$600,000 (plus $1200 per month maintenance) -- to be way up there at 148th street in Harlem? Why on earth didn't they look in Downtown jersey City?

Quote:

"Salt & Pepper shakers" -- there is a joke in there somewhere.

They already dress alike -- maybe she can just get them hats -- one with one dot -- one with three.

Lively Neighborhood Essential

New York Times
By JOYCE COHEN
March 17, 2011



TEDDY PHILLIPS and Paul Morejon believe in the try-before-you-buy philosophy. They moved often and, each time, learned something about what was important to them in a home.

The household of Teddy Phillips, left, and Paul Morejon was about to expand.

A recently updated, free app offering in-depth property search tools and mobile features to help you navigate the real estate market.


The verdict on a West 179th Street place: too quiet a neighborhood.

The couple met in 1997 in Los Angeles as volunteers for Project Angel Food, which delivers meals to the homebound, and moved to New York the following year. Mr. Phillips, who is from Sunnyvale, Calif., and Mr. Morejon, who grew up in a Harlem tenement, first lived in Manhattan sublets and then rented a small one-bedroom above a pizza place on First Avenue near Stuyvesant Town. They enjoyed the neighborhood but not the noise, so they moved to a two-bedroom garden duplex in a small Brooklyn Heights town house.

Mr. Phillips?s mother, Tonia Phillips, visited often from California, staying several weeks at a time.

When the couple lived in a doorman building, ?she would make friends with the doormen and chat with them in the lobby,? Mr. Phillips said. She befriended the pizza guys, the bodega clerks, the people at the cleaners. ?Sometimes I wouldn?t know them,? Mr. Phillips said, ?but they would ask after my mom.?

Ms. Phillips especially enjoyed the front stoop of the town house. ?She came to life,? Mr. Morejon said. ?She was the neighborhood grandma.?

When that building was sold, the couple moved to Washington Heights. By now, they were thinking seriously about buying a place. But first, as was their policy, they had to try out the neighborhood, so they rented a big one-bedroom on Haven Avenue. Their apartment, for $1,725 a month, was five flights up.

Ms. Phillips, a retired pharmacy technician, rarely visited them there. When she did, she had to take a break from climbing on the third floor. She mostly stayed inside because there were few places to go ? just one delicatessen.

About three years ago, the couple began hunting for a home. Their price range started in the mid $500,000s. They invited Ms. Phillips, who is awaiting a liver transplant, to live with them.

They also planned to adopt a child someday, so they needed a three-bedroom home with two bathrooms and a layout where ?Mom had her space on one side of the apartment and we had ours on the other,? Mr. Phillips said.

So whenever they looked at a place, they would test the acoustics by splitting up, one going into a bedroom and calling the other?s name. That way, ?we would know if it was private enough,? Mr. Morejon said. ?We wanted to make sure the noise didn?t travel across the living room.?

Other requirements included few or no stairs, and a lobby attendant in case of an emergency.

Ms. Phillips requested that she be given the master bedroom, plus a bath with a whirlpool tub. She wanted a formal dining room, too. ?I put my two cents in,? she said. ?They ignored it.?

The only place in Washington Heights that interested the couple was a three-bedroom in a prewar co-op building near the George Washington Bridge. It had gone on the market at $438,000 and, after renovation, returned at $540,000. But ultimately, they decided against Washington Heights. The neighborhood was too residential, with few diversions for Ms. Phillips. It could have been cleaner: Some dog-walkers weren?t picking up after their pets. Their neighbor?s apartment was burglarized, and then so was theirs. That was the clincher. By now, their rent was $1,850 a month.

They decided to look in Jersey City, where Mr. Morejon was certain they would get more for their money. He was especially enticed by the oversize spaces at Canco Lofts. (The other day, a three-bedroom duplex with more than 1,500 square feet of space was priced at $545,000.)

But the location, near highways and industrial buildings, was remote. The PATH train was a shuttle ride away. ?I like to be at work within 30 minutes,? said Mr. Phillips, a graduate of California State University, Northridge, who works in Midtown West for Coach, the leather goods company. ?Otherwise, it changes my personality. I knew the commute would begin to grate for Paul.? Mr. Morejon, a graduate of the State University of New York at Binghamton, is a Web development manager for a pension provider; his office is in Midtown East.

Again, it occurred to them that the area would be less than ideal for Ms. Phillips. ?It wasn?t a neighborhood,? Mr. Morejon said. ?It was a compound approach to that all-amenities building.? A nice apartment wasn?t enough. ?I had this image of my mom being Rapunzel locked in this tower while we were at work all day, and being somewhat lonely,? Mr. Phillips said.

