5 and Diamond Restaurant – Please reopen soon!! is a post from: Bouchner & Co. New York Real Estate

Manhattan real estate market statistics and market update.

New York City Real Estate Update – Video Blog is a post from: Bouchner & Co. New York Real Estate

The Real Estate Section of the New York Times ran an article about short sales in New York City . Short sales have finally come to NYC, but the deals may not be as good as expected, and the process is a long one. Check my video for more thoughts on short sales, and if you have had any experiences, either as a buyer or a seller, let me know about them….I am curious to hear your point of view.

Video Blog – Short Sales hit New York Real Estate is a post from: Bouchner & Co. New York Real Estate

Turtle Bay is a great section of Manhattan. There is a lot more going on there than the UN! Check out the WSJ article to learn about the housing stock and quality of life.

By SUSHIL CHEEMA

Ramin Talaie for The Wall Street Journal

Shops and restaurants occupy the first floors of buildings along East 53rd Street in Turtle Bay.

Nestled between Midtown Manhattan and the East River is the upscale enclave of Turtle Bay, home to the United Nations, soaring high-rise buildings and handsome brownstones.

If You’re Browsing This Weekend . . .

First settled in 1639, the area was an important point of shipbuilding through the 18th century. Brownstones popped up after the Civil War, and the bay, home to railroad piers and wharfs, was filled in and developed by the end of the 1860s, according to the Turtle Bay Association.

Tenements housed Italian, German, Irish and Jewish immigrants. By the 1920s, the neighborhood became fashionable and notables like actress Katherine Hepburn would call Turtle Bay home.

The origin of the neighborhood’s name is debated: Some say there were once turtles in a creek that ran through the area, but others say it came from a corruption of the Dutch word “deutal,” or “a bent blade,” used to describe the bay’s shape.

Construction of the U.N. building in the late 1940s pushed out area slaughterhouses and attracted diplomatic missions and consulates and high-rise buildings. They include the Veneto, a 34-story tower, with 137 residences, and the 72-story Trump World Tower condominiums.

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Ramin Talaie for the Wall Street Journal

A pub on Second Avenue displays its location.

Neighborhood By the Numbers

• Crime in 2010 (17th Precinct)
  • 0 Murders
  • 4 Rapes
  • 37 Robberies
  • 33 Felony assaults
  • 56 Burglaries
  • 362 Grand larcenies
• Listings (StreetEasy.com)
  • 206 active listings in Turtle Bay
  • Median price is $950,736
  • Median size is 820 square feet
  • Median price is $1,151 per square foot

More Open Houses This Weekend

• 250 E. 49th St., No. 17C
  • Two bedrooms, two baths
  • $1.791 million
  • July 25, 11 a.m.–5 p.m
• 45 Tudor City Place, No. 1515
  • One bedroom, two baths
  • $825,000
  • July 25, 11 a.m.–1 p.m.
• 236 E. 47th St., No. 24F
  • Two bedrooms, two baths
  • $1.189 million
  • July 25, 11 a.m.–12:30 p.m.
• 301 E. 48th St., No. 10M
  • Studio
  • $435,000
  • July 25, 1 p.m.–2 p.m.

While some locals have long been drawn to the area because of its central location and easy access to the shopping, entertainment and dining of Midtown, investors and second-home buyers are increasingly calling Turtle Bay home.

Foreign buyers also like to be near theaters and shopping, but want a more residential feel, says Jacky Teplitzky of Prudential Douglas Elliman, who has worked with international clients.

“Most of [Manhattan's] hotels are located actually in Midtown and the East Side,” she says. “A lot of these tourists, when they come over, that’s what they know.”

Parks: Large green space is hard to come by in Turtle Bay, but small pockets do exist.

Tudor City, a cluster of 11 apartment buildings that is practically a neighborhood in itself, was built in the 1920s and has a park and adjacent public playgrounds. Ralph J. Bunche Park, opposite the U.N., has been the site of many demonstrations.

Dag Hammarskjold Plaza Park serves as a promenade for the U.N. and is home to Katherine Hepburn Garden. Greenacre Park has a 25-foot waterfall.

Schools: Turtle Bay’s schools, part of District 2, include the commercial-arts-focused High School of Art and Design.

