Sugar Hill & Hamilton Heights Townhouse Sales, Early 2010

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Continuing with an examination of townhouse sales this year, this time I’m looking at Sugar Hill and Hamilton Heights…

[Remember that price per square foot is generally pretty inaccurate because the measurement of townhouses is not consistent – some include the ground (basement) level in the square footage, others don’t.]

Higher end properties

Sugar Hill

  • 2/17/2010 – 614 West 148th Street, $1,316,199, 3,000 sq. ft., $438/sq. ft. – SRO restricted
  • 4/21/2010 – 545 West 149th Street, $1.095M, 3,264 sq. ft., $335/sq. ft. – SRO restricted
  • 5/19/2010 – 413 West 154th Street, $1.2M, 4,368 sq. ft., $274/sq. ft. – Landmarked, not SRO restricted, Aging ’80s renovations, English basement, 25′ foot wide

Hamilton Heights

  • 1/20/2010 – 410 West 145th Street, $900K, 3,608 sq. ft., $249/sq. ft. – Landmarked, not SRO restricted, on busy commercial street
  • 3/3/2010 – 522 West 142nd Street, $895,638, 2,872 sq. ft., $311/sq.ft. – Not SRO restricted
  • 6/4/2010 – 554 West 142nd Street, $1.12M, 4,543 sq. ft., $246/sq. ft. – SRO restricted

What’s shocking here is that nothing sold on Hamilton Terrace, Convent Avenue, or the prime, landmarked blocks in Hamilton Heights (with house numbers in the 400s). The other rather shocking thing is the generally low prices. With the high end of Mount Morris Park now pushing $2M, the highest sale in Sugar Hill was barely over $1.3M, and calling $895K “higher end” just feels odd to me…

We actually went through 413 West 154th Street during our search. It sold for more than we expected. A nearly identical sister townhouse just around the corner on St. Nick had sold in August of 2009 for $1.05M and it was recently renovated. 413 needed $200K to $300K in renovations. Still, it was a very solid house in good repair. If you didn’t mind the aging renovations there was nothing that needed to be done.

Low end properties

Sugar Hill

  • 2/16/2010 – 844 St. Nick, $775K, 5,195 sq. ft, $149/sq. ft. – Huge ark of a house on a small lot, had certificate of no harassment and approved plans (under 1968 building code) for renovation to 2 family, some original details, lots of charm with a lot of big huge rooms
  • 4/14/2010 – 427 West 146th Street, $450K, $165/sq. ft. – Habitable, SRO-restricted
  • 5/18/2010 – 521 West 150th Street, $250K, $89/sq. ft. – SRO restricted

Hamilton Heights

  • 1/29/2010 – 48 Hamilton Place (near 140th St), $450K, 3,146, $143/sq. ft. – Active, occupied SRO
  • 2/5/2010 – 505 West 144th Street, $425K, 3,468 sq. ft., $122/sq. ft – Had certificate of no harassment, estate sale, some interesting original details, but smelled (badly) of urine, and on a block that is a bit rough at times

A few of these houses we knew pretty well. We had gone through 844 St. Nick a couple times. It was a wonderful ark of a house with huge rooms, great bones, some original details, a certificate of no harassment, and approved plans for conversion to 2 family (under 1968 building code). It was owned by a friend and initially we thought we couldn’t afford it, then he confided what he really wanted and we bid $765K, but he already had a verbally accepted offer for $775K and so we didn’t get it.

505 West 144th Street was always the one we’d bring up when we got discouraged and thought we weren’t going to be able to buy a townhouse. We went through it twice. Despite the strong sense of dog urine (a ‘caretaker’ had a dog in there for years and didn’t walk it very often), it had some real charm. But ultimately we walked away because we didn’t feel comfortable or safe on the block at night.

With the exception of 521 West 150th, low end prices were slightly higher than I would have expected – especially given the stagnation in the neighborhood in the higher end properties. There’s less of a gap between shells and high end properties than there is in Mount Morris Park which means less opportunity to make a profit from renovation.

