Columns

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How’s the market in Battery Park City faring right now?

It’s affected by the overall increase in vacancy rate as the rest of Manhattan and much of New York City is. Downtown has gone through such a dramatic revival with a conversion of many buildings from offices to condominiums in the last couple years that we have perhaps more inventory than other neighborhoods at the moment. So whether we’re in a good market or a softened market, we simply have more units down here than we’ve ever had.

A lot can happen in 20 years. Since 1988, New York City has changed dramatically: from the rise of Wall Street in the ’80s to its recent turbulence, from the crime cleanup of the ’90s to the tragedy of Sept. 11, to today when the Manhattan skyline is being made over by a boom of high-end construction. It seems like the city has grown up a lot these past 20 years.

In the summer of 1949, when Nicholas K. Coch was a young boy, his father took the family to pick berries in a New Hampshire forest. A forest fire had recently swept through and produced fertile ground for berry patches. Noticing that the trees were not only blackened by flames but were also broken, Coch asked his father why.

By Alison Rogers

We’ve been trying to sell our apartment ourselves and the market’s been dead. Should we hire a broker?

There are a whole bunch of real estate agents who try to get business by going to people who are selling their apartments themselves — and saying, hey, I can do a better job. The argument is that a real estate agent knows how to show your house, how to attract buyers, and how to put together a co-op board package.

By Rachel Sokol and Nick Orlando
Hello everyone! We hope your summer has been terrific thus far. The heat wave seems to have finally cooled off and the beach still looks mighty fine. Only a few weeks of summer left—make a splash and do something drastic on your few weeks of summer—July 4th may have come and gone but that doesn’t mean fireworks still can’t sparkle in your life. In the meantime, here’s some Tinsel town news.