Starting at the top… There will be a roof deck on the rear of the building. We only learned after buying the building that we had views of the midtown skyline (off in the distance). Mind you, climbing up all those stairs to get there won’t be a lot of fun, which means we’ll need some sorta buzzer system for the front door. We’ll eventually mount a retractable awning on the bulkhead for shade. We opted for bulkhead windows instead of a skylight because they let in more light in the winter and less in the summer.

There is some dispute on the proper width of the bulkhead. The architect has a 3 foot passage to the side of it, the plan examiner says it’s a “side yard” and should have an 8 foot passage OR be the entire width of the building with a ladder over it. The architect noted that if he encloses the walkway it becomes interior space and 3 feet is appropriate. We’re still trying to figure out which solution we want to go with.

The next floor down, the 4th floor of our unit (8-9′ ceilings), will be art studio space for Dan. He’ll have a clean studio / office in the front of the building, and a dirty studio in the rear of the building. The small utility room in the middle will be his wet area. The floors in all his studio space will be commercial grade vinyl flooring (inexpensive and practical). There will be clerestory windows letting lighting from the stairwell into the front room (which is on the North side of the building). We’ve configured it in a way where the next owner could turn the utility room into a bathroom and then have two additional bedrooms / playrooms, etc.

The 3rd floor of our unit (9′ ceilings) will have the master bedroom in the rear and a spare room in the front. The spare room will most likely be a den / exercise room - have a treadmill, a couch and a TV. Like the clean studio above it, the den will have clerestory windows letting in light from the stairwell. We wanted the bedrooms in the back since the back of the building should be quieter.

The 2nd floor of our unit (one floor up from parlor, 10′ ceilings) will have the spare bedroom in the back and a home office in the front. Having the office in the front achieves two goals… First, the office isn’t noise sensitive, so it’s on the noisy side of the building. And second, it’s used during the day, so air conditioning bills will be lower since there’s far less heat gain on the North side of the building. (We’re using a mini split ductless system where each room is a separate zone). On this floor, attached to the bathroom is the laundry room. Having been in apartments for the past 20 years, we can’t wait to have a washer/dryer in our unit! Oddly it’s one of the things we are most looking forward to.

Our original plans had the 2nd and 3rd floor swapped, then we realized that we’ll be going up and down stairs to the office a lot more than we would be going up and down to the master bedroom, so we put the master bedroom up higher and the office down lower. Swapping the floors also lets us have a laundry chute from the master bedroom closet directly into the laundry room. We’re going to love that feature!

The parlor floor (10.5′ ceilings) will have the living room, dining room and kitchen. This is where we had to get a special reconsideration to have an open floor plan since code would otherwise require having 1 hour fire rated walls around the staircase and from the staircase to the front door. I know some people hate having front doors open into kitchens, but we saw so many narrow unusable living rooms that we decided to put the living room in the rear where it could be more spacious. But it does mean that the kitchen design needs to be pretty flawless since it will be people’s first impression of the house. One thing we have noticed is that the living/dining/kitchen space is nearly identical to our old apartment. This is a 15′ wide townhouse - we may have 6 bedrooms, but some things are more on the modest side.

There will be a narrow 4′ wide deck with a pergola off the living room. We kept it narrow so the tenant’s window would still get plenty of sunlight, and we added the pergola (which we’ll have vines growing on) to give us some shade in the summer. Here’s a diagram showing how it will look…

From the beginning of our process we knew that we didn’t have the biggest townhouse and as a result our design choices were a bit limited. There just wasn’t the space (or budget) to be all that extravagant. Where we were a bit extravagant was with the staircase. It will have a 3′ x 6.5′ lightwell running down the middle of it that will help get light deeper into the core of the building. We’re also going with open risers to help let light bounce around. From the beginning I knew the stairs would be the dominant design element in the building. To that end our architect really stepped up and has given us an incredible staircase design. You can see a bit of it in this diagram…

Basically there will be swoopy translucent plastic (or fiberglass) panels that will be attached to simple metal framing. Because it’s reducing metal work it should be a fairly economical solution. It’s also changeable. I had thought the staircase would permanently define the space, but because the panels can be redesigned and executed in different materials, there’s nothing permanent about it. Not shown in the diagram is the architect’s solution for the “railing” along the hallway. We’ll be taking the existing floor joists cutting them down into thin strips and creating a “screen” (wall) with vertical strips of old floor joists. That will be our version of “original details” and should look pretty incredible if we get the right balance of colors and textures in the space.

