Category Archives: Commentary

My City Club colleague John West distributed this, December 14, New York Times article on Friday.  https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/14/nyregion/mta-funding-real-estate-value-capture.html It argues that the city’s construction of new mass transit lines, with public funds or debt, is a subsidy to property owners, who should …

Members of the City Club (cityclubny.org) met with New York City Council Land Use Staff and a representative from City Councilman Daniel Garodnick’s office to discuss changes to the zoning changes proposed for East Midtown.   The purpose of the …

Most readers will remember that a proposed rezoning of Midtown East failed under the Bloomberg administration. Mayor De Blasio formed a Midtown East Steering Committee to improve on the plan, which is based on a perceived need for tall, modern, …

My friend Gary, who with his partner, owns a 19′, renovated house, adjacent to Striver’s Row, sent me a link to this listing, an 18′ house in Hamilton Heights, currently in contract and last asking $3,250,000 (http://streeteasy.com/building/456-west-142-street-manhattan/house). The renovations do …

Recently, in order to price a wide, multi-family Village townhouse,  I considered sales of other multi-family and ready-to-build townhouses and compared these to recent sales of wide, 1-2 family houses. Ready-to-build refers to two houses on prime blocks in the …