. It comes up out of the ground at Thirty fourth Street and then it comes down through West Chelsea and then goes down into the meat packing district. Very soon after it was completed it fell into very marginal use. The High Line is so true and. It is what it is. It's. Beautiful. And it's. Ratty. And it's lovely. The High Line is untouched. Nothing's happened up here in the last

twenty two years for that reason. It's such a jewel. It's absolutely pristine. It doesn't fit the public's notion of pristine which is nature untrammeled. But it in some ways it's more pristine. Than. Yellowstone though you've Samedi because every inch of it is authentic. It's currently a threatened structure. There is a group of property owners who own the land underneath the Highline who want to. Down because they believe that that will increase the property values. You could never create something like the High Line again in today's market. It's irreplaceable it's essential that we find a way to save it. You know in the 1870s William Henry Jackson was sent out on one of the Western exploration expeditions. Three years there'd been rumors of this fantastic region in the West with geysers and waterfalls but nobody had seen Yellowstone. Till Jackson.

Brought back the pictures. And as soon as he brought them back Congress made Yellowstone into a national park. In a way I feel like. Jackson. Nobody's ever seen the High Line. It's been. The most extraordinary experience to be in the heart of New York City. And see this. Secret landscape that only a few people have ever seen. We want to see people out there using this amazing unique piece of open space. A lot of New Yorkers have dreams. I used to have one when I lived in a lousy little apartment where you dream that you open the closet and there's a secret room on the other side of your apartment just got to be twice as big. And that was sort of what I felt the Highline was. There was this huge space that you didn't know existed just waiting for you to take advantage of it. I think there are very few experiences in this world that have exceeded my expectations. And the High Line is one of them. I never imagined all the screens and lace and. Purple heather and all of the

wildflowers and all the fruit trees that are up here. In the autumn. This turns the most. Beautiful yellow color. You feel like you're in the wheat fields of Canada and then you look up and there's the Empire State Building. It's absolutely surreal sometimes people look at the pictures of the highway and they think I've digitally altered the picture to put this beautiful pathway through New York City but there's nothing digital about it. This is how it is up here that's what makes it. So rare and so special like. I can't imagine that there's any other scene like this. You know the urban center anywhere in the world. This is just a magic landscape that. Exists in space and time. And that's it for this edition of you your voice is way up your own mind. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. New York Voices is made possible by the members of 13 additional funding

provided by the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation and the Norman and Rosita Winston foundation.