Continuing down the building… The rental unit will have smaller rooms that are still a decen size (i.e. the bedroom will be 175 sq. ft. and the living/dining room 260 sq. ft.). We’ll be putting in a decent Ikea kitchen (not bare bones, but still Ikea). One of the things we’re debating currently is the appropriate level of security for the rental unit. Our options are metal gates/bars on the doors/windows -or- laminated security glass with a security break sensors in lieu of gates/bars. Gates and bars will feel more secure, but it may seem like you’re in a prison.

The rental will be a bit of a duplex. I say “bit of” because it incorporates cellar space which can’t legally be a bedroom. It can be a media room, a workspace for an artist or craftsman, or a home office. Because that’s the south-facing wall, there should be plenty of light down there so it won’t feel too much like being in a cellar. What this means is is that it’ll be far more than a 1 bedroom, but not really a two bedroom. The tenant will also have their own laundry room in the cellar.

The cellar will also have the mechanical room and storage space for us. There’s this incredible arched brick ceiling in the “vault” under the “front yard” which we’ll be repairing/restoring. This townhouse is rather unusual in that it has a separate entrance for the cellar under the stoop, so we don’t have to go through the tenant’s space to get to the cellar.

In terms of utilities we’ll only be providing heat for the tenant. We’re separating all the other utilities - gas, electric, even water. Given how the boiler will work if we were to put in separate heating for the tenant the heating system wouldn’t run at optimal efficiency. So it won’t cost that much more to give the tenant heat. We don’t want to have the typical over heated New York apartment. Instead, we’ll keep it at a temperature where we’re comfortable in a light sweater but not so cool that our hands get cold. That will be lower than the minimum heat required by NYC, so the A/C units in the rental unit will be “mini PTAC” thru-wall units which can also provide supplemental heat as needed to keep the tenant comfortable. That means we’ll need to have the tenant sign something saying they understand they aren’t getting full heat for their unit.

I know Julia Angwin had mentioned on her blog at the Wall Street Journal that she had a tough time trying to figure out if she still wanted telephone jacks. Our strategy for voice and data is fairly aggressive, but also a bit conservative. Half of the closet in our home office will be a mini “server room” complete with rack mounted servers, cool air intake and warm air exhaust. (Dan and I do web projects for a living - we need all that sorta stuff). All voice, data and security will “home run” to that closet. We’re assuming we’ll continue to have a Vonage VoIP system, so we see won’t have a dedicated phone line coming into the building. Other than in the server closet there will be only two voice jacks - one in the office for the fax machine and one in the living room for a phone. We’ll also have Ethernet jacks throughout the house even though wireless will be our main form of connectivity. Primarily we’re putting Ethernet jacks next to cable TV jacks because we believe video and entertainment over the Internet will be common in the near future and the video/entertainment boxes may not support wireless. The Ethernet jacks will also be used for wireless routers - we assume we’ll need several to properly cover the entire house.

There’s a lot more detail I could go into, but that covers the basics… It’ll be fun to see it all come together…

Well, months passed and then someone at Eggersmann found my previous blog post mentioning them. They contacted us and asked if we had made a choice yet. Thanks to problems with DOB, we hadn’t. They noticed that I had mentioned that their last price was too high, and offered to design a lower cost kitchen. Our kitchen design and layout had changed somewhat since their last proposal. The biggest change was moving the coat closet further into the building - across from the stairs rather than across from the kitchen. The other change was getting rid of the upper cabinets and taking the cabinets at each end to the ceiling (which is 10.5′ tall). The net result was a 1/3rd savings in cost. We need to see where the other numbers come in, but we’re thinking we just might be able to afford an Eggersmann kitchen, which is quite exciting…

