$2M Continues To Be Limit for Harlem Townhouses

Posted on July 25, 2011 by BeatingUpwind

A number of Harlem townhouses continue to flirt with the $2M mark, but few of them go over that amount. The latest to push $2M is 319 Convent Avenue – a single family house in Hamilton Heights which just sold for $1,971,830.

319 Convent is one of the grande dames of Harlem townhouses – 20 feet wide, 55 feet long, and 5 stories tall – so roughly 5,500 square feet, though officially the square footage is 3,596 which less than you’d expect if they didn’t count the basement. Still, a big grand ‘ol house.

While the location and scale of the house are exceptional, based on the available interior photos, the overall condition seems to be just fair to good. There are no kitchen and bathroom shots – which is always a bad sign, and in the photos they do show there’s peeling wallpaper and the floors clearly need to be refinished. I would also expect there to be 100 year old plumbing and electrical – so the buyer is looking at a minimum of $200,000+ to bring the house up to current standards – and I could totally see someone spending a half million or even more on renovations to really do a great job. It’s the type of house that deserves that level of money to be put into it.

Notice the peeling wallpaper over the door in the next photo…

All in all though – an incredible house that’s clearly been lovingly maintained in near-original condition. I think the new owners will have many happy memories in that house 🙂

There’s Still A Long Way To Go For Gay Rights

Posted on July 24, 2011 by BeatingUpwind

Today is the day when the first gay marriages are being performed in New York. That’s a huge step forward and it’s great, but we need to remember that we still have a LONG way to go before we’ve got equality. I’ve been having a back and forth on Facebook with a classmate from grade school (I went to a very conservative Baptist school). One of his comments was “So you have gay marriage in New York, why are you complaining?” Let me explain why I’m still complaining…

Dan and I have been married since 2005. The problem is that our marriage is just not on the same legal footing as straight marriages. I’m being asked to be happy and content with the fact that a state here or there recognizes my marriage. But meantime…

I couldn’t give Dan a green card. What if his immigration status had been more tenuous? He would have had to leave the country and there’s a chance I couldn’t have followed him if he came from a country that didn’t recognize me as his spouse. (That’s academic for us, but isn’t for many bi-national gay couples). [Dan did finally get his green card this year, but the issue is that he should have gotten it 10+ ago based on his relationship to me.]
We’ve had huge legal bills to keep Dan in the country.

Before getting his green card Dan used to be here under NAFTA and we had to go through the process of getting him approved by immigration every year. The first few years we used a lawyer ($$) and then we had to do use a lawyer again after 9/11 when things got tighter… Very little of that would have been necessary if our relationship had been recognized and he had gotten a green card by being my spouse.
We had to incorporate our business twice because we did it wrong the first time. Immigrants aren’t allowed to be owners in the companies that sponsor them for work visas/statuses. Before 9/11 the INS didn’t really care, but after 9/11 we had to reincorporate the company ($$) so I was the sole owner.
We had to spend $5,000 on rather complicated wills. Since he wasn’t allowed to own the company that sponsored him if something happened to me we had to set things up so a trust would take over the company until he had his green card.

Health insurance has been an ongoing issue.

In one company the (lesbian) general manager got rid of domestic partner benefits somewhat by accident (she didn’t realize the company had them since no one was using them). The executives over her were not gay friendly but luckily she was. When she realized her mistake she gave Dan a job so he’d have health insurance (he was already freelancing at the company). We just lucked out – most bosses don’t go that far for their gay employees.
When Dan was at other companies that weren’t so gay friendly I had to get health insurance through our company. That cost us an extra $800/month. While we could afford it, a lot of other gay guys and lesbians can’t. And for god’s sake – there were other things I would have rather done with the $800/mo.
Even now with Dan working for a gay-friendly state agency (CUNY) I get health insurance, but because the federal government doesn’t recognize our relationship Dan has to pay federal tax on my health coverage as if it were extra income. That tax is not imposed on straight couples.

Dan has had to do particular types of work to stay in the country. Since Dan’s Canadian he’s eligible to work here under NAFTA, but he had to do particular types of work – namely graphic design. If I had been able to give him a green card he probably would have pursued some other career option or had more time to pursue art. Only now that CUNY got him his green card last year does he have that flexibility.
If we’re hospitalized while traveling we may not be able to make medical decisions for each other. This is potentially a big one. Because there are places where our marriage is not recognized we may not be able to make medical decisions for each other in an emergency. We have executed heath care proxies and living wills but our attorney tells us they’re only valid in the state in which they’re signed. Other states can choose not to honor them.

So while it’s great New York is doing gay marriage now, unfortunately those marriages in many respects still aren’t equal to the same marriage performed in the same place for a straight couple.

My classmate from grade school went on to say “Actually, I feel bad for the situation you find yourself in, but as far as I vote, I answer to a higher authority than you and Dan. It’s not a personal insult.” Thing is, when you can look someone straight in the face and ask them to sit in the back of the bus, how are they supposed to interpret it? He, and people like him, are denying me my civil rights. They’re not necessarily bad people, they just don’t get how offensive their actions are to people like me. At one point he said “Let me ask you this, if you could get a green card would that make you happy? If you could have a ceremony in a liberal church would that make you happy?” What he doesn’t understand is that throwing scraps my way will never make me happy. I don’t want a little here and a little there. I want equality. We keep making progress (like gay marriage in New York), but we’re still not equal.

