Councilman Lander seeks to halt Lightstone Group’s Gowanus development

Posted on November 22, 2012 by Medvis

New York City Council member Brad Lander, in an open public letter released Tuesday last week, asked the Lightstone Group CEO, David Lichtenstein, to forgo all plans on its multi-million dollar Gowanus development.

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Councilman Lander

In light of the devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy to low lying neighborhoods in New York City, Councilman Lander of the city’s 39th district, asked that Lichtenstein and the Lightstone group to withdraw a proposal it made earlier this year to the New York City planning commission to construct 700 new rental units on the banks of the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn.

Councilman Lander is not the only one seeking to halt future development in Zone A, which includes Gowanus, in light of Hurricane Sandy. The Friends and Residents of Greater Gowanus (FROGG) also released a statement asking the City Planning Commission to place a halt on the Lightstone development proposal.

History of Contention

The appeals of the Councilman and FROGG are just the latest troubles developers have encountered in the Gowanus region, which received several feet of water water from Hurricane Sandy.

In 2010 ,the Environmental Protection Agency halted a development at the very same Gowanus canal site due to concerns of early 20th century pollution of the canal.Now safety concerns surround issues of tropical storms and not old factory waste.

Interestingly, as pointed out by critics of Councilman Lander raised no opposition to the 2010 Toll Brothers proposal which was halted by the EPA. Lightstone for the time being remains committed to their development project of Gowanus as indicated in a public statement where in Lightstone states that it will “move forward to build a high-quality, environmentally-sound residential complex.”

With both sides of the aisle committed to their positions, it will be interesting to see who will win this battle. Profits vs. Storm Safety: both are rather important in New York City.

John Legend closes on Nolita condo

Posted on August 10, 2012 by Medvis

Back in September of last year, John Legend, the famous R & B musician placed his Bowery Condo on the New York City real estate market. Fast-forward to this week, when John Legend just announced his new Nolita luxury pad.

Legend through his longtime Prudential Douglas Elliman broker, Jason Walker, closed on a baller one-bedroom, 2 1/2-bathroom condominium loft in Nolita’s Brewster Carriage House which sits at 374 Broome St. It is reported that the unit was purchased for just under $2.5 million.

The luxurious bachelor pad boasts a spacious living room with a fireplace, a masterful kitchen and spa-like washing rooms with soaking tubs and rainfall showers.

Meanwhile Legend’s two-bedroom, two-bathroom Bowery 1,359-square-foot condo at 52 E. Fourth St. is in contract with a mystery buyer. The asking price for this property which Legend bought for $1.9 million in 2009 was last listed at $2.795 million, down from its original $2.95 million.

john legend 374 broome street nolita loft

For John Legend and his fiancee Chrissy Teigen , it looks like a wonderful life

It seems as though the 13-foot ceilings, a private elevator landing a landscaped roof deck, a swimming pool and Andres Escobar interiors at 52 East 4^th street simply did not cut it for Legend and his model fiancée Christine Teigen.

I guess moving on up for John Legend is synonymous and moving on down, south of Houston.

NYC Condo and Co-op Tax Abatement are here to stay

Posted on July 9, 2012 by Medvis

Governor Andrew Cuomo and a group of NY state legislators are looking to make life a little bit more comfortable for many New York City condominium and co-op owners. Thus if you were considering that leap from a rental into NYC condo/co-op ownership such a move is still worth the investment.

At the end of June, 16 year old tax abatements on many NYC condominium and co-op property taxes expired, infuriating and distressing many condo-co-op owners. To dig the political hole even deeper, New York City officials made a tremendous error of including the 17.5% tax break on bills sent out on for July 1st, giving owners the impression that their bill would be business as usual instead of at the latest and higher tax rate, which ion some cases could go as high as 30%.

“Tax Compromise”

Governor Cuomo asked that New York City officials handle this issue administratively in a way that would allow for the existing 17.% abatement.

Meanwhile, as reported by The Queens Courier, a key group of lawmakers in Albany have come to an agreement to extend tax abatements through legislation which would be voted upon at the end of the year.

Under this agreement, lawmakers would increase tax abatements for middle-class condominium and co-op owners but would gradually eliminate the abatements for owners whose NYC condominium or co-op are not their primary residences. This last clause presumably goes after the city’s filthy rich residents who have an affinity for house hopping.

: I doubt this condo owner needs the abatement

This compromise almost neutralizes the argument of many New York City policy makers that the current tax cut system for condo and co-op owners is one which disproportionately benefits NYC’s upper middle class and down-right wealthy residents while costing the city over $400 million every year in revenue in property taxes.

