What are the thoughts that go through my wife/ business partner’s mind as we roll into the fall 2011 NYC residential real estate market?

Mrs. Z writes, 

"The espadrilles will soon be put away and I am already donning a sweat shirt today! Each September still feels like a fresh start to me--one that I didn't even realize I was missing..That desire for freshly sharpened pencils and new notebooks (even in my ripe 30s), as well as more "adult" cravings such as new Chloe boots and chunky sweaters or knitted A-line dresses perfect with almost any boot.  As much as I love that fresh Fall feeling, as I get older, though, summer is a bit harder to let go of..that sweet corn, juicy tomatoes, peach pie from our pie lady, the smell of coppertone, bare feet in the grass, fresh flowers in our garden, Randolph's summer grassy scent, Paul's summer dishes especially the ones with burrata!, Lucien Croce Rosé, outdoor dining, Bbq visits..sigh. As the last unofficial weekend of summer comes to a close we already have 8 appt requests in and 6 voice mails from labor day alone..the end of the summer and the start of the fall real estate market. As sad as I am to see the summer go I can't help but have that crispy sweater feeling of excitement for Fall and all that it will bring......"

Check out what Mrs. Z has got cooking!

http://www.elliman.com/real-estate-agent/carolyn-zweben/3471

SOLD AND CLOSED~

  The Silk Building~

STUNNING LUXURY PENTHO-- -- USE!

$3,575,000

This quintessential Greenwich Village Penthouse is perched atop the Legendary Silk Building, a Prewar-Loft Condominium which housed the flagship Tower Records from 1983 until its recent closing making the building a widely known Icon of Contemporary Pop Culture. This striking 2 Bedroom, 3 Bath home has over 2100 interior gross square feet spaciously laid-out on three floors for ultimate privacy with a full, well-appointed Bath on each floor. Your coveted new home features dramatic 10-12’ ceilings, surround sound throughout, elegant hardwood floors stained a rich ebony, HVAC heating & air conditioning units, and over-sized windows with Sunny SW open city views. The second floor features a grandly proportioned open layout with custom chef’s kitchen with stainless steel appliances including sub-zero fridge, sleek black granite counter tops & breakfast bar, excellent storage, and opens to the dining and living rooms complete with cozy wood-burning fireplace. A floating spiral staircase leads to the Luxurious Master Suite located on the third floor and boasts a gorgeous spa-like Bath with shower, skylight, a separate lounge area, and a Lush Private Decked Roof Terrace offering gorgeous city views perfect for outdoor entertaining complete with butler’s pantry & wet-bar, irrigation system and an idyllic outdoor shower! The second generous Bedroom is tucked away on the first floor creating a private space with full Ensuite Bath with Jacuzzi tub, lovely light, and excellent storage. This Special Home is located in the Heart of Greenwich Village in the Highly Sought-after Silk Building, a 24-hour luxury doorman Condominium, built in 1908, with common roof deck, bike and storage rooms and live-in Super.

 email me for a private appointment: [email protected]

http://www.elliman.com/new-york-city/manhattan/greenwich-village/the-silk-building--14-east-4-street--unit-ph1104/14-east-4-street/nuycqsy

Living room!

Start Cooking!

The master bedroom with views of the terrace and the city~

The rental market, especially the high end market continues to be on fire in New York City.

We literally put 304 West 77^th street #1 on the market last week and it is already rented at the full asking price of $9,000 per month… That is $108,000 in rent per year.

The apartment was a 2 bath, 2.5 baths in a fabulous townhouse and was priced perfectly for this rental market.

I cannot tell you how many people wanted to see the apartment and it was amazing how quickly it rented.

So why would people want to spend $108K per year on rent instead of owning?

There are many reasons, but here are a few:

Maybe it is a new area for the people to live and they want to get a feel of the location before purchasing.

Maybe the folks have transient jobs and they don’t want to commit on a purchase.

Maybe they are bearish on the NYC sales market?

Maybe they are trying to time their purchase by renting?

The bottom line is that if history repeats itself, the rental market supersedes the sales market and this could be a good indicator on where sales volume and transaction prices go to?  

http://assets.prudentialelliman.com/NYCPhotos/retail_reports/manhattan_Q1_2011.pdf

I started The Culinary Institute of America on September 28th 1982….

I will never forget the 1st day of cooking and meeting all of my classmates.

One dude that I made an immediate connection with was Ken Shore!

He just walked up to me and started talking and talking and talking.

Needless to say, Ken is a major player in the hospitality industry, although no longer sweating in the Kitchen.

But as they say- once you get the food business in your blood, there is no turning back!

Here is Ken’ Rugelach recipe which was tweaked from his Grandmother’s recipe!