Dan and I had gone through several rounds of kitchen designs but hadn’t been 100% happy with anything we came up with. Many of the designs reminded us of our last kitchen and we really wanted this one to be different. Finally I proposed a layout one day and Dan liked it. That’s the layout Eggersmann laid out (and improved slightly). Here are some 3D renderings Eggersmann did for us…

Instead of having coat closets across from the kitchen, we’re going to have a bench where people can sit and talk. This will essentially be the view from the bench. The door to the right is the front door. The upper panels in that door will be glass. The column to the left will house a Sub Zero 736 TCI fridge. At over $6,000 it’s our one huge extravagance in the kitchen, but we loved the 700 TCI we had in our last kitchen… The shelves in the center island will be used for wine and cookbooks. Dog leashes and the like will go in the cabinets below.

This shows a few of the details more clearly. We’re envisioning Corian (white) counter tops, a stainless back splash. The range is a compromise. We’re going with a 30″ Electrolux when Dan would really love a 36″ Wolf, but it costs nearly $4,000 more. The range hood was one of our challenges. The shape of it will probably be a bit different than what you see, but luckily we can exhaust directly out the wall, so no chimney is needed. We’re also thinking of put lighting on the top of the shelf as well as the bottom so the wall isn’t so dark.

Seen from a different perspective… The wall to the right will be exposed brick, and the front doors will have glass in the top panels. The window looks huge as it is, but looking at it now I realize it wasn’t drawn big enough. It’s 4 feet wide, 7 1/2 feet tall, so it will be another foot higher (at least). It won’t be one huge piece of glass. Instead it will look a bit like a french door (two vertical casement windows).

This last one shows how we’re hiding the microwave in a nook with additional cabinets. Up by the ceiling, above the cabinets, will be the A/C. We’re going with a “mini-spit ductless” system and that location gives us a nice place to hide the unit. (Not going with concealed units is another budgetary concession). The large wall will be exposed brick, so while the cabinets will be white / off-white, there will be plenty of color and warmth in the kitchen.

The other thing I’ve realized looking at these renderings is that the radiator we were going to put under the window will conflict with opening the cabinets. Dan and I are debating where the radiator should go.

So we’re crossing our fingers hoping we can get the Eggersmann kitchen. It’ll be really wonderful. Their sense of design is really special and their fit and finish is incredible.

Anyway, it’s over and we’re now on to getting a final bid from our contractor, and getting everything ready to apply for the mortgage. Hopefully, after all this, we’ll be able to afford the renovation we want to do. Knocking wood…

I know I’ve neglected the blog lately, but the last 3 months have felt like purgatory. We were just sitting and waiting. Honestly, I didn’t want to focus on it too much because it would have just been frustrating. It’s a good thing we weren’t buying the building with a rehab loan. If we had closing would have had to wait until all of this was done. As it is the house isn’t costing us that much to maintain right now - just taxes and paying a guy to keep it clean so we don’t get violations.

The benefit of the wait was that our architect had time to do more detail drawings which will help clarify things with the contractor. And the biggest change was that we decided to swap the floor plans for two floors. We’re going to have the home office one flight up from parlor and the master bedroom two flights up from parlor (instead of the other way around). It should result in less stair climbing and we get a laundry shoot in the master bedroom, which will be nice. When we get the electronic versions of the approved plans I’ll post them here.

In the future one or both of us with go with our expediter when he needs to get changes approved at DOB. Lesson learned. 

The first thing that was rejected was the energy review. Our architect did this complex analysis using a web-based program provided by the federal government where you enter all the characteristics of the building including wall types, window types, light fixtures, etc. and it confirms compliance with the 2010 standards that are in effect for New York State. But the plan examiner rejected it because NYC is still on 2007 energy standards and the 2010 standards aren’t being phased in until later this year. They literally told us to come back in 24 days, on July 1, since they’ll accept our architect’s energy analysis on that date. So we got rejected for showing compliance with a more demanding standard that they’re going to use in less than a month. Go figure.