When you run across people who are against gay rights, please challenge them on their beliefs. They need their world view widened and you can make a difference…

Before & After: Repointing The Back Wall

Posted on July 23, 2011 by BeatingUpwind

They haven’t taken down all the scaffolding in but it seems they’re done with repointing the rear façade and things are looking leaps and bounds better than they did when we started the project…

Here’s what it looked like initially…

And here is what it looks like after the repointing is done…

There was so much garbage in the yard when we started you couldn’t even see the cellar windows! It’s looking very neat and tidy now – as it should… And notice that you can’t even tell where the opening for the air conditioner used to be. There used to be parts of that wall that I thought could collapse – that’s no longer the case – it’s back to being a completely solid wall.

Here are some other before and after shots…

And what it looks like now…

The one thing that didn’t quite go how we had hoped was mortar color. The original color was a pinkish yellowish tan color that looked very sandy and had a high lime content. They just don’t make mortar like that anymore. Well, they can, but there are better ways of making mortar (with cement mixed in). The issue is that the base color of modern, cement-based mortar is gray, not a tan/sandy color. I’m not sure we could have achieved the original color if we had tried. Dan wanted to mix red into the mortar so the mortar would be closer in color with the brick, but even that wouldn’t have been the original color. In the end the contractor just went with the standard gray color. If it were a front façade I think we would have been pickier about the color, but the fact of the matter is that it’s the back of the house and it looks fine.

One thing I should mention is mortar type. There are several types of mortar and they vary by how strong they are…

Type M:	2,500 psi
Type S:	1,800 psi
Type N:	750 psi
Type O:	350 psi
Type K:	75 psi

You would think stronger would be better, but on historic structures the opposite is actually true. Old bricks are softer than modern brick and if you use a mortar that’s stronger than the bricks, when the wall needs to move the weakest part of the wall will be the bricks and they’ll crack before the mortar. That’s the opposite of what should happen – the mortar is supposed to give way before the bricks. After all, the mortar isn’t that difficult to replace, but the bricks are historic – you want to preserve them. You may think it’s not a big deal but think about the fact that a southern facing wall, like our rear wall, will expand slightly every afternoon due to the sun’s heat and then contract at night. Over time that can destroy your bricks if your mortar is too strong. Typically Type N mortar is what should be used on late 1800s townhouses like those in Harlem. Type S and Type M should never be used in walls with historic brick.

NYPD: Sitting Prohibited

Posted on July 23, 2011 by BeatingUpwind

Yesterday I was in Grand Central and found it funny that NYPD had a huge sign saying sitting on the steps was prohibited, yet a whole bunch of people were sitting on the steps regardless…

And not just one or two people… So much for people being afraid of the police.

The NYC DOB Continues To Be A Problem…

Posted on July 19, 2011 by BeatingUpwind

Before the project started the biggest issues were with the NYC Department of Buildings. We thought we had pretty much everything worked out, but once again they’re holding up progress on the project for the simple reason that they can’t manage to get their work done in a timely manner.

The problem is the sprinklers. When the mechanical engineer reviewed what the architect had proposed (and gotten preliminarily approved) he found that there wasn’t sufficient coverage and we needed a lot more sprinkler heads. We finally got everyone on the same page and the new sprinkler job was submitted to DOB on June 28th. It took them until July 1 to get it entered into the system and assigned to a plan examiner. The DOB says that they’ll get the initial plan review done on new jobs within two weeks. Well, today is 3 weeks since the job was submitted and the initial plan exam still isn’t done. I check the job status once or twice a day but it still just says “Assigned to P/E”.

The problem is we can’t do the new water main connection until the sprinklers are approved and we can’t get electrical and gas into the building until the water main connection is done. So we still have no running water and no electricity in the building. It’s amazing how much has been accomplished without water and electricity, but things would move a lot faster if we had them.

The issue is that there’s a decent chance they’ll come back with objections and then it will be at least another two weeks before we can get those resolved… It just never seems to end with DOB. Yes, we could self-certify, but that’s a dangerous thing to do in this case since if we’re wrong we might have to do the water main connection all over again (big $$$).

NYC’s Department of Buildings just seems like more of a hindrance than anything else. It’s one thing to enforce rules, it’s another to just arbitrarily slow down projects…

UPDATE:

We finally got the list of objections. Here they are…

DOB Sprinkler Objections

68 heads? We don’t have 68 heads, we have 38 heads. All our documentation says 38 heads. The plans show 38 heads, but apparently we got rejected because the plan examiner couldn’t be bothered to get it right. He says the cost estimate is missing. It’s not. He says the certificate of no harassment is missing when it’s clearly available in the parent job for the sprinkler application. And now his objection is that we have 68 sprinkler heads.

Honestly, he just didn’t seem to care enough to get it right. Welcome to the NYC DOB. Meanwhile our project is delayed.

UPDATE #2:

The mechanical engineer chimed in and told us “<name of plan examiner> has never reviewed a set plans correct[ly]”. He then went on to detail for our expediter exactly why everything was fine and should have been approved. In other words this entire problem is because of an incompetent plan examiner. We have a meeting with him on Tuesday morning. Hopefully he’s not obstinate as well as incompetent.