Apartment Hunting
What Are Two-Up Two-Down Apartments?
Updated 6 days ago
Like the Manhattan Classic
Six, there is a particular floorplan jargon that is extremely
common in prewar London. It's called the Two-Up, Two-Down row
house. It refers to having no neighbors above and below you, but
almost always neighbors on your two sides. If you are lucky enough
to have the…
Fukubukuro - Japanese Fortune Bags and Rental Apartments
Updated 1 week ago
Hello and Happy New Year from Tokyo, Japan. The culture here
certainly has some interesting concepts not found elsewhere in the
world. We previously discussed the ancient " Repaired With Gold" technique, hat tip to Jason
Friedman.
New Year Fortune Bags
Around New Years, shops small and large…
How Will Global Warming Impact Real Estate Prices?
Updated 1 week ago
Today, a VC named Fred Wilson discussed 10 bold predictions for
the next decade on his well-named blog, avc.com. He is the same guy
who Paul Graham once begged
to invest in Brian Chesky's Airbnb, but famously declined,
pre-Series A and then also in later
rounds. However, he got a whole bunch of…
Accuracy Deposit to Reactivate Suspended Agents
Updated 2 weeks ago
After an agent has repeatedly violated our advertising policies,
we will suspend the account and remove all of their listings and
credits. In our prior discussion, we prefer to suspend and ban
agents rather than apply a fine. When the problem seems firm-wide,
we will suspend the entire firm…
Craig Releases New App!
Updated 1 month ago
Speak of the devil, we just mentioned the former massive network effects from old sites,
in particular the NYC loved and hated Craigslist. Researches and
professors at the Harvard Business School have
studied the phenomenon at length - or at least they wrote a case
study about Lawrence Zhou and…
Discount Brokers: Avoiding Adverse Selection Problems
Updated 1 month ago
Yesterday we discussed one of the original discount real estate brokerage
businesses from the Dot Com 1.0 Bubble. To be fair, the
founders probably came out well - a success story from a Y
Combinator definition, because the founders "got
rich" (relative to their cohort).
But none of the…
ZipRealty: Early Pioneer turned Zombie Company?
Updated 1 month ago
Does anyone remember ZipRealty? Back in the Dotcom 1.0 era, they
were among the first widespread discount real estate brokerage
companies with a reasonably strong presence in the west coast. I
have fond memories of using their saved search features to track
listings prices through the 2004-2010…
What is Net Effective Price?
Updated 2 months ago
The Net Effective Price is the monthly rent paid by a tenant to
the landlord after factoring in free rent incentives included at
lease signing. The term is common when searching for apartments for
rent in NYC, especially during the off-peak winter season when
landlords increasingly offer rental…
Banning the Bad Brokers
Updated 2 months ago
We previously discussed why brokers are necessary in the NYC
apartment rental scene - they make deals happen and
save everyone a lot of time.
Unfortunately, some bad apples give everyone in the business a
negative reputation. Over the past few months, we have
significantly stepped up our…
Strictly Enforcing Flex Bedroom Advertising
Updated 2 months ago
The Flex bedroom concept has been around forever: converting an
extra alcove or living room into an extra bedroom using temporary
walls or dividers. Maybe thousands of years ago, cavemen would roll
large home large boulders, turning the studio cavern into a junior
one.
Unfortunately, the…