Second major item was the sprinkler system (again). This time the plan examiner wanted documentation that there was sufficient pressure in the water main to support the sprinklers being on the domestic water supply despite the fact that the code specifically states that sprinkler systems with 30 or fewer heads can feed off the domestic water supply. He also wanted all the pipe sizes and sprinkler heads specified, but that’s typically done when the sprinkler system is certified - it doesn’t need to be done at this point and requiring it now is just being difficult.

The biggest issue that he raised is that he’s insisting we do a pressure test on the water main to do the calculations to determine the sizes of pipes that are required for the sprinkler system. It takes 4 to 6 weeks to get DEP to do a flow test, so that means we can’t go in for a plan review until that’s done. Again, the flow test is typically done after DOB approves the overall plan - he’s just being obstructionist IMHO.

At one point the plan examiner insisted that we needed 2 hour fire rated walls around the stairwell, not 1 hour walls. Our expediter stuck to his guns and then it took the plan examiner 10 minutes of searching the code to realize we were right and he was wrong. Why do they have people doing plan exams who don’t know the code? If the code is just horribly complicated then why not have plan examiners specialize in certain building types? If we had someone who really knew the code issues for townhouses then maybe they’d know the code well enough to do their job properly.

Then the plan examiner was telling our expediter that he saw errors in the “I-Cards” for the building. I-Cards were the predecessor to Certificates of Occupancy, which came out in 1938. So in other words, he was holding us responsible for errors previous building owners made dating back to 1938 or before. I mean please… The whole point of our rehabbing the building is to bring it up to code and get a C of O. How can inaccuracies on the old I-Cards matter when the point of the exercise is to make them obsolete by getting a C of O?

Next time Dan and I will go to the plan review to prove the point that we’re not some nefarious slumlord trying to build a crappy substandard building. We’re just regular guys. Plus, with the enormous workload that DOB is under right now I just don’t understand how it’s productive for them to keep having us come back over and over again for stupid little things.

Now imagine if we were trying to purchase the place with a rehab loan and needed to get approved plans to close the loan. Obstructions like this can really hamper redevelopment of blighted buildings - for no good reason because they can tank deals. And it’s the reason why it can take FOREVER to close when the buyer needs financing to purchase. I’m sure more than a few deals have gone bad because DOB took too long and the contracts expired.

Our place is a 5 story townhouse that’s a narrow(ish) 15′ in width. It’s attached to sibling townhouse to the east (to the left as you look at the front of the building), but there’s an alleyway to the west between it and the apartment building next to it. The windows look off center because one sidewall is shared (and hence our portion of that wall is narrower which throws off the symmetry).

We’re still working on the window situation. What’s drawn is a casement window over a fixed pane transom. We need to do some measurements this weekend, but it may turn out that only double hung windows fit the current window openings since they’re wider than 3 feet. If we’re going to do casements in the front we have to make sure they’re in before the block is landmarked - apparently there are people who want to do it and there’s even a meeting about it tonight. Landmarking will help the value, but restrict what we can do in terms of development including what windows we can put on the front façade. Just for reference, the window next to the front door is huge - 4 1/2′ wide by 7 1/2′ tall! The window next to the door in the back (parlor floor) is 3 1/2′ wide by 8′ tall. We’ll may have to narrow the back windows to 3′ since that’s the maximum width for casement windows before you get into expensive custom “architectural” windows. We could also do double hung windows back there, but I’d really rather have casements.

The back side is south facing, so tons of light. The front faces north.

One thing that we loved as we were looking at townhouses was the quality of the light as you went up in the building and got light from the skylight. We’re not actually doing a skylight, instead we’re doing a bulkhead with south facing windows - just as you see in a lot of European factories. This should improve the quality of the light since it will reduce the light at noon in the summer when the sun is high in the sky, and increase the light in the winter when the sun is lower on the horizon. We’re devoting an bigger area than normal to the stairs and wrapping them around a “light well” which will bring the wonderful light down deeper into the building.

As you can see in the section view the house is basically a 6 bedroom owner’s unit over a 1 bedroom rental unit that has “accessory space” in the cellar. It may seem odd to have a 6 bedroom place in Manhattan, but if you think about a family with three kids - that’s three bedrooms for the kids + a master bedroom for the parents + a home office + a playroom/lounge for the kids. Even at 2 kids it makes sense - then they’d have a spare bedroom for guests.

