LEGAL/FINANCIAL

It was only a matter of time, really. The gritty Lower East Side was already changing by the nineties. But revitalization tends to mean gentrification and, today, condo prices are starting to soar as high as those in historically pricier neighborhoods, such as SoHo, NoLIta, and NoHo. The New York Times reports that "one of the newest condo developments to be marketed on the Lower East Side — stretching from Houston Street to the Brooklyn Bridge, and the Bowery to the East River — is 50 Clinton. Demolition to make way for the seven-story masonry building, which replaces a row of one-story shops that included the restaurant WD-50, began in May, with occupancy set for the fourth quarter of 2016." Average ticket price? Approximately $2,100 per square foot. For those keeping track, that figure is nearly double "the $1,167 average price per square foot for Lower East Side condos over the last year, and well over the $705 per square foot average price of co-ops, according to data provided by CityRealty, a real estate listings and research service."

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Replacing an elevator, especially in a building with only one, is no small feat. It's an exercise in organization, planning, coordination, and damage control — lots of damage control. Timing is everything with any major capital improvement project, but sometimes there's no way around it: if your elevator breaks down and the only real, cost-effective fix is replacement, it's going to be a long and grueling process. And people are going to complain, especially now that the days are turning hot and humid.

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It is the small details that can lead to big problems. Working as an energy efficiency consultant, Matt Brown, an engineer by training, discovered an airport airline facility was losing $4 million and no one knew why. 

Mystery solved: Brown discovered that a button on the building's computerized management system was somehow being disabled. Press a button and save $6 million? Brown knew technology should work more efficiently with buildings.

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It is the small details that can lead to big problems. Working as an energy efficiency consultant, Matt Brown, an engineer by training, discovered an airport airline facility was losing $4 million and no one knew why.

Mystery solved: Brown discovered that a button on the building's computerized management system was somehow being disabled. Press a button and save $6 million? Brown knew technology should work more efficiently with buildings.

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Speaking of white-glove buildings, it looks like the "poor door" is making headlines again. According to the New York Daily News, Extell Development wants to build a 56-story luxury tower near the Manhattan Bridge, the former site of a Pathmark supermarket. Next to it would be a 13-story "poor door" building where the low-income population in the complex would live. Activists are saying hell no. The "poor door," they say, "reeks of discrimination." The Daily News reports that last Wednesday, "hundreds of Chinatown and Lower East Side residents gathered in front of the 227 Cherry St. construction site to demand that [Mayor Bill] de Blasio protect their waterfront community." They mean business, too, planning to carry on the protests on the last Wednesday of every month. They are calling on the mayor to stand by the promise he made in 2014 to end the use of the poor doors. Scheduled to be completed by 2018, the luxury tower would be located in the midst of several public housing projects — so this fight is more than just saying no to the segregation affecting the low-income population. This fight is also about a city that, according to many, doesn't seem to have its priorities in check. One activist points out that what the city needs are schools, not (more) luxury towers. And it's also about gentrification: "Luxury buildings push rents through the roof and displace low-income people; the loss of local, affordable businesses such as Pathmark also forces people out," adds another activist. For them, scrapping plans for a poor door isn't enough. They want to stop the entire development in its tracks. "We put you in office," they say to the mayor for whom affordable housing is so high on the agenda. "So we demand that you stop the Extell project!" They're mad as hell, and they're not going take it anymore.

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It is probably among the strangest exchanges between an outgoing management firm and an incoming management firm that you'll ever see. "We will not release anything until the corporation's accountant has performed a complete audit of all files," wrote Rachel Manhim, property manager at Rachlin Management for Sherwood Village B, a Queens co-op. She was responding to an e-mail from Abdullah Fersen, the president of Newgent Management, the incoming firm. He had written Manhim a number of letters requesting payroll documents, and paperwork with various city agencies, arrears statements, vendor bills, and also access to the co-op's money. Fersen was frustrated and surprised. Rachlin had been fired nearly a month before by the new board of Sherwood Village B, and it was dragging its feet. Fersen, a veteran manager, says he has never seen anything like it before — most transitions are perfunctory — and adds that he was forced to recreate many of the records by diligent research among shareholders, vendors, and various city agencies. "We had to go with our plan and recreate everything from scratch," he says.