However, for policy makers like Assemblyman Sheldon Silver, this agreement helps the majority of condo and co-op owners who already bare a disproportionate share of the New York City’s property tax burden.

When the anticipated tax compromise is enacted later this year, the new tax cut will be enforced retroactively back to July 1st.

So go ahead and close that condo deal you were nervously sitting on as you watched this saga play out. It seems as through this sweet NYC deal is here to stay.

Duplicate data resolved, now working on numerous other site improvements

Posted on May 25, 2012 by blocksy

Some of you were kind enough to let us know you found some duplicate data in the home search results and rental search results on the new site we release this past week. We can’t stress enough how seriously we take the issue of maintaining high integrity data on our site. Once we heard this, we rapidly uncovered and resolved a very small indexing bug that caused about 15000 of our listings to show up in duplicate on some of our results.

Bottom line: This issue has been resolved and you can rest assured that each listing in our new search results area is unique.

At this point, we’re working to improve performance and site functionality across the board and are shipping new code constantly. Many of you know that our listings are updated hourly, so you already have reason to come back periodically throughout the day. But now you have another reason: To check out the fixes and other cool things we’re rolling out constantly. (We’ll see you in 59 minutes).

As always: please holler if you agree that searching for real estate online is often a sucky experience and want to see us doing things to raise the bar. We’re listening to you.

Latest Press Release

Posted on May 23, 2012 by blocksy

Check out our latest press release here (also pasted below):

Blockhawk.com Beta Launches Simpler, Easier Real Estate Search

New type of real estate site making it easier for home buyers and apartment renters to research the New York area.

Blockhawk is a new type of real estate site that makes it much simpler, faster, and friendlier to find homes and apartments in the New York area.

People spend an inordinate amount of time and income on real estate and deserve a much better search experience.”

New York, NY (PRWEB) May 23, 2012

Blockhawk.com is announcing today the beta launch of a site intended to make searching for New York real estate, easier, faster, simpler and perhaps more joyous than other sites on the web.

The site was founded as a pet project by a number of New York area entrepreneurs. One of its Co-Founders, Jason White, explains: “I had always felt the process of searching for homes and apartments online was cluttered, slow, unfriendly, and often quite difficult, even for sophisticated users.” White adds that it “bothered [him] because shelter is a universal need. People spend an inordinate amount of time and income on real estate and deserve a much better search experience.”

In 2011, White, an entrepreneur who has launched other ventures online, got together with some engineers, designers, and colleagues from the real estate sector and began to focus on the problem. The goal was to see if, on a shoe string, a simpler, better consumer home or apartment-hunting experience could be developed. A bare bones site was quickly released to collect user feedback and test various hypotheses.

In a short time, the alpha site, which in White’s words was “so crude we were too embarrassed to tell anyone about it,” was attracting significant traffic without any marketing whatsoever. This validated that a larger opportunity was at hand.

Studying the Market

For nearly half a year, the team used its alpha site as a laboratory environment to study how consumers researched homes and apartments and to test ideas. The data collected was used to inform the new type of real estate website that was beta released this week.

Central to this initial release is the ability for consumers to search home and apartment sales and rentals by selecting from a multitude of filters, including the age of the building, whether its price has been reduced, or whether, for example, one can see water views from its windows. Such filters are not new. But allowing consumers to search across so many spectra without producing a slow or cluttered user experience is novel, even compered to the largest real estate sites online.

Another feature of Blockhawk is in how listings and other data are displayed. Pages are simpler and friendlier to navigate. Images are large. The result is an experience in which consumers can more quickly get to the results they seek, and avoid wasting time looking at information that isn’t relevant.

Freshest Data

The site also boasts extremely fresh and comprehensive data. In addition to showcasing New York real estate listings in the friendliest possible way, Blockhawk provides full listings for the five boroughs and is updated as often as 12 times a day. This assures consumers their visits will be rewarded with the most up to date content anywhere.

All of which is just the beginning. Blockhawk plans to release a host of innovative, disruptive, and consumer obsessed products and features in the months ahead.

As for its current focus on New York area property listings, Jason White explains that “Nothing is settled at this point.” In its short life thus far, Blockhawk has received repeated requests that it expand to other markets. “To be clear,” White says “we’re listening.”

About Blockhawk

Blockhawk.com is a new site that provides the highest quality, cleanest, and fastest method of searching for real estate in the New York area. The site combines listings of townhouses, co-ops, condominiums, rental apartments, and more. Blockhawk listings are updated hourly and constitute the most comprehensive and up to date information for New York home buyers and apartment renters online.

