| Bedford Corners NY Weekly Real Estate Report | 11/25/2013 | |
| Homes for sale | 39 | |
| Median Ask Price | $1,465,000.00 | |
| Low Price | $495,000.00 | |
| High Price | $12,000,000.00 | |
| Average Size | 5059 | |
| Average Price/foot | $467.00 | |
| Average DOM | 194 | |
| Average Ask Price | $2,614,154.00 | |
Although we are similar in many ways, my business partner and I tend to disagree when it comes to technology. I’m an Apple gal to my core (no pun intended), and Kate is an Android fan.
Earlier this year when we were both looking at buying new phones, I fought for her to get an iPhone, as I thought collaboration between the two of us would be easier if we both used the iOS system.
But being as stubborn as we both are, she ended up with a Samsung Galaxy S4 and I upgraded to the iPhone 5. After some research we found there are actually many apps and programs that work extremely well cross-platform.
Here are some of the ones we use to help us stay synced and always up-to-date with our business: Contact management: Ixact Contact We tried other contact management programs, but this is by far the most simple, yet powerful, one that we’ve tried.
At $34.95 per month, it’s not cheap, but it’s a huge time-saver.
We are able to easily sync contacts, reminders and appointments from our Android and iOS devices to Ixact. If Kate books an appointment with a client, on her phone or through the Ixact dashboard, it is automatically synced to my phone and vice versa.
– See more at: http://www.inman.com/next/viber-splitwise-among-cross-platform-apps-that-provide-structure-to-real-estate-partnerships/#sthash.858Iag78.dpuf
thousand square feet of blank space might feel intimidating to some, but this apartment’s empty walls and cookie-cutter materials turned out to be a dream come true for Ariane Bartosh. The Los Angeles designer and painter used the space as a blank canvas on which to showcase her love of color, pattern and texture. Now hand-drawn patterns and vintage wallpaper adorn the walls and colorful, quirky furniture fills the apartment with unmistakable personality.
Houzz at a Glance Who lives here: Ariane Bartosh Location: Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles Size: 1,200 square feet; 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom Budget: $35,000, including labor, furniture and materials
Architectural Digest has long been a shiny toy filled with beautiful things, from eclectic Hamptons “farm” houses and slick fashion-y penthouses to Spanish villas overhauled by presidential decorators and Italian castles overhauled by, well, Martyn Lawrence Bullard. All exemplary interior design jobs, all rich people’s renovations projects. For the rest of us, though, the magazine features can very well be read like a primer in how to get sued by one’s landlord—unless, of course, one’s landlord is cool with “tearing down that bitch of a bearing wall” or “completely reconstructing every wall.” Below, a lesson in what not to do with a rental home, courtesy of Arch Digest:
Photo by Thomas Loof/Architectural Digest
13. ↑ “In the face of runaway extravagance, she addresses her designer’s concern over a blocked view with an imperious directive: ‘Tear down that bitch of a bearing wall and put a window where it ought to be!’ [Link]
12. Despite the potential nightmare of redistributing the column’s load, his response was categorical: Take it down.” [Link]
11. “Sheltered beneath a vibrantly gabled slate roof, the home has the same footprint as the original, but the amount of living space was dramatically expanded after the interior was reconfigured.” [Link]
10. “Ceilings were raised to ten and a half feet, as Candice requested, revealing awkwardly placed structural beams that Reger cleverly blended into handsomely configured coffers. Doors were heightened and aligned with windows, so natural light could flow deep into the rooms.” [Link]
9. “She jettisoned the living room’s 18th-century-style marble mantel in favor of a custom-made limestone replacement with an Art Moderne profile.” [Link]
8. “Len handled all of the architecture, completely reconstructing every wall and customizing every surface. Most dramatically, he dismantled the exterior walls and inserted a series of nine pairs of steel-framed glass doors that reveal the sweeping skyline and bring a metropolitan immediacy into the apartment.” [Link]
7. “By relocating the openings between rooms, circulation was enhanced.” [Link]
Photo by Luke White/Architectural Digest
6. ↑ “The designers brightened this once-gloomy space by ripping out dark paneling, painting the walls white, and installing a splendid light fixture that runs the length of the room.” [Link]
5. “Upstairs, Sultana and Croft had the task of converting two palatial salons into snug bedrooms. Their solution was to construct enclosed chambers inside each space—rooms within rooms. In the master suite, they broke up the wide expanse by building a capsule containing a bathroom in the area behind the bed.” [Link]
Photo by Scott Frances/Architectural Digest
4. ↑ “One segment of the glass wall is an immense 18 feet long by 9.5 feet tall. ‘It arrived from Canada on the last possible day we could close the street and hoist it into place with a crane,’ Harris recalls. And of course, he adds, ‘it ended up being the windiest day of the year.'” [Link]
3. “The only solution was a radical one—demolish the interiors and rebuild them from scratch, adding a level for extra space.” [Link]
2. “Fulfilling an important client directive, she combined three poky cooking and pantry areas into a single expansive kitchen. It now features two islands, green-painted cabinets (some with copper-mesh fronts), and a fluted hood. To accentuate the Spanish character, she incorporated dark-stained Douglas-fir ceiling beams, a strategy also employed in the main hallway.” [Link]
1. “Working within the existing footprint, the designer reconfigured the master suite to provide separate his-and-her studies—the latter embellished with a trellis mural by Valle.” [Link]
· All Architectural Digest coverage [Curbed National] · All Renters Week 2013 posts [Curbed National]
The Kagoshima Nanatsujima Mega Solar Power Plant, built by the electronics manufacturer Kyocera, boasts postcard views of Kagoshima Bay and Sakurajima volcano. It’s also Japan’s largest, with a capacity of 70 megawatts. That’s enough to power some 22,000 Japanese homes. The $280 million project is part of a national effort to invest in clean, renewable energy as the country continues to grapple with the fallout of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. The country’s new feed-in tariffs have made it one of the world’s fastest-growing solar markets.