Most townhouses are 4 floor buildings. We’re lucky to have a 5th floor. Dan’s a sculptor who’s never had enough space to do his work. One of our objectives in getting a townhouse was to give him space to do his art in a place where he could make as much noise as he wanted to (apartment buildings have lots of rules about noise). Initially he thought he’d take the cellar for art, but when this building had a 5th floor we decided to give it all to him for his art. In the back he’ll have a “dirty studio” which can get as messy as he wants. In the front will be his “clean studio”, and gallery space (if he can get people to walk up all those flights to look at the art). The dirty studio faces south so it will have tons of light and the gallery will get flooded with light from the bulkhead windows. However, FDNY may make us put a wall up between the stairs and the studio since it’s a bit of a fire hazard to have an open room at the top of a stairwell since fire spreads vertically. If that happens we’ll put a big window in the wall. In the middle will be a “utility room” that can easily be converted to another bathroom. It will have a slop sink, a small kitchenette, and some storage. The ceiling height on this floor will go gradually up and taper with the slope of the roof. In the back it will probably be about 8′, and in the front more like 9′.

One floor down will be my office. The fact that I’ve been self-employed for 9 years now (and for 3 years in the early 90s) is another reason why we needed more space. I need a proper office and that’s what will be in the front of the 3rd floor. Any street noise there might be won’t bother the office, unlike the guest bedroom which we’ve put in the back of the building. In the middle is a bathroom with an attached laundry room with a stacked washer/dryer. There will be exposed brick along the wall with the hallway. The other three walls will be insulated and sheetrocked since they’re exposed exterior walls. The ceilings are a nice 9′ high on this floor.

The next floor down is the floor just over the parlor and is traditionally called the “master/mistress floor” because the husband would have a bedroom in the front, and the wife a bedroom in rear and in the middle would be connecting dressing rooms. That let each spouse have a separate bedroom, but let them discretely go between the rooms as they desired.

We’ll have our master bedroom in the rear and a 2nd guest bedroom / den in the front. Since there wasn’t room for a second bathroom on the floor we’re putting in a pocket door so we can share our master bathroom if we have a lot of guests. The bathroom is smaller than some might want, but it’s plenty big for us. We opted to have a bigger master bedroom and a smaller master bath. I should mention that each of the bedrooms has about 10′ of closets - which we’ll really enjoy. There is a wood burning fireplace shown on the plans. It doesn’t use the existing chimney (which is on the opposite wall). It was just easier to put in a new fireplace and a new chimney. However, chances are the fireplaces will get cut due to a tight budget. But they’re something that can be done almost as easily at a later date.  The ceilings are a whopping 10′ on this floor.

The parlor floor is always the most grand floor in a townhouse. Ours has 10 1/2′ ceilings, though we’re considering raising the floor 6″ (which would lower the ceiling height) to give more ceiling height in the apartment on the floor below. Historically the kitchens were a floor below and they had servants that would bring the food up. There would have been a sitting room in the front, a dining room in the middle and a living room in the rear. In most modern layouts the living room is in the front, the kitchen in the rear and the dining room in the middle. We’re changing that around and putting the kitchen in the front because we want the living room in the rear where it’s quieter, more private, and more connected to the living space in the back yard. Ultimately we’re going for an open concept loft-like space on this floor. When you come in the front door we want an unobstructed view to the back.

One of the objectives in buying a townhouse was to have a back yard, so there are stairs going down so we have use of the back yard. We could have put in another rental unit on the parlor floor pretty easily and made it into a 3 family, but then the only outside space we would have had would have been the roof deck. The back yard isn’t huge - just 15′ x 26′ (390 sq. ft.) but it’ll still be really nice to have it.

It was tricky fitting a bathroom on this floor. The thing is you don’t want people using a bathroom next to where you’re making food, and you don’t want to think about someone else using the bathroom when you’re in the living room, and you definitely don’t want it to be an issue when you’re eating. The best solution was to tuck it under the stairs and put a privacy screen between it and what will be the dining area. We’ll just have the rule that if you need to use the bathroom during dinner you need to go and use one of the bathrooms on the upper floors.