In 2009, 92.6% of students in District 2 received a proficient score on the math exam, and 85.8% of students received a proficient score on the English Language Arts exam. In 2006, the results were 78.5% for math and 73.8% for reading.

Private schools include the Lyceum Kennedy French International School, with students in pre-kindergarten through 11th grade, which specializes in bilingual French-English education. Beekman School, a college-preparatory high school, is also in Turtle Bay.

Dining: The northern end of Turtle Bay along 53rd Street is home to a variety of restaurants and bars, including Little Thai Kitchen, Cello Wine Bar, La Gioconda, Brick Lane Curry House, Mantao Chinese Sandwiches and Obao Noodles & BBQ. Also try Traffic, with bars on two levels. For a more relaxed atmosphere, try Güllüoğlu, a Turkish bakery and café.

Posted via email from Rich Bouchner – Neighborhood Real Estate Guy

Turtle Bay Real Estate Article from The WSJ is a post from: Bouchner & Co. New York Real Estate

The new good faith estimate which was mandated by Congress as part of the financial reform package has created more questions than answers. I was interview by the Real Deal for an article about the new 2010 GFEs.

Grappling with ‘good faith’

New disclosure law prompting lenders to inflate costs — and buyers to panic July 01, 2010 07:00AM By Candace Taylor

Last month, mortgage banker Bruce Maasbach got a panicked call from a friend’s daughter, who was about to close on a New York City co-op.

The buyer told Maasbach she was reluctantly considering purchasing an apartment in an all-cash deal because she’d just received an estimate from her bank putting the cost of closing her loan at $12,000. That’s more than triple the usual closing costs for a co-op, said Maasbach, the managing director of the Manhattan division of mortgage bank Luxury Mortgage.

“She was rather taken aback,” said Maasbach. “She said to me, ‘I’m not spending this kind of money [on fees].’”

Maasbach has received many similar calls since January, when new federal regulations went into effect governing the “good faith estimates” that lenders issue to mortgage applicants, outlining loan fees and other closing costs.

The new regulations require estimates of all mortgage origination fees and transfer taxes to be identical — sometimes down to the cent — to the fees charged at the closing table. If the fees exceed the estimates, the lender, not the borrower, must pay the difference.

The changes are meant to make the mortgage process more transparent for consumers, and to eliminate the unexpected fees that commonly popped up at the closing table during the boom.

But experts say the revisions are having unintended consequences. Because New York City’s closing costs are so high — they can be 5 to 6 percent of the loan amount — one mistake could easily cost the loan originator tens of thousands of dollars.

“It’s huge money,” said Richard Martin, a senior vice president at DE Capital Mortgage — a partnership between Wells Fargo and brokerage Prudential Douglas Elliman. In New York, he said, “the stakes are vastly higher” than in other places.

Because lenders and mortgage brokers fear being on the hook for mistakes, they are greatly overestimating closing costs, causing confusion and often panic among buyers, experts noted.

The complicated new GFE process is slowing down deals just as the market is starting to pick up. And while the new regulations are intended to save consumers money, they are actually costing them more, at least in the short term.

“Deals are more expensive to do, because people are so nervous about the numbers being correct on the good faith estimate,” said Maasbach, explaining that some New York-area banks and mortgage brokers are increasing application and processing fees by roughly $100 per transaction, in part to account for the labor required to check and recheck GFEs.

In the past, good faith estimates had “no teeth,” said Brian Sullivan, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“You’d begin the process of getting a loan, and then 60 days later you’re going to closing, and you’re presented with a loan that doesn’t resemble what you were offered,” he said.

The new GFE is a standardized form that must be generated within three days of the initiation of a mortgage application. In addition to the fact that estimates for lenders’ fees and transfer taxes must be practically identical to the final fees paid, a variation of only 10 percent is allowed for estimates of nonlenders’ costs, like title insurance and appraisal fees. If the estimates aren’t close enough, the lender pays the difference (there is no penalty for the buyer). If there is a material change, such as a change in the price of the unit, a new GFE must be generated.

Many mortgage brokers and lenders agreed that borrowers should be offered more transparency, but say there are problems with the implementation of the new rules.