They felt the same about Clermont Cove condominiums at 1 Greene Street, which had similar prices for ?gloriously large? spaces, Mr. Morejon said. ?My frugality was driving a lot of what we were looking at.?
Enlarge This Image

Tina Fineberg for The New York Times
Bradhurst Court on West 145th Street in Harlem came close.

A recently updated, free app offering in-depth property search tools and mobile features to help you navigate the real estate market.

The Ellington on the Park in Harlem had a layout that was just right.

Last year, they realized that three-bedrooms in Harlem were within reach. ?I was so focused on Jersey City that I wasn?t doing searches in Manhattan,? said Mr. Morejon, who saw no need to test-drive his old neighborhood.


A three-bedroom duplex at Bradhurst Court on West 145th Street had a sufficiently private layout, plus a terrace. The co-op was listed at $599,000, with monthly maintenance around $1,370. (The building has an annual income restriction of $192,000 gross per household.) But the apartment was at the back of the building, beyond a courtyard. The lengthy walk to enter and exit was ?far too much for my mom,? Mr. Phillips said.

One day, during his lunch hour, Mr. Phillips inspected the Ellington on the Park, a 133-unit co-op on Bradhurst Avenue and West 148th Street. He was squeezed for time. He raced through some three-bedrooms, noting that the bedrooms were next to one another. Still, Mr. Phillips was enthusiastic even though, by now, the couple ?always expected to be unimpressed,? Mr. Morejon said.

When Mr. Morejon went to see the Ellington, he was drawn not to the three-bedrooms but to the two-bedroom model apartment, a 1,200-square-foot space with a den that could function as an extra bedroom.

The bedrooms were on opposite sides of the apartment, the kind of layout that would give them the privacy they sought. ?It is like two apartments in one,? said Charlie Lewis of Warburg Realty, the building?s sales manager.

The two terraces were a bonus. And, in the building?s lobby or at Jackie Robinson Park across the street, Ms. Phillips would have plenty of places to sit down, read the paper, work the crossword and chat with neighbors. Some of the neighborhood stores are open round the clock.

?I asked, ?Where am I going to get my hair done?? ? Ms. Phillips said.

?You will have no problem,? Mr. Phillips told her.

The listing price was $677,000; the couple paid $602,000. Maintenance is around $1,200. The place was one of the building?s 23 market-rate apartments. The other units, with income restrictions governed by the city?s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, were available on a first-come first-served basis. Of the market-rate units, 14 remain, Mr. Lewis said.

The couple arrived in the early fall. ?I worked super hard to get out of Harlem and worked twice as hard to get back in,? Mr. Morejon said jokingly.

They are now awaiting Ms. Phillips and wondering about the merger of two households. ?She likes tchotchkes,? Mr. Morejon said, ?and we are in declutter-your-life mode.?

Ms. Phillips collects salt and pepper shakers. ?We?ve been enablers,? Mr. Morejon said, explaining that many are souvenirs of their travels. Ms. Phillips is eager to find the perfect place for a curio stand ? perhaps along a prominent wall in the living room?

That was an idea Mr. Phillips quickly deflected. If people wish to admire her collection, he told his mother, ?I will direct people to your bedroom.?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/realestate/20Hunt.html?_r=1

barf.

Quote:

That ain't the only 'killer rack' he's got, if you know what I mean.....

The Hunt
A New Marriage and a New Jersey City Condo for Apartment Hunters

New York Times
By JOYCE COHEN
Published: February 13, 2009

BACK in his bachelor days, while living in a Queens rental, Effie Speigler spent two years hunting for a loft in Brooklyn, smitten with the towering industrial spaces.


Effie Speigler and Machell Espejo-Speigler are planning interior changes.


The Hamilton Square condo in Jersey City had an ? la carte plan for amenities.


The Canco Lofts condominiums offer myriad perks.

He lusted after the Gretsch Building in Williamsburg, once a guitar factory. But at that point, while he was building his catering business, Effie?s Kitchen, ?I couldn?t pull the trigger on such a big deal,? he said.

Besides, around the same time, he met Machell Espejo, his future bride. She was living with roommates in her native Jersey City. So, nearly four years ago, he bought not a Brooklyn loft but a one-bedroom condominium in a small building on Second Street in downtown Jersey City.

Mr. Speigler, 34, originally from Plainview on Long Island, studied sports management at Florida State University in Tallahassee. Deciding against a desk job, he then attended the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y. He has since sold his catering business and is now a corporate regional chef for Balducci?s.

Mrs. Espejo-Speigler, 31, is the associate wedding style editor for Bride?s magazine. She was an intern there while attending the Fashion Institute of Technology.