The rental unit will help carry the cost of the (rather large) mortgage we have to get on the place. So it’s important that we have a nice rental apartment so it will rent quickly and for a good price. We’re including 1/2 of the cellar in the rental as a “accessory space” (see floor plan below). You’re not legally allowed to have a bedroom that’s fully below grade, but renters can use it as a media room, artist studio or home office. There will be about 725 sq. ft. on the main ground floor and another 225 or so in the cellar - so it will be over 1,050 sq. ft. The tenant will have access to the back yard, but we want the back yard to primarily be ours. So how much they’re allowed to use it will depend on how we get along with the tenant and how much we find ourselves using it. Ceiling height will be at least 8′. We’re thinking about raising the floor above and taking 6″ from the parlor level and lowering the floor in the rental 6″ in the living/kitchen area. Those two things would give 9′ ceilings in much of the rental and over 8′ ceilings elsewhere.

The one odd part about the building is that there are two entrances under the stoop. There’s a 3′ wide staircase down into the cellar, and a 2′ entrance to the ground floor. The 2′ entrance is not up to code and we doubt we can get it grandfathered, so we’re thinking we’ll need to make what was once the window into the legal door. The tenant can use either, but we’ll put french doors on the legal door so it can read visually as either a door or a window.

We have a “C2-4″ commercial overlay on the property which means we can use the ground floor (and even the parlor floor) for commercial purposes. In regular economic times a commercial tenant would be better since they’d probably pay as much or more in rent and only be there during the day. We’ve done the layout so if you take out the kitchen it’s a viable office space or small store, hair salon, etc. However, we won’t be trying to get a commercial use specified in the C of O. We’re amending plans for 2 family building the prior owner got approved. If we went the commercial route it would cost us a lot more money. Down the road we can think about changing that - but not now.

Here you see how the tenant gets half of the cellar. There’s a mechanical room in the center and storage for us in the front. The townhouse is unique in having a “vault” under the “front yard”. Usually the utilities are brought in under the stoop, but since there are stairs under the stoop they created a little stone walled room with a rustic arched brick ceiling (that’s having problems). It’ll make a wonderful little wine cellar or dungeon - depending on your proclivities

So there you have it - top to bottom… Hopefully in a year we’ll be living in it!

Here’s one picture looking back to front in the cellar…

And we climbed up a ladder, through some rickety floor joists and into the back yard for the first time. It was pretty much what we could see from 122nd Street though we saw the bottom floor for the first time. I can’t believe some moron cut a huge hole in the brick wall to put an air conditioner in. There isn’t even a steel lintel to hold up the weight of the brick above. Needless to say that’s gotta be patched. And there’s about 1 foot of construction debris all over the back yard which will need to be removed. Unfortunately masonry debris tends to be basic and plants like acidic soil, so once that’s out and cleaned up we’ll need to bring in a lot of fresh topsoil and wood chips to get the soil back to being acidic. There was very nice light in the back yard - quite sunny…

The yard felt a little narrower than I was hoping for, but I’m still going to be very happy to have a back yard. Just need a good privacy fence… I haven’t been able to really garden in over 20 years… Should be fun!

One thing that doesn’t look so glamorous now but will be glamorous in the future is the size of the windows. Just on the ground floor (in the future basement rental unit) that window is nearly 7 feet tall. One floor up, on the parlor floor (in our future living room) those are 8 foot windows (One will become a door). And one more level up on the master/mistress level, in what will be our master bedroom, there are 7 1/2 foot high windows. That’s the south wall, so we’re going to have a crazy amount of light… Possibly too much light.