Was Rachlin being unreasonable? 

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A husband and wife found the perfect apartment — no small feat in the complex world of New York City real estate — located in a "white-glove" co-op, complete with private entrance. Very, very posh. The couple's bid was accepted, but then the pair read the building's governing documents and got a glimpse of living large that made them very uncomfortable. "They said that 'household help' was restricted to using service elevators and entrances, while residents could use the main ones. Two sets of laundry facilities separated such workers from residents. My husband noted that since we would have our own entrance and don’t have any household help, the bylaws wouldn’t affect us. But we would still do our laundry in the separate laundry rooms and would still be a part of what we consider reprehensible policies," they write to Ronda Kaysen in this week's Ask Real Estate column in The New York Times. The couple withdrew its bid and wants to know whether the building's policies are ethical or even legal. Kaysen explains that by definition, a white-glove building "connotes Old World (and old money) sensibilities — a modern-day 'Downton Abbey' on the Upper East Side." After all, Kaysen points out, the term "white-glove building" refers to the gloves its staff either still wears or tended to wear in the past. So it's no surprise that, first, they include language about "household help" and that, second, they have policies in place that keep domestic staff out of sight. Kaysen adds, however, that governing documents don't necessarily offer an accurate picture of a building's culture. For example, the language and policies with which the couple took umbrage may have been drafted decades ago and may be no longer enforced. For better insight, the couple might have asked to read meeting minutes, asked brokers for details about the building's cultural atmosphere or jumped on the old Google machine for an inside scoop. 

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Managing agent Maria Auletta of FirstService Residential recalls walking into the boiler room of the 162-unit Tracy Towers at 245 East 24th Street about a year ago. She was the new agent for the building and was floored to see such a clean boiler room. "It says a lot about the leadership of the building," she observes. "I've been in property management for ten years and most boiler rooms are average at best. They have to be somewhat clean — but at Tracy Towers, you can eat off the floor. It's that impressive." In comparison, Auletta remembers walking through a boiler room at a different building and seeing water bugs so big that she left the room. "No one wants to go into [those types of] boiler rooms," she observes. Because shareholders rarely see the boiler room, it can easily become a mess. In fact, its appearance can reflect on how the super does his job.

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A READER ASKS: I'm on the board of a midsize co-op in Manhattan. We've had a rough couple of years. Two tenants are in arrears and my fellow board members and I are arguing about the pros and cons of taking them to court. Another tenant has spent the last few months threatening to sue us for everything under the. He has a reputation in the building for being very irate so we want to tread lightly and carefully but at the same time put a stop to the negativity. And if that weren't enough, two neighbors are feuding with each other and threatening each other with court action. Do you have any advice on how to deal with all this? I'm personally at my wit's end! 

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Frank Sinatra told us all those years ago that if you can make it here in New York, you can make it anywhere. Life's tough in the Big Apple — never mind expensive. For one New Yorker, it's been an especially tough year. Since January, he's had to move from place to place, twenty in all, including crashing at friends' places and even in his own office. What happened to Art Teman? Well, if the name doesn't ring a bell, you might assume he couldn't afford rent in the big city anymore. Maybe he lost his job. But Teman, who describes himself as "homeless" now, didn't is still employed and wasn't having money troubles until he had to start shelling out cash for sublets and hotels. Teman found himself on the dreaded and infamous tenant blacklist after his Chelsea apartment made headlines last year for being the scene of an orgy. And he wasn't even invited. According to Brickunderground, Teman's "Airbnb guests turned his rental into a 'XXX Freak Fest orgy.'" Hope he's not a germophobe. As a result of the raunchy debacle, his broker dropped him and no new broker wants to give him the time of day. It seems like New York has chewed Teman up and spat him out. According to an open letter Teman wrote to Airbnb on his Tumblr blog, he can't get anyone to offer him a lease in the whole of the city, not even with promises of paying a full year of rent up front. "And now," writes Brickunderground, "we have an answer to the age-old question, 'What could be worse than coming home to find a BBW orgy in your apartment?' Getting stuck on the tenant blacklist, apparently." Duly noted.

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