It would seem Hamilton Heights and Sugar Hill are are the place to buy if you want a higher end property that needs minimal renovation – the properties are going for a half million less than they are 20 blocks south. What might be hurting sales is the lack of services. Mount Morris Park and South Harlem have great restaurants, grocery stores, etc. Those are sorely lacking in Hamilton Heights / Sugar Hill.

“Body Block”, Near Feral Children, Drug Houses, etc.

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In all honesty when we put the bid in on our place on 123rd Street we didn’t really know what we were getting into. When we bid on other places we would walk the blocks after dark on summer nights and could get a clear sense for what the block was really like. There would be people out on the street and we were able to differentiate “good” blocks from “not so good” blocks. In one case we walked away from a building we were considering after Dan walked past two women who nearly got into a fist fight (actually fists would have been fine – he was worried one of them would pull a knife or a gun).

We bid on the place we bought in mid-November. By that time it was cold and people were staying indoors, so we didn’t get the same sense of what the block was really like. That worried me a bit. We could tell the apartment building next door was a bit run down, and the apartment building across the street was only slightly better. We could tell parts of the block weren’t so great, but we didn’t know whether we should be worried or not.

As it turns out the people who live in the run down apartment building next door are really nice. Our worst problem seems to be the people who buy their “40s” at the corner bodega – they’re not threatening so much as messy. Our biggest concern is getting $100 ECB tickets for their trash.

That’s the block today – it has it’s rough edges, but we feel safe and people are nice to us. However, we’ve come to realize the block (and even our own building) had a very different past which still lingers a bit in the air…

The first warning bell was when we were told that many years ago the building two doors down had been taken over by a drug dealer who killed the landlord and two other people, chopped the bodies up, put them in the cellar, and kept covering them with lime to keep the smell down. It seemed like a pretty unusual story and we thought it was just “local color” – every neighborhood has something bad that’s happened.

Then we also started hearing references to the fact that a number of other people had died on the block over the years, but we figured that was probably true of most streets in Harlem… There was a time when Harlem wasn’t such a great place…

But then my friend and I went on the MMPCIA’s house tour… We stopped at Minton’s Playhouse and were served lemonade. As we were sipping our lemonade we started talking to the guy behind the bar who lived in the neighborhood. I said I bought a townhouse shell. He asked where, I told him, and he said “Oh, body block”. I naively asked what he meant and he explained that our block (123 between Lenox and ACP) had the nickname “body block” because so many people had died on the block over the years. Turns out our block wasn’t just average in terms of violence, but one of the roughest blocks anywhere in Harlem…

And it continues… Dan was showing the building to my nephew and his girlfriend one day when a guy stopped and started talking to them (a common occurrence on our block – one of the things I really like about it). He said he had “sorta lived” in the building in the late 90s. Then he mentioned that the building was raided in 1997 and the police had found a nearly feral child living in a closet. I believe he said the child was 6 or 7 years old when she was found. In other words, our building was a drug building. The people who say they “lived” there were largely drug addicts, and some unfortunate kid was born into that, and neglected so badly that she spent years living in the closet of a drug flophouse with little to no meaningful social interaction with other people. Truly sad…

I’m sure some of that history is the stuff of legends and a bit embellished, but the general gist is that our block, and even our building, have a rather sordid past.

windows on 123 condoBut things are changing. The biggest change has to be the new condo down the block – Windows On 123 – it’s really changed the nature of the street. With asking prices up to $1.465M for a floor through, 3 bedroom, 3 bath unit, the block is quickly losing it’s bad reputation.

There’s a lot we love about the block…

We don’t really like 124th street – you get the ugly backs of all the big buildings on 125, so 123rd is as close as you can realistically get to the subway stops at 125 – and we’re right between two of them – a 4 minute walk to the 2/3 and a 6 minute walk to the A/B/C/D. With one stop to 59th Street you can’t get better subway accessibility without paying downtown prices.

We also love that we’re between all the new development over on Frederick Douglass Boulevard and the established, stable core of Mount Morris Park. Being near them means we’re near a number of great restaurants, bars and grocery stores.