Ingredients

• Rugelach Dough
• 8oz butter – room temp
• 8oz cream cheese – room temp
• 2-¼ cups all-purpose flour
• 2 Tbsp bar sugar
• 1/8tsp salt
• 1/2tsp vanilla extract

Method

• Cream butter and cream cheese med high speed scrape down with a spatula twice
• Add vanilla mix
• Sift dry ingredients
• Add dry ingredients in two batches, mix to incorporated
• Fold out onto a flowered surface
• Kneed to combined
• Refrigerate at least an hour
• Roll out and tri fold on flour surface (like croissant dough or a business letter)
• Refrigerate at least an hour
• Cut dough into thirds and cover
• Roll out one at a time to 1/8 – ¼” thick
• Use a cake ring or mixing bowl (upside down) to cut a circle

Filling

• 2 cups Chocolate – dark
• 1 cup chopped pecans or walnuts – toasted lightly colored
• In food processor blend nuts and chocolate to make pasted and remove

(Hint… keep warm or re-warm in bowl in microwave easier to spread on dough)

Alternative filling

• Raspberry preserve
• Apricot preserve
• Chopped nuts
• Cinnamon sugar
• Assembly and Bake
• 1 egg for egg wash

Method

• Spread filling evenly on circle dough leaving 1-2” filling free boarder outer circle and 1” middle of circle (so easy to roll dough)
• Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar with a light even amount for seasoning
• Cut circle (from above) into 3” triangle (just like you would cut a pizza) half and thirds etc.
• Roll each triangle like a croissant
• Sprinkle top with cinnamon sugar (fully coat)
• Brush egg wash on top of each rugelach
• I use parchment paper to bake
• Bake 350 degrees until lightly brown
• Remove from pan when cool

By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY

Published: January 3, 2011

Sage for smudging!

Are you a good Witch or a Bad Witch?

I always knew Mrs.Z was a good Witch! Even the NY Times says so!!!

The Appraisal

Before Move-In Day, Evicting

the Old Auras

Judith Wendell, left, a feng shui expert, was hired by Ziporah Reich to improve the energy in her apartment. Since worries about the future or negative vibes from the past are two things New Yorkers cannot complain to management about, a very tiny industry has evolved to fill these needs.

Ziporah Reich sat cross-legged on her living room floor. As Judith Wendell chanted and burned incense that seeped into every crevice of the apartment, Ms. Reich meditated over an altar that included bowls of water with candles and wildflowers and a stack of brightly colored papers on which she wrote her wishes: finding her soul mate, starting a family and having more success in her career.

“I want to bring a positive energy that’s not tied to anything specific and also get rid of the energy of the previous owner,” Ms. Reich said.

Ms. Reich is a well-traveled 38-year-old lawyer. Ms. Wendell is a well-traveled 59-year-old feng shui expert, whose talents include the process of smudging.

The New York real estate industry has been a job machine for thousands of brokers, lawyers, managers, architects, engineers and tradesmen. But since worries about the future or negative vibes from the past are two things New Yorkers cannot complain to management about, a very tiny industry of smudgers — or “space clearers,” the term Ms. Wendell prefers — has evolved to fill these needs.

Smudging, predictably, is a vastly unregulated world with little organization. It can include a real estate broker adopting the Native American tradition of burning sage in an apartment in preparation for the first open house. It can also extend to include the afternoon-long space clearings that Ms. Wendell does with clients, for which she charges $900 to $1,800. Ms. Wendell said that her fees were driven less by apartment size than by “what’s in the space energetically.”

Ms. Reich said she had always been interested in good-luck rituals. While growing up in Brooklyn, she watched how neighbors and friends brought bread and salt as housewarming gifts, a Jewish tradition. While living in Japan, she noticed that car dealers blessed cars before buyers started driving them.

She also wanted to wipe out memories of the delays and construction problems she had experienced while renovating her compact one-bedroom apartment on West 105th Street. Even though she closed more than a year ago, she moved in only recently and still has most of the furniture in storage.

“I definitely think things could have gone smoother,” she said. “I feel like I could have better luck.”

That is why she hired Ms. Wendell. The self-described “child of the ’70s” grew up in a Jewish family in Bayside and discovered spirituality, she said, while living in San Francisco. She calls her influences as varied as the Maharishi’s visit to the United States and a 1995 trip to Bali and Borneo. She also has professional training in feng shui and design. Ms. Wendell said that while she expected her business to drop in the recession, it actually rose because people wanted to improve the feelings in their current homes, or the homes they were moving into that perhaps people had given up.

“I thought my business would go down because it’s not a necessity what I do,” Ms. Wendell said. “But when people are trying to create some security for themselves, this is one way to do it. This is part of their lives they have control over.”

In 2008, Barbara Wagner, a real estate publicist, and her husband, Steve, a lawyer, hired Ms. Wendell when they took possession of an apartment they had been renting to an aunt who died there. They wanted to remove any lingering aura from her death. They were renovating, but they were on a budget and economized by using Ikea cabinets in the kitchen so they would have enough left over for the smudging. But Ms. Wagner said it was worth it to spend the money on her hopes for the future.

“A lot of it really may be in my head,” Ms. Wagner said. “But it was a good start to an apartment we had known for years.”

Carolyn Zweben, a Prudential Douglas Elliman broker, has been a do-it-yourself smudger since 2004, casting out negative vibes from apartments she was trying to sell. In particular, she said, buyers could sense the tension when there had been a divorce in the apartment.