This sort of sprawling solar-panel farm is hardly the most efficient form of power generation in terms of either cost or the amount of land required. Still, it makes more sense when you consider that Japan has been dealing with soaring energy prices in the wake of a disaster that threw into question its entire nuclear-power program. While solar is clearly more expensive than nuclear power, the Washington Post noted in June:
Most consumers think that sacrifice is worthwhile, and they say nuclear power has hidden cleanup and compensation costs that emerge only after an accident. Fossil fuels, meanwhile, release harmful greenhouse gases and must be imported from Australia, Russia, Indonesia and the Middle East.
In other words, this gorgeous solar plant is what happens when a country comes face-to-face with the full societal costs of more traditional power sources.
To promote the project’s beauty, Kyocera has opened it to the public, offering tours and building a circular viewing room with sweeping vistas and science exhibits. As Cnet’s Tim Hornyak notes, it isn’t the country’s first solar-themed attraction: There’s also Panasonic’s Solar Ark, which turned recalled Sanyo solar cells into a stunning display of how photovoltaics could be incorporated into a building’s design.
The United States, meanwhile, is building some impressive solar projects of its own. Brightsource’s Ivanpah plant may not be quite as aesthetically pleasing as the Kagoshima project, but at 377 megawatts it’s more than five times as powerful. And while there’s no public viewing platform, you can take a virtual tour of the Ivanpah solar power plant here.
Drains are hidden heroes in your home. If you’re lucky, you can go for years without thinking about them, but when dirty sink water suddenly won’t go away or a toilet won’t flush, they can be a major frustration. A plugged drain certainly demands attention, but fixing it is probably something you can do yourself. You’ll get faster results than calling a pro, and you’ll save money, too.
Successfully unclogging drains depends on a few simple tools and knowledge of the layout of pipes hidden in your home.
Each drain connects with horizontal pipes that meet a vertical section of the system called the “stack.” The top of the stack goes through the roof, and acts as an air vent. The horizontal pipes travel down and out of your home, taking wastewater with them. Poor drain performance can be caused by problems in either the drain side of the equation or sometimes, the vent side. Even if water is free to flow through pipes, for proper performance the water must be replaced by air drawn into the system through the rooftop vent.
Certain parts of every drain system are prone to blockage, so it pays to understand where typical trouble zones might exist before an emergency arises.
Plugged drains are most likely to occur in three specific places: curved sections of pipes called “traps” that exist underneath sinks, tubs and showers; the internal passages within a toilet; or somewhere inside the main drainpipe leading away from your home.
Before you spend a lot of time trying to unplug a sink or toilet, and regardless of where the blockage seems to be located, start with a simple check: Run some water down the other drains in your house. Do the others flow freely? If not, your trouble probably involves more than meets the eye and could actually be part of a systemic problem.
Before you try to clear what looks like a small, localized blockage, take a quick look at the big picture. You’ll either know you’re on the right track or save yourself from wasting time trying to solve the wrong problem.
