It Happened One Weekend: More Deposits Getting Ditched

1) Some buyers have been walking away from deposits because the apartments are losing value, but a new wave of people forfeiting the 10% or 20% are doing so because their financing stepped out for cigarettes and never returned. These buyers are out of their life savings in buildings like Chelsea Modern, Fifth on the Park and Chelsea Stratus, and in some cases, they're suing to get their deposits back from developers. ['Up in Smoke: The Deposit Vanishes']

2) Edward R. Morrison, a law professor and economist who recently testified before Congress on mortgage bailout legislation, recently paid $2.575 million for a two-family Harlem townhouse on West 121st Street (right), a whopper of a deal for the neighborhood. So where does a mortgage expert go to get financing? His employer! Columbia floated him a million bucks to get the deal done. Ah, to have tenure! [Big Deal/'An Academic Perk']

3) For those wondering how slender One Madison Park manages to rise 60 stories without ever toppling over due to high winds, here's your answer: "three enormous tubs of water on the roof function like an anvil. One holds 20,000 gallons; the other two hold 22,500 gallons each. When the wind blows in one direction, water moves the opposite way in the tubs, braking the building’s tendency to quiver." Are we crazy, or does that sound slightly terrifying? [Postings/'Beanstalk Buildings']

4) Unmarried women with income and no kids are buying more and more housing in New Jersey, and now they've been given a slightly disparaging-sounding acronym: WINKs. In the Jerz, 45 percent of all condo buyers last year were WINKs. [In the Region: New Jersey/'WINKs Make Developers Smile']

5) A couple of ballet dancers want to pack up their flats and pirouette right out of their Kensington co-op and into Manhattan. Their plan is to find a dump and renovate it to their liking to save cash, and their hunt takes them to the Upper East Side. They negotiate a 1BR on East 94th Street down to $585,000 from $695,000, but with their last place sold and their new place set to begin renovations, they're kind of homeless. [The Hunt/'A New Performance on 94th Street']