We’ve been looking at townhouses in Harlem for about a year now and saw at least 30 different places (not including drive-bys). At first I was only interested in Hamilton Heights and Sugar Hill (aka “West Harlem”) which would have had us near the A, B, C, and D trains at 145th Street. Being two stops from 59th Street (on the A and D) seemed like it would be great. The nice part about Hamilton Heights / Sugar Hill is how stable the area encompassed by the historic district is. It really is lovely, but once you get outside of the historic district it’s hit-or-miss. The bottom line was that there was  nothing available in our price range on a block we wanted to live on. I’ll be doing blog posts in the near future on the various places we looked at and the reasons why they didn’t work out…

I really didn’t know that much about Central Harlem, but as Hamilton Heights & Sugar Hill started drying up we started looking at places further south and east. Strivers’ Row is stunning, but it wasn’t quite in our price range and the subway access was a bit bleak. Strivers’ Row townhouses do have garages, but that doesn’t help the people we want to visit us and work for us. The other issue in Central Harlem were the rather large and ugly housing projects that were built in the 1950s. I just refused to live in a place where I’d have to walk past something like that all the time. Other places were on the 2/3 train and while that was OK, it wasn’t as good as being on the A, B, C, D.

In early October our (wonderful) broker, Maria McCallister of Barak Realty, suggested we look at 168 West 123rd Street. Up to that point I had found most of the places we looked at. I’m not quite sure why I kept skipping over that particular listing, but (obviously) I’m quite happy she suggested it. As I went over the details of the property I realized the location was pretty incredible. It wasn’t near any big housing projects and it was within easy walking distance of the 2, 3, A, B, C and D trains. And since this was Central Harlem it was just 1 stop from 59th Street on the A & D trains. And the 2/3 gives us great access to the Upper West Side.

The building had the critical “certificate of no harassment” that you need to convert the building to 2 family. There is public housing close to our place, but it’s the type of building that you don’t know is public housing unless someone tells you or you’re particularly well-versed in the tell-tale signs. I knew the townhouse was one of a group of townhouses that were all being sold by the same owner - TPE Townhouses Harlem. At the time I didn’t know much about TPE or the story behind those particular townhouses. In the coming months I’d learn a lot more about them than I ever wanted to…

When we looked at the building we realized it was a total shell. There were no floors, no windows, not much of anything - just 4 walls, a leaky roof, and some rotting floor joists. It was sorta cool - you walked down into the cellar and looked up 60 feet to the roof. It was somehow very peaceful and had a strange beauty about it. Here’s a picture of the interior - it’s the view looking up. The timber you see are old floor joists (they happen to be some of the better, less rotted ones)…

As you can see, there are no “original details” to preserve. In other places there may be plaster walls, or original tile work, or old fireplaces. While we would have been game to take on a project with original details, they do create a bit of a problem since you have to do the construction somewhat surgically in order to preserve them, which will increase cost somewhat. None of that is necessary here. It also gives us a completely blank slate to construct whatever we want (and can afford).

The good part is that people with total shells are more realistic about the value of their place than other people are. Finding realistic sellers was one of the many problems we encountered in our search. Most owners just didn’t (want to) realize how far the values of their places had fallen since the height two years before. The reason we bought was because values were down about 65% from their high in 2007. That’s a hard pill to swallow for owners. Estates were some of the only people who were being realistic.

Another seller that was being pretty realistic was TPE Townhouses Harlem. They had purchased 11 townhouse shells in 2004 - 2005. They were all townhouses that had been involved in mortgage fraud starting in the early ’90s. Unbelievably the mortgage fraud was perpetuated by churches who typically would buy townhouses at inflated prices from accomplices and then take out the maximum federally-insured mortgages which they would promptly never pay. The church involved in the TPE Townhouses was Beulah Church Of God In Christ Jesus. I do not know the particular details of the Beulah case - just how it turned out. Based on how it turned out there’s a very good chance Beulah didn’t actually commit the fraud, but again - I don’t know. In some of the cases people would forge documents pretending to be the churches so the churches were involved but not guilty of any wrong doing. I do know there was a court decision in 2002 that determined that Beulah was the actual owner of the properties. TPE bought our particular townhouse from Beulah in 2004 for $1.13M.

TPE then seems to have wasted the next three years of opportunity. They could have developed and sold the properties at the height of the market in 2007 for a huge profit. In 2005 they took out a blanket mortgage on 11 townhouses for a total of $14.3M. They’ve developed the two most valuable buildings that are over on Frederick Douglass Blvd (8th Avenue) in the heart of “SoHa” (South Harlem - the new and upcoming area in Harlem that’s been recently gentrified), but they only did that development recently. The other 9 townhouses they decided to sell just before the market crashed.