For more information, please contact:

Medvis Jackson
Blockhawk Public Relations
(315) 825-1874
Medvis.jackson(AT)gmail.com

New site officially live!

Posted on May 23, 2012 by blocksy

Hurrah! After a great deal of work, we’ve finally pushed our new site features, including a completely new search experience on Blockhawk and site redesign. Before anything, we’d like to thank the community for all the patience and support.

Now, more about our latest release of features, which are intended to allow you real estate hounds and apartment hunters to more easily find the content or listings you’re looking for:

- New site design

- Completely new method for searching home sales and rental apartments in NYC

- Filters that allow you to search by a number of attributes, including age of property, amenities, monthly maintenance fees, price reduction, and all the obvious home filters (such as price, bedrooms, bathrooms, size, price per square feet, etc).

- Mapping and neighborhood system that allows you to search by any combination of borough, neighborhood, etc and which allows you to navigate using the map as interface

- and a whole lot more, which you’ll just have to visit the site to find!

Again, thanks so much to all of you who have been sending us your feedback and requests. We’ve been listening and want to continue to hear from you about how you think we can make this product vastly better. Rest assured we’re working on a host of features and site improvements and this is all just the beginning!

Saving Old Harlem: the Historic Housing Initiative of Community Board 10

Posted on May 9, 2012 by Medvis

Harlem community leaders are currently leading an effort to increase the number of historically designated and protected areas in Upper Manhattan, with Harlem being their area of particular focus. Community Board 10, last week, approved a wide reaching preservation scheme which is designed to prepare buildings and blocks for land-marking.

Community Board 10 Saving old Harlem Historic Landmark preservation

Photo Taken from Ronsaari.com- Photo of Strivers Row, part of which has already been historically designated

As cited by NY Curbed, only 3.6% of Central Harlem, to date, is under historic landmark designation. This pales in comparison to the 26% of real estate in the Upper West Side which holds the same status. Until now, only two sections of Harlem enjoy historic landmark designation: Strivers Row and Mount Morris Park. Under the plan passed by Community Board 10, Harlem can hold as many as nine historic districts.

The plan voted through by Community Board 10 includes the following parcels:

Astor Row (130th Street between Fifth Ave and Lenox)
West 147th-149th Streets, between Adam Clayton Powell Jr. and Frederick Douglass Boulevards
130th-133rd Streets between Lenox Avenue and Adam Clayton Powell Junior Boulevard
Striver’s Row from 135th Street to 140th Street (In addition to previously dedicated sections of Strivers Row)

Under this initiative, Rucker Park will also receive status as a scenic landmark due to over half of a century of recreational basketball games and tournaments, involving both professional and local basketball players.

Taken from Flickr (jag9889)- Photo of Astor Row, which is up for historic designation

As reported by Jeff Mays of DNAinfo, this designation process is part of a much larger initiative to save the old Harlem, and preserve the history of this old cultural axis for many of New York’s immigrant and migrant groups. Currently, the board is beginning to weigh the possibility of a Harlem State Heritage Area which would be a tool for raising the historic and cultural profile of the area, as well as, for attracting investment.

We at Blockhawk have long discussed the “rising profile” of Harlem. However, while the real estate and infrastructure are likely to draw new buyers to Harlem, we believe it is the preservation of its history and character which will keep these new neighbors uptown.

Editorial: New York Rent Controls, here to stay

Posted on April 30, 2012 by Medvis

Millions of New Yorkers under rent controlled leases can scratch one more item off of their worry list. After showing early interest in hearing a challenge to New York City rent regulations, the Supreme Court has now declined to hear the case, leaving the City’s current housing regulations in place.

New York City Rent Control 32 W. 76th St

Harmon's 32 W. 76th St on Manhattan's Upper West Side

Harmon’s Challenge to Rent Controls

Earlier this year, James and Jeanne Harmon brought forth their challenge to New York’s rent control policy. In the Harmon’s five-story brownstone on West 76th Street, three of the six apartments they rent out on the top three floors are subject to New York’s rent-stabilization policy. Under such policy, the government sets maximum allowable rent increases and, almost invariably, allows tenants to renew their leases indefinitely.

As stated in their 2008 suit, their rent stabilized leases permit tenants to only pay around $1,000 a month, 60 percent below the market rate. The Harmon’s suit against New York City challenged the fact that they were being forced to accept rent payments which were below the market rate. Such an obligation violated the 5th amendment, according to the Harmon’s, and was equivalent to an unjust seizure of property.