While science has yet to get around to evaluating the effectiveness of smudging, Ms. Zweben, who says she knows other brokers who smudge, can offer anecdotes like this one: One woman hired her to sell her apartment because she was disappointed she had not found love there. Ms. Zweben smudged the apartment and found a buyer. The buyer moved in, quickly fell in love with her neighbor and eventually got married.

And to those who would prefer to ridicule, she and other smudging converts have this to say: It can’t hurt.

She even smudged an apartment that she and her husband, Paul Zweben, also a broker, bought and combined with the one they owned directly above. She said that before they bought it, a curmudgeonly older couple lived there who complained that they made noise. She wanted to smudge out the bad memories of those neighbors.

“Now I don’t feel anything negative from them,” Ms. Zweben said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/04/nyregion/04appraisal.html?_r=1

Serena Lee, a twitter friend had posted a tweet about her Hazel Nutella Mission Fig Cookies and I started to salivate! I begged and begged her to send me the recipe and she finally did!

Follow Serena on twitter : @nycserena

Hazel Nutella Mission Fig Cookies

By Serena Lee

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cup sifted organic wheat pastry flour
• 1 1/2 cup organic all purpose flour
• 1 cup finely chopped hazelnuts ( I throw it in the food processor for a few pulses)
• 1 cup dried mission figs stems removed & cut up (I like to use the kitchen shears & slice them vertically into rings so you can see the seeds)
• 1 cup butter
• 3/4 cup organic brown sugar
• 3/4 cup organic pure cane sugar
• 1/2 cup Nutella
• 2 eggs
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon sea or kosher salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda

Directions

1. In a large mixing bowl, cream together the butter, pure cane & brown sugar. Gradually add in the vanilla extract, eggs & Nutella. Then slowly add the wheat flour, all-purpose flour, salt & baking soda.
2. Fold in the hazelnuts & figs. If the dough is too runny, just add some more flour a tablespoon at a time until dough is workable.
3. Refrigerate for at least an hour before baking. I usually let them rest overnight in the fridge & the results are perfectly crispy on the outside~soft inside cookies.
4. Grease cookie sheets & bake for 8-10 minutes at 350 degrees.
5. Eat them until they’re all gone :~)

How to sell your imperfect apartment

If you live in NYC- you have to follow the amazing articles and tips in:

www.Brickunderground.com

Here is a post from today:)

No light? No problem.  The Zweben Group has your back.

Is your place too far from the subway? Dark as a crypt? In a building with bed bugs? Cheer up. No apartment is perfect, especially in the eyes of a potential buyer.  And while you can't hide it, you can try to put it all in perspective.

"We can often move things along by reminding buyers that New York City real estate is by definition an exercise in compromise, and that every flaw, in theory at least, is reflected in a lower price," says Carolyn Zweben, a real estate broker with The Zweben Group at Prudential Douglas Elliman. "That's how you get past the fixation on the one or two things that are 'wrong' to an appreciation of everything that's right."

Here's how to address some less sell-worthy aspects of your apartment:

• Too far from the subway: If you have priced your apartment correctly, the price should make up in affordability what the apartment lacks in convenience.  And those three blocks are great exercise.
• Higher-than-average monthly charges: Unusually high monthly charges are usually offset by a below-market asking price.   That means more apartment for less money up front, which can appeal especially to cash-poor buyers. Higher maintenance could also mean higher tax deductibility, which may soften the blow.
• No light: Because a comparable apartment with good light can trade for as much as 20-30 percent more, this is another opportunity for a buyer to get more apartment for less money.  Stage your apartment with an abundance of indoor light sources and consider bringing in a lighting consultant to suggest other ideas that you can pass along to buyers, like installing light boxes on the floor behind the furniture. Staining the floors a lighter shade also helps as well as putting lighter colors on the wall.
• Bed bugs: Bed bugs are a fact of life in New York City now, and if your co-op apartment or building has had a bed bug infestation within the past year, buyers now have a right know.    Make sure you and your broker are familiar with the steps that have been taken and the status of the infestation.  Offer to let the buyer inspect your apartment, and consider setting up an escrow account to offset future bed bug extermination costs if the apartment becomes infested within the next six months to a year. If you are aware of any bug issue in your building, alert the board so that the issue can be taken care of immediately. Most buyers understand these things happen in New York so the KEY is to know that that building is handling the issue asap.  As long as it is being taken care of properly, buyers are usually okay with it.
• Great apartment, rundown building: This fact should be reflected in the price.  Besides getting more apartment for less money, remind the buyers that they can run for the board and make some changes that will enhance the value of their investment along with their quality of life.
• A kitchen/bath in dire need of renovation: Remind the buyers that if the kitchen or bath were perfect, it would be reflected in the price of the apartment.   Then give them a range of what the work might be expected to cost, and invite them to bring a contractor to check it out.

For more info or to hook up with one of the city's more awesome real estate teams, contact:

The Zweben Group at Prudential Douglas Elliman

"We Make It Happen!"