TPE put our place on the market in July of 2008 for $1.1M. In November they lowered it to $995K. In March of 2009 they lowered it to $895K and a week later reduced it again to $795K where it stayed for quite a while. We saw the place for the first time on 10/15 and put in an admittedly low-ball offer of $450K the next day. It was rejected and we were told our offer “needed to start with a 5″. Almost 3 weeks later, on 11/5, we came back with an offer of $500K. We then continued to take our time negotiating the price because some other properties came up that we were interested in. On 11/13 they reduced the price $100K to $695K most likely trying to see if anyone else would come in with a higher bid. At this point we gave our broker a ceiling price that we couldn’t go over and told her to see what she could do. By this point in our relationship with Maria we knew she was very good at negotiating price and we trusted her. After a few rounds of negotiation, the day after Thanksgiving (11/27) we got the call that the seller accepted a price of $530K. (That’s less than half what they paid for it in 2004 and what they listed it for a year an a half before).

We were thinking that since it was technically an all cash deal we might close before the end of the year. Boy, were we wrong! First things were slowed down by TPE telling their lawyers to put as little time into the closing as possible to reduce costs. I should mention that TPE is Tahl Propp Equities which is a big Harlem landlord that seems to own over 100 buildings in Harlem alone as well as some fairly large office buildings in Midtown. Tahl comes from a well-established NY real estate family. Propp was one of Donald Trump’s lawyers at one point. This sale was pretty insignificant to their overall operations.

Then we hit a wall with title issues. Given the sordid legal history of the building our lawyer insisted in using his own title agent and insurance company - not the one TPE was insisting we use. In fact, they wouldn’t even go into contract unless we either settled the title insurance issue or used their title company. So we waited. In a hotter market not being in contract would have been dangerous. But in this particular case we were pretty safe. It wasn’t in the best interest of the seller or the seller’s broker to get another offer on the place. They still have about a half dozen similar properties to sell. It’s much better that they make two sales than one at a slightly higher price.

It wasn’t until early February that the title issues got settled. The seller’s title company was actually a pretty good company so now we have two big, solid title companies that think the building is OK, which will help when we go to sell. We signed the contract during the (first) big snowstorm on 2/10 and the seller’s signed a week later on 2/18 and we closed yesterday, 3/3.

The closing was actually a bit up in the air there for a little while. Apparently the seller’s bank was giving them difficulty about it. Remember, they initially had a $14.3M mortgage covering 11 buildings. They’ve developed two of the buildings, and sold maybe half the others ones. It makes me wonder how well that loan is collateralized these days… I know our final payment went 100% to the bank (The Community Preservation Corp). I’m guessing a fair amount of the deposit went to the bank as well.

So now we’re working on plans with our architect. More on that soon…

Just some basic info on the building - It’s 15 feet wide, 5 stories tall (most are 4 stories). The usable interior space will be about 13 feet in width. It’s longer than most townhouses - 58 feet. That means we can have decent sized bedrooms of 200+ sq. ft. The ground floor and part of the cellar will be a rental unit (residential or commercial) which will help offset the cost of the mortgage.

Here are some pictures of the front and back of the building. The big window on the parlor level is nearly 8 feet tall and 4 feet wide! The front of the building faces north. You can see in the picture how there’s an alleyway between us and the apartment building to the right. This will be helpful since we can punch holes in the wall and have windows in the bathrooms, and vents for the kitchen range hoods.

The back of the building will be incredibly sunny since it faces south. Some of the windows you see are about 7 feet high and 3 feet wide - so the rooms on the back of the building will be incredibly sunny. Obviously the entire back wall has to be resurfaced and the brick repointed.

It’s a huge project, but it’ll be fun and the end result will be pretty spectacular. And no, we’re not doing the work ourselves. Everyone seems to ask that but it’s an absurd question… Just monitoring the work and choosing finishing materials will require an incredible amount of time.