First, in a climate where getting a mortgage is far from assured, many buyers start the process of applying for a loan after their offer has been accepted, but before the contract has been signed. That often means the terms of the agreement are still being ironed out while the lenders are generating the GFE, which can lead to delays or costly mistakes, as one lender discovered at the closing of a $1.7 million Upper East Side co-op in April, Maasbach said. The lender forgot to disclose the mansion tax (paid by buyers of homes over $1 million). As a result, the lender had to fork over $17,000 at the closing table, he said.

To avoid mistakes likes these, “you can imagine that there’s a lot of double-measuring and double-checking before the deals get to closing,” said Jeffrey Appel, a mortgage loan officer at Bank of America. “If an error is picked up, there’s a delay.”

The costs get passed on to consumers, in the form of higher bank fees and late fees if their closings are delayed.

The new rules also require mortgage brokers and lenders to spend time on the phone with vendors, like title insurance providers, finding out how much they charge, explained real estate agent and mortgage broker Richard Bouchner, founder of Bouchner & Co. Real Estate.

To protect themselves from possible mistakes, many loan originators inflate their estimates. “If someone tells me $1,200, I’m going to put down $1,500,” said Bouchner. “I’d rather be way higher.”

Many also list fees — like transfer taxes — that they know will likely be paid by the seller, just in case. That often causes confused buyers to panic, which can jeopardize a deal, especially if the contract hasn’t yet been signed. “The client will get this enormous number and be calling us, hysterical, saying, ‘How could my closing costs be so high?’” Maasbach said.

HUD is aware that the new law presents some “challenges from an operational point of view,” Sullivan said. But policymakers believe the problems will fade away as lenders become more comfortable with the new regulations.

“We do believe that as time goes on, and they become more fluent in these new rules, they won’t feel the need to inflate their costs,” he said.

New Good Faith Estimates – Quoted in Real Deal Article is a post from: Bouchner & Co. New York Real Estate

New York City real estate deals typically involve hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars, but everyday both buyers and sellers walk away from transactions over a few thousand dollars. However, with mortgage rates at all time lows, delaying a purchase or sale in order  to “get your price”, can end up costing close to $450,000 over the life of a new $1,000,000 loan if rates go up to 6.5%.

Video Blog – Low Mortgage Rates Increase Buying Power is a post from: Bouchner & Co. New York Real Estate

Mortgage brokers are denying pregnant borrowers loans according to a NYTimes story. Unfortunately, this news is not too surprising, as banks and brokers seem to make up the rules on the fly.

The mortgage lending environment continues to be challenging, and even highly qualified borrowers are having a touch time getting mortgages. I am not in favor of returning to the crappy underwriting standards that got is in trouble in the first place, but come lenders….at least give your clients have a chance!

HUD to Investigate Mortgage Loan Denials

By TARA SIEGEL BERNARD

“Lenders have every right to ascertain the incomes of families to determine whether they are eligible for a mortgage loan, but they have no right to use a pregnancy or a short-term disability as a cause to deny that family a mortgage they would otherwise qualify for,” Shaun Donovan, the agency’s secretary, said in a statement late Wednesday.

The move comes after an article in The New York Times on Tuesday, which reported that lenders were taking a harder look at prospective borrowers, like parents of new babies, whose income has temporarily fallen.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two mortgage financing giants, have always required that borrowers have enough income to pay for the loan on closing day and that lenders document that the income is likely to continue for at least three years.

But since disability payments typically do not continue for that long, some lenders will not count it as qualifying income, several mortgage brokers have said. Some lenders may require new mothers, or others on short-term disability, to reapply for the mortgage once they return to work.

“Denying a mortgage to people just because they’re having a baby is flat wrong,” Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said in the statement.

If a borrower is on leave at the time of closing, the housing agency said that “lenders must document the borrower’s intent to return to work, that the borrower has the right to return to work, and that the borrower qualifies for the loan taking into account any reduction of income due to their leave.”

The department said it was also reviewing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s underwriting guidelines to ensure that they do not violate the Fair Housing Act

Mortgage Brokers Deny Pregnant Borrowers is a post from: Bouchner & Co. New York Real Estate