Court’s Ruling

In 2011, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York,ruled in favor of New York City. A three-judge Appeals Court argued that the Harmons knew the terms of the rent controlled leases when they acquired the building. Moreover, the Court of Appeals asserted that the couple were still able to, in some circumstances: reclaim the apartments for their own use; demolish the building so long as they did not replace it with housing; and “evict an unsatisfactory tenant.”

In short, since the city’s rent laws did not allow for “permanent physical occupation of the Harmons’ property” it did not violate the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment, which states that private property shall not “be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

New York Housing Policy vs. Free Market Principles

New York City’s rent controls affect almost half of the city’s roughly 2.2 million rental leases. A million other units are occupied by their owners. Last summer, the NY State legislature signed an extension on rent controls, which were set to expire.

The rent control law stipulates that in the event of a housing emergency, defined as a vacancy rate of less than 5 percent, rent ceilings are to be in effect.

The Harmon’s and free-market policy commentators however point to the absurdity of this stipulation given the fact that the city has been in such an emergency for the last 40 years with 68,000 vacant apartments.

Standard Rent Control Price Points with and without Rent Controls

Moreover, the free market side of the debate contends that the City’s price controls stifles the supply of rentals. This low supply leads to the rental market in New York to keep a artificially high market rate for those who are not rent controlled leases, instead of being at the ideal supply and demand equilibrium point.

As free market as I would love to be in this situation, it would not be fair to New York renters to undo rent controls while still subsidizing and financing various private sector development companies in their multi-million dollar projects across the city. If the government is going to be laissez-faire with one, it must be laissez-faire with all.

So while New York’s housing market is not operating at peak efficiency but instead stifled by a web of price controls and subsidies, it is not ready to operate in complete fairness.

Has Alicia Keys lost her “Empire State of Mind?”

Posted on March 26, 2012 by Ashley

Born and bred Manhattanite Alicia Keys is ditching her swanky SoHo penthouse for new digs, refuting her famed lyric: “[ that in New York] there’s nothing you can’t do”.

The 6167 square foot triplex on Crosby Street features 3000 square feet of picturesque terraces and is listed for $17.950 million, according to Sotheby’s International.

Though it is unclear where Keys is headed next, the pre-war Condo was put on the market just as the IRS reportedly filed a $727,985 tax lien against Keys’ husband, producer Swiss Beatz.

The couple is likely to make a pretty penny off their 5 bedroom, 4 bathroom, 4 powder room apartment with a floating glass staircase after purchasing it from Lenny Kravitz for $12.5 million in 2010.

Bringing new meaning to the term extravagant, there is little the Crosby Street penthouse doesn’t have. It is fully equipped with a massive windowed eat-in kitchen, wine cellar, capacious living room, fireplace, master suite with spa, dressing area and private terrace, and state-of-the-art entertainment and security systems.

When even the dreams of the rich and famous are tied down by practicality, it’s hard not to wonder who would splurge on this luxurious light-filled loft. But not to worry, this is New York. Someone will soon take this SoHo palace off Keys’ hands… Someone in an Empire state of mind.

New York City actually is affordable…Seriously, it is.

Posted on March 20, 2012 by Medvis

Go ask any person anywhere in America which city they consider to be the most unaffrodable and I’m sure they’ll tell you “New York City.” However, with great happiness, Blockhawk would like to say “wrong answer!” When it comes to national wage-adjusted average rent costs, New York City does not even fall into the top ten.

According to a new study released by the National Low Income Housing Coalition, San Francisco tops the charts as the most expensive city in America to rent a two bedroom unit with an average rate of $1,905 per month. This report, which focuses on the affordability of a rent, rather than just the rent itself, shows that in order to live in San Francisco, one would have to earn $36.63 per hour ($76,000 a year) in order to avoid spending ⅓ of their income on rent.

New York City average rent costs San Francisco

Top Ten Most Unaffordable Municipalities in America

In the rest of California, one need only earn $26.00 per hour to avoid spending more than 30% of their income on rent. It is at this 30% mark that one is considered to be cost burdened.

So why is it New York City fails to break into this pricey top ten? Answer: Housing availability. New York City is simply a larger city. So not only is the average income in New York City much higher on average than San Francisco, its larger selection of housing options and location allows for its residents to find more affordable housing than they would in San Francisco.

: San Francisco Tops Lists for its high Unaffordability Index

So while this does not mean that the New York City does not possess many the most expensive residential properties per square block in America, it does mean that the city is not completely unaffordable.

Thus, for all you San Fran hippies: You may nowwant to check out the real estate over in Brooklyn in order to save a pretty penny.

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