Read more: http://www.motherearthnews.com/print.aspx?id={B2F98965-6F47-4F55-859A-8AB35ED9BCB2}#ixzz2kXNbAqW4
Photo via Disney Golden Oak
No longer content to merely spread its over-saturated vision of Main Street, U.S.A., across the globe, The Walt Disney Company, is trying its four-fingered, white-gloved hand at real estate development. Makes sense, because, as any American child (or childish American) will attest, the only thing better than visiting Disney World would be staying there forever. Built on a huge tract of Lake Buena Vista land adjacent to the park, the gated community of Golden Oak has been open to buyers since 2011, and, as you might expect, the details from the Wall Street Journal’s look into what the first wave of Disneyphilic homeowners have done with their places is absolutely nutso. Though most of them use their Disney World houses for vacationing, an elite few have enough devotion to this mind-colonizing megacorporation to live at the park year-round. For your horror and delight, eight fast facts about Golden Oak, as gleaned by the Journal:
8. Up to 450 homes are planned for the 980-acre parcel, but only a select few will afford a view of the famous Cinderella Castle fireworks. Since the community opened two-and-a-half years ago, nearly 100 of the community homes have been sold.
7. Owning a Golden Oaks home starts at $1.7M, while a few of the Magic Kingdom–connected McMansions have sold for over $7M.
6. Annual fees of as much as $12K cover park passes, door-to-park transportation, extended visiting hours for attractions, membership at a clubhouse with a restaurant and concierge, and, eventually, entrance to the spa and dining rooms at the Four Seasons resort expected to open in Golden Oak next summer.
5. Golden Oaks homes are especially popular with Brazilians, who can fly direct from São Paulo to Orlando.
4. Disney makes a point of overlooking trademark violations in the dwellings, many of which are decorated with references to licensed characters: Donald Duck door carvings, backlit tray ceilings in the shape of Mickey’s head, etc.
3. Devoted Disneyphiles have the option of filling their homes with tiny mouse-eared insignias known as “hidden Mickeys.” A showcase home finished earlier this year included an estimated 75.
2. When building in Golden Oak, one is limited to seven handpicked custom builders and constrained by a number of design and landscaping restrictions. Shutters must be functional. Square gutters are banned.
1. Disney has representatives in four of the seven seats on the community board. One agent reports that “when you live in there, you live and die by the rules.”
· Is There a Mouse in the House? [WSJ]
The tale of combination unit #35AB—the massive, 6,000-square-foot apartment owned by steel tycoon Leroy Schecter—at 15 Central Park West is well-documented, but it just got a little more interesting, now that its back on the market asking $70 million.
Schecter bought units A and B at 15 CPW for $18.9 million a few years back, renting out one of them to A-Rod before allowing unit A to assimilate all in its path like the terrifying, insatiable Borg, against which resistance is futile.
In August 2012, the combined Borg-unit hit the market asking an insane $95 million, where it remained unsold for almost a year, until last April, when its price decreased by $10 million. Now, after switching brokerages, its ask has been chopped yet again, settling at its current “still-absurd-but-slightly-less-insane-because-that-is-somehow-normal-in-New-York-these-days” $70 million.
Its been a rollercoaster ride, but will that $25 million pricechop be enough to sell this place? · Listing: 15 Central Park West #35AB [Brown Harris Stevens] · Leroy Schecter coverage [Curbed] · 15 Central Park West coverage [Curbed]
The commercial real estate market is sputtering back to life in the Portland metropolitan area. A number of high-profile projects that stalled during the “Great Recession” have suddenly restarted, and several other large construction projects are also just getting under way. But according to commercial real estate experts, new construction is only half the story — vacant office space in the region is rapidly filling up, foreshadowing even more construction in coming years.
Work is underway at Hassalo on Eighth Avenue, the large mixed-use project on the superblock in the Lloyd District.
“Coming out of the Great Recession, it wasn’t a pretty picture,” said Scott Weigel of CBRE, which is regarded as the world’s largest commercial real estate services firm. “There were a lot of empty office buildings. Vacancy rates were as high as 30 percent. But we’ve returned to just about normal in the last 36 months, and now it’s getting hard to find a lot of empty [office] space in many areas.”
According to Weigel, office parks that have experienced turnarounds include Kruse Way in Lake Oswego and Lincoln Center in Tigard. Before the economy collapsed, they housed many financial firms involved in the real estate business. Now they are refilling with a more diverse mix of businesses, including some from out of state.
Weigel personally brokered the deal that moved Salesforce.com into a long-vacant office tower in the Synopsys Technology Park in Hillsboro. That single deal took 115,000 square feet of office space off the market.
The biggest exception, said Weigel, is downtown Portland, which currently has about 56 floors of empty office space. Much of that occurred when numerous federal agencies moved back into the renovated Edith Green-Wendell Wyatt Federal Building. But Weigel predicts the vacant downtown space will begin filling up soon. Already, he pointed out, several technology companies from San Francisco and the Silicon Valley are looking to relocate or expand in Portland.
Check out SC Real Estate of Austin, Texas for some excellent properties.
