1) This week's Hunt Family is living in 4,000-square-foot house with a pool in Manila. That sounds nice but—whoops—now they're in Harlem with three kids and two dogs trying to find a co-op for under $700,000. They look for a little bit, but decide that they don't have enough focus and begin creating artificial guidelines to search by. The wife decides that she needs to have a view of the Chrysler Building. Okay, sure. The husband decides that they should buy a one-bedroom and rent another apartment next door for the kids (they also lowered their price range to the $400,000s at some point), leading to this fantastic quote from their broker: "I thought, this is a tall order — an apartment to buy with an adjacent apartment to rent. It had to allow for the two dogs and have Chrysler Building views." Can she do it? No. Of course not. That is a ridiculous combination of requirements. So which ones are going to have to go? The Chrysler Building views, right? It's got to be that. It's not like they're going to pay way more than their target price and have the kids all sleep in the living room of a one-bedroom just so they can have view of the Chrysl—oh, what? That's exactly what ends up happening? Well, what do you know. [The Hunt/'A Tall Order for a Small Apartment'; photo by Jeremy.Gordon]
2) Once again, people are worrying about how Hurricane Sandy and its aftermath will disrupt the Lower Manhattan real estate market, then pulling themselves together and reassuring everyone that it's going to be alright. The biggest cause for concern at the moment is the laundry list of buildings still uninhabitable due to salt water-related damages (surprisingly, mostly newer construction according to "a real estate Web site.") Also, some brokers have reportedly had sales fall through. Fredrik Eklund complains that he lost a potential buyer for Marble House, although, to be fair, no one ever really wants to buy Marble House. But really, everything's going to be okay. Probably. [Big Deal/'Downtown, the Crystal Ball Clouds Up']
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