When the two met six years ago through a common friend, Mr. Speigler knew nothing about New Jersey. ?It might as well have been Kansas,? he said. But ?my intentions were to propose to Machell, so I wanted to live as close as I possibly could to her.?

In his ground-floor condo, on Second Street, he redid the kitchen, adding counter space, shelving and an industrial sink. His grill was in the backyard, where he once hosted a crawfish boil.

Later, she joined him there. They acquired a puggle, Tate. ?Even though that was our home, it was my home,? Mr. Speigler said, ?and we wanted a bigger place we could put together ourselves.? Last year, several months before their wedding, they began looking for a two-bedroom, preferably in a new building, for $350,000 to $500,000.

?I loved the idea that nobody dwelled there before, and it is a new marriage, a new start, a new home,? Mr. Speigler said. ?Everything new just made sense to me.? He was less wedded than before to the idea of a loft, which he wasn?t sure he could even find in Jersey City.

Mr. Speigler enlisted the help of his friend, David M. Tobias, an agent at Keller Williams Realty in North Bergen. Often, in downtown Jersey City, ?for the dollar, what we saw was not worth it,? Mr. Tobias said.

So he showed the couple Gregory Commons, perched atop the Palisade Cliffs in Weehawken. Once the site of Blickman Manufacturing, it was converted to condominiums some 20 years ago.

An enormous one-bedroom caught their attention. ?If we had moved there, I would have been really happy,? Mr. Speigler said.

The sellers, whose baby slept in a loft bedroom area, ?kept the place absolutely immaculate,? Mrs. Espejo-Speigler said. ?I don?t know if that?s how they lived or how they kept the house for people to come to see. There was no clutter. My husband is a neat freak.?

But, at $579,000, it was out of reach. Their offer of $525,000 was turned down. And Mrs. Espejo-Speigler would have had an inconvenient bus commute to her office in Manhattan. Mr. Speigler, who travels among the area?s six Balducci?s locations, often drives to work. (The Gregory Commons apartment later sold for $499,000.)

The couple returned to Jersey City and checked out Hamilton Square, a preconstruction condominium on the site of the former St. Francis Hospital complex.

?What they were doing to the space was really nice,? Mrs. Espejo-Speigler said. ?It definitely didn?t look like a hospital.? Still, its history ?wasn?t a selling factor for me,? she said. ?There?s a lot of ghosts there ? not that I am superstitious or anything.?

And the condominium was still far from completion. (It will be move-in ready by late February.) Nor did they like the ? la carte plan for amenities, with separate charges for things like parking and the gym.

Then, last spring, they visited the Canco Lofts, the former American Can Company factory, also in Jersey City. It was just what Mr. Speigler had dreamed of.

At that point, it was still ?really raw,? he said. ?I do like to touch and feel and see things when I buy ? I don?t necessarily like to buy online ? but if I had a good feeling about the place I would go with my gut.? And he did. It was on the higher end of their price range, ?but we thought maybe we could swing it.?

The building?s amenities ?like a large gym, a half-size basketball court, a screening room and a dog run ? made up for its location, amid a thicket of highways and factories. Nearby warehouses are leased to moving and storage companies.

The couple chose a one-bedroom condominium of nearly 1,200 square feet with two bathrooms and a den, for $460,000. The unit has 14-foot ceilings and a concrete column. The monthly common charge is in the mid-$700s, while annual property taxes are around $4,200.

During construction, Mr. Speigler showed up often at the work site. To the workers, ?it was probably every day, but to me it was every week,? he said. ?When you?re buying something before you see walls, it is hard to envision it.?

The couple moved in just before the new year. ?I designed this really killer pot rack,? Mr. Speigler said. It now hangs from the ceiling.

Though their apartment was supposed to include stackable washer and dryer units, at the walk-through they found a single combined unit, apparently because there was too little amperage for separate ones. ?So they did the right thing and gave me a credit at closing for $1,500,? Mr. Speigler said.

?It takes a darn long time to dry clothes,? Mrs. Espejo-Speigler said. ?We used to curse the machine for taking so long, but you become used to it. It is a luxury to have a washer-dryer in your unit instead of going to a basement laundry room.?

They are currently trying to rent out Mr. Speigler?s Second Street place. (The rent is $1,595, with one month free.) So far, they have had a few ?almosts,? he said. If it fails to rent, they might put it up for sale, but they prefer to keep it, figuring Jersey City values will rise over time.

Meanwhile, their plans for some interior changes will keep them busy for a while. They hope to add a kitchen island, a wine refrigerator, a storage closet and a nursery area.

?I?ve wanted to live in a space like this for a long time,? Mr. Speigler said.

E-mail: thehunt@nytimes.com