[Fredslist] Gotham's Own Max Dobens Extensively Quoted in The Real Deal magazine

[Lucas Meyer]

Hello along the network:


Gotham's own Max Dobens (Real Estate Group) is extensively quoted in an
article published in The Real Deal magazine.  Check out Max's
always-excellent take on the real estate market:


 


Playing the game of inches in measuring square footage


 

As market tightens, buyers and sellers look to measure square footage
more precisely

 

By C.J. Hughes 


Considering the intangibles that can factor into buying an apartment -
the hipness of a neighborhood, the beauty of a view, whether that roof
deck will really become a gathering place for sunset cocktails - getting
a handle on how much space there is may seem straightforward. 

Yet it isn't. For condos, appraisers generally use one method, brokers
prefer others, and it can be anybody's guess how developers stretch
their measuring tapes (though the results are often, er, generous.) 

Co-ops, meanwhile, are an entirely different beast, owing to their
unique ownership structure, so square footage usually isn't included in
listings. If it is, brokers admit that they often eyeball it. 

Frustrated by these inconsistencies, the Real Estate Board of New York
doesn't bother to include size as a criterion on Residential NYC, the
public listings service it launched in September 2007, a spokeswoman
notes. 

But this customary patchwork approach may not be flying anymore. A
tightening market has buyers and sellers demanding more data about
apartments, including more precise square footage figures, according to
lawyers, brokers, developers and appraisers. 

Sellers, eager to unload properties quickly in such an uncertain market,
don't want any extra quibbling to derail the sales process, so they are
increasingly double-checking the sizes of units before advertising them,
sources say. 

And buyers, with wallets made lighter by the economic downturn, are
unwilling to pay for square footage that doesn't exist, according to
experts. At the same time, it's becoming a necessity for co-ops to
produce hard-and-fast comparables, to vie for buyers who may also be
looking at condos. 

"All parties involved are paying more attention," says Max Dobens, a
vice president with Prudential Douglas Elliman. His firm - like the
Corcoran Group, Brown Harris Stevens and Bellmarc Realty - inserts
"approximate" or "estimate" before square-foot figures in its condo
listings. Still, "if you see a round number, it's probably wrong, and
the right number is probably higher rather than lower," he says. 

A growing fear of lawsuits may also play a part in the new exactitude. 

In November, Rishi and Heather Bhandari sued Two Trees Development over
a 1,140-square-foot two-bedroom condo at 110 Livingston Street in
Brooklyn that cost $795,000. They claim it's 17 percent smaller than
promised, a "material misrepresentation," according to the suit. 

To head off a similar problem, Dobens, who was representing a seller,
recently called out a buyer's broker for telling his client that an
$899,000 two-bedroom Upper East Side condo was 1,020 square feet when it
was actually 914 square feet as spelled out in the offering plan, Dobens
says. 

The buyer's broker attributed the mix-up to a clerical error, and the
matter was eventually dropped without a price change, Dobens adds. 

The lesson? "Best to be accurate early so it doesn't come back to bite
you," Dobens says. 

Cubic square footage totals are also being challenged, says Adam Leitman
Bailey, a Manhattan-based real estate attorney who's currently suing a
developer for promising nine-foot ceilings but delivering at only eight
feet, he says. 

The case involves a penthouse in the Empire condo at 188 East 78th
Street on the Upper East Side. The unit was purchased by Ellen and Jim
Sykes for $3.9 million a few years ago. 

Though the Sykeses have since sold the unit, they're seeking $1 million
from the developers, Trevor Davis and Aby Rosen, for money they claim
they lost on the sale because the ceilings were too low, Bailey says. 

Increasingly holding developers to task, Bailey says, will create "less
reckless conduct in the market, and buyers will benefit." 

In the past, developers have pumped up square-foot numbers by including
elevator shafts; others tallied up terraces, says Shimshon Heskel of HMS
Associates, an appraisal firm based in Borough Park, Brooklyn. 

But buyers and sellers may be on to them. In the last few months,
there's been a 10 percent increase in requests for pre-closing
verifications, he says. 

"You can't steal square footage," Heskel says. "The whole industry is
going through more scrutiny right now, and that's good on the whole." 

For their part, developers admit that there are sometimes inaccurate
measurements, though they're typically the fault of sloppy architects,
or worse, unscrupulous brokers, says Andrew Bradfield, a principal of
Manhattan-based development company Orange Management. 

"Built conditions can be off a bit, but if they're off by 10 to 15
percent, someone is going to figure it out," he says. "It's such a bad
way to make an extra buck." 

In his 22 Renwick, a 12-story condo between Spring and Canal streets in
Soho, unit spaces were measured from the exterior wall, which is the
rule of thumb for new buildings, as their walls tend to be thin,
Bradfield says. By contrast, the square footage of converted older
buildings, which can have thicker construction, is calculated from a
mid-wall point. 

Renwick's 19 two- and three-bedrooms, from 1,000 to 1,900 square feet,
are priced from $1.3 million to $3.4 million, and 10 have sold since
November, Bradfield says. 

Eric Albert, the owner of State Street Consultancy, a real estate firm
in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, says that a client once called him out on a
co-op that Albert had promised was 850 square feet. Indeed, when the
buyer went through with his own ruler, it turned out to be 770 square
feet. The buyer ultimately purchased the unit, Albert says. 

Typically, though, Albert sells townhouses, and he calculates simply by
multiplying the building's length by width. Although that's essentially
the method used by appraisers, he does it that way because he believes
that much internal footage has a fundamental importance, even if it
can't accommodate tables and couches. 

"Most people want walls around their bathrooms," Albert says. "If there
is value in that, how can you say that is unusable space?" 

 

 

Lucas J. Meyer

5th Street Advisors, LLC

34 5th Street

Stamford, CT  06905

lucas at 5thstreetadvisors.com

voice:  203 327-1212

fax:  646 349-3058

www.5thstreetadvisors.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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