I just saw that one of the townhouses we’ve been through is having an open house - 42 Hamilton Terrace. After everything we’ve seen I can honestly say that owner (or broker) is absolutely crazy for the price they’re asking - $995K (it was up at $1.1M when we saw it earlier this year). Let me explain why that’s a crazy price…

To be fair the upside to the property is that it’s a decent width and on a great block - Hamilton Terrace. It also has some incredible original details in it - mostly the fireplaces and baseboards on the ground floor. But there’s so much wrong with the place it’s not even funny - at least when you consider they’re asking a million dollars for it.

The big issue is that it’s falling down. Literally. The extension in the rear where the kitchen used to be is just walls - the floor in the extension has fallen into the floor below. The rest of the building is falling down as well. When we went through it was raining inside the building because snow was melting on the roof. If you know anything about buildings you know the building goes downhill very quickly if the roof is no good. I was literally scared to walk through the building. They have plywood down in some areas ’cause they’re worried people will fall through those parts of the floor. Personally I don’t think it’s safe to go inside that building. If anyone gets hurt I’ll feel really guilty ’cause I was tempted to call 311 and report it as unsafe (but I didn’t).

It’s not the first Harlem townhouse that’s fallen down and it won’t be the last. But right now, in this market, you just don’t pay a million dollars for something that’s falling down.

• 48 Hamilton Terrace a few doors down needs some work, but it’s completely livable and mortgageable and it’s going for $1.25M.
• There’s a place on Stiver’s Row (236 W 139th) that apparently sold for around $425K a few months ago and now they’re trying to flip and asking $699K. Someone started a renovation and didn’t finish, but it’s completely solid and it’s on Striver’s Row.
• Then there’s 506 West 142nd Street, which is a fully renovated, income producing property in move-in condition and it’s asking the same price as 42 Hamilton - $995K. Mind you, the renovation is soulless, the back yard is dark and small, and the block isn’t nearly as good, but compared to one that’s about to fall down on a better block it’s price to sell and 42 Hamilton clearly isn’t.
• And 470 West 148th was just reduced to $999K - it’s perfectly nice 12′ wide townhouse that’s move-in ready, but will need renovation in the not-too-distant future.

Personally I think 42 Hamilton should have a price drop of about a third - to $699K. With a $500K renovation that would put the total cost around $1.2M and it would be in better condition than 48 Hamilton which would compensate the buyer for the hassle of the renovation.

The other townhouse where people seem like they’re stuck two years back in a time warp is 532 West 148th Street. The pictures are amazing, but when you go through the house you realize how little substantive renovation has been done. It’s “shabby chic” in the ’80s sense of the word (before the term referred to a store) when people didn’t have money for renovations so they just make things that were falling apart look pretty. The floors aren’t redone - they’re just whitewashed and varnished. The ceilings aren’t redone - they’re ripped out and there’s exposed beams. Same with the walls - ripped out. What you have left is a shabby chic 3 story loft that’s one big open space plus a work space in the basement - a total bachelor pad. There are almost no walls, no privacy - some of the bathrooms are literally in the middle of the floor with no walls around them. It would have been hot 20 years ago, but now people are looking for genuine renovations - skim coated walls, recessed lighting, floors that are in good condition. The other thing about that property is that it’s 1/2 block off Broadway - not on a prime block.

All of that would be fine if they weren’t asking nearly $2M for the place ($1.895M to be precise). I think the comp for it is 48 Hamilton Terrace @ $1.25M - so they need to drop the price by a third to be in line with their competition. Both 48 Hamilton and 532 W 148 are in similar condition in terms of infrastructure. 48 Hamilton is on a MUCH better block and is landmarked. 532 W 148 has better interior design, but you’re buying the building, not the furnishings. Plus 48 Hamilton has walls and rooms, which most townhouse buyers want, so it’s more desirable.

I did like going through the place though - it showed how much you can do to a townhouse at a reasonable price. If you really don’t want to do expensive structural changes, you can still have a place that’s stylish (though to me shabby chic is pretty dated).

The Harlem real estate market has always been pretty speculative, but luckily much of the market is pretty realistic about how prices are dropping. There are some incredible bargains out there and a lot of people are quite flexible. We saw one property where the broker (whom we really liked) told us they were about to drop another 17% - and that’s after a price reduction not all that long ago.

But some people are afraid to be realistic. There are a few that are dropping the prices too far ’cause they’re desperate to sell in a bad market. But the problem is that when you drop really low people start thinking that’s what all the prices should be and then prices  really tumble. Hell, we’re sorta playing that game - hoping we can sell our place before that mentality takes hold in our neighborhood and after it takes hold in Harlem.

I’m not saying that most of the places that are livable and mortgageable should drop that much further, but the reality is construction loans are hard to get these days and people who buy places that need construction loans (like 42 Hamilton) should get rock bottom prices to compensate them for doing something that’s pretty risky in a falling market… At least we’re hoping a seller will see it that way when we go to buy a place. I’ve got my eye on a place and as far as I can tell it’s practically a shell. It also needs a one-third price reduction… Hopefully we’ll be able to sell our place and hopefully the seller will be flexible by then… We’ll see. First step is to sell our place…

In defense of the people who’ve over-priced is the fact that the market is rapidly changing and there’s not a lot of data to make informed decisions on. Things were dropping before the stock market went down in September, then only 2 townhouses had deals in Q4 of 2008. That didn’t give people a good idea of what they should be doing. In Q1 they say 10 townhouses have closed, but even that data isn’t all in yet. But the issue is how far do you have to drop in order to be “priced to sell” when almost nothing is selling?

Dan and I are going to try and sell our apartment. Simply put we need more space. We both work from home and we have people coming in to work with us, and on top of that Dan needs an artist studio to do his artwork. That means we need at least 3 decent-sized bedrooms. We’ve also been thinking about getting a place upstate so if the new place had outdoor space it would mostly eliminate our desire for a place upstate.

Ideally we’d get a townhouse. Townhouses in Upper Manhattan are a much more speculative market that swings up and down a lot more than coop apartmentss. In the past two years townhouses in Upper Manhattan (in the lower end of the price range which we can consider) have lost about half their value. In comparison in our building the prime apartments (like ours) have lost 10% or less of their value, and smaller apartments have lost about 20% of their value. As a result, if we’re ever going to be able to get off our wave onto the bigger townhouse wave, this is the time to do it. People think the New York real estate market will get worse by the end of the year, so cashing out now and buying in the fall is the optimal way to do things.

So we’ve been trying to determine which broker to go with and we’re finding it’s surprisingly difficult to find a broker with a good balance of what we need. For starters let me show you what we’re working with - this is a picture of our kitchen…

When we did our renovations in 2005/2006 we sorta went all out - Wolf range ($3,000), Sub Zero integrated fridge ($4,500), Poliform/Varenna cabinets from Italy ($22,000), stainless counter with Franke sinks welded in ($5,000+ - just the sinks were something like $1,500), a KWC faucet ($600), and so on… This is not an Ikea kitchen.

Mind you, we did a lot of the leg work ourselves so we probably didn’t spend that much more than a hands-off person who did a “good” Ikea kitchen.  Still, there’s a fair amount of value in our renovations.

What we’re finding is that most of the agents just don’t understand the renovations. One stood in the kitchen thought it was nice, but was more focused on problems like whether there was enough cabinet space (despite the fact that Dan’s a great cook and has room for everything he needs), or the fact that some people might not like an eat in kitchen (looking at HG TV I thought everyone wanted eat-in / entertainment oriented kitchens). The more typical response is that they know the renovations are special, but they just can’t put their finger on what it is about them that’s special. Only one agent really seemed to get it, unfortunately he a junior agent and wasn’t from one of the “power house” agencies.

What we want in an agent is 1) someone who “gets” the apartment and can explain/sell it to buyers and other brokers. 2) someone who can give the apartment a lot of exposure and bring in a lot of qualified buyers. That last point isn’t easy in this market. It’s a combination of advertising and connections.

We’re really disappointed in what the brokers in the area offer. The two agencies who used to control the listings in our little neighborhood have a track record of exclusive listings and they just don’t have the relationships or reputations to work well with other brokers - in our opinion that’s deadly in this market. One in particular has listed/sold many of the high end apartments in the neighborhood, but the tactics that worked for them before aren’t working so well anymore.

Then you have the power house brokers from big corporate agencies. They bring a lot of marketing muscle to the table but their agents are a bit of a mishmash - some are so busy you feel like they won’t have time to concentrate on your listing, others only have experience with lower end listings (the bread and butter listing for the neighborhood), and none of them really seem to “get” our apartment. At best they know it’s good, but can’t quantify in words why it’s good or how that translates into a price.

And lastly there’s a quirky sorta scrappy agency where one of the agents does “get” the apartment and the other one (the more analytical of the two) comes close to getting it but so far has had problems putting it into words. At the moment they’re the ones I’m most hopeful of, but the issue is whether they have the marketing muscle to get the word out there and get the exposure the listing will need. But to their credit they did just sell one of the prime apartments in the building for less than 10% off the high price for apartments like that, and they got the offer in 2-3 weeks after listing.

So we’ll see, but so far none of the brokers is a clear winner.

I just got my weekly e-mail from Abercrombie & Fitch and was amused. The e-mail subject was “The Rugged Look”. I was expecting some rugged looking guy, but I guess they didn’t have any around (just pretty boys), so they actually showed the clothes for one. Thing is, look at the color of the shirt in their “rugged look”…

That’s right… Abercrombie’s definition of what’s rugged includes a pink shirt! I can just see my father (who’s a pretty rugged guy) shaking his head…

Abercrombie - PINK IS NOT “RUGGED”!

As happy as I am that gay men (and lesbians and the transgendered) are being more widely accepted, I feel like the gay community has lost something in the process. That our assimilation into mainstream culture has made us more ordinary.

I was just a kid in the 70s and my parents were big fans of Jerry Falwell. I remember going to Thomas Road Baptist Church one Sunday and having gay men protesting on a picket line outside, so my experience with the gay community in the 70s isn’t first hand…

But looking back at pictures and videos from the era there was a level of creativity that you don’t see anymore. Sure they have the obligatory gay guy on every design/make-over show, but how did the creativity of gay men go from the outrageous antics of groups like The Radical Faeries and The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (both founded in 1979) to making picture perfect apartments and making straight guys into metrosexuals?

I mean think The Radical Faeries are all about rejecting heterosexual norms and finding our own way - of not being afraid to blend masculine and feminine - of not being limited by norms of acceptable creativity… Here are some pics I’ve “borrowed” from LifeLube’s blog - they have a weekly Friday is for Faeries blog post which is inspiring to see that while the Faerie movement is small, it’s still very much alive…

As you can see - they range the gamut - some can be wonderfully creative, others just enjoying themselves and having fun, while others are just normal guys who seem genuinely well-adjusted.

Then you have The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence… They take more of an in-your-face, over-the-top, “shock and awe” sort of approach to their creativity…

Needless to say whether it’s the Radical Faeries or The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, these are the sorts of gay guys who really push creative boundaries in our society. With the commercialization of gay creativity on reality TV shows, it just feels like gay creativity is less than it used to be - more mainstream, more homogenous.

Or maybe there are just as many as there were in the 70s, but they’re less visible because they’re now a smaller percentage of our community since all the people who had no problem “blending in” have now come out of the closet.

Still, it’s wonderful when you see crazy creative minds at work. One of the latest that I’ve come across is François Sagat who’s best known for being a big name porn star, but when you look at his his blog and his YouTube channel you realize how much more he is - how wonderfully creative he is. He is a porn star and a lot of his creativity is centered around his body (his ass in particular), but he takes it way beyond the vulgarities of porn and makes it into something fascinating and edgy…

One of his more recent videos is a music video of sorts with him, a drag queen (playing his girlfriend), and another guy who he’s got the hots for…

Yes, I like the fact that HIV/AIDS isn’t killing off gay creative talent like it was in the ’80s and early ’90s. I like the fact that gay men are back in the saddle creatively - even if that’s making straight guys into metrosexuals, or helping women chose better outfits, or decorating a home. But I’ve got a special place in my heart for the guys who are “out there” and push the limits of what’s acceptable. I’m a geek - I’ll never be one of those people, but I know they’re special - very special…

We’re selling 2 Florence Knoll tables and 8 Harry Bertoia fiberglass chairs if anyone reading this is interested. They’re our old dining room set, but they no work with our eating area now that we’ve renovated our kitchen (we need a table with its leg in the center, not at the corners).

They’re authentic mid-century modern pieces. The chairs were manufactured in 1969 and the tables were most likely made around the same time.

If anyone is interested, please send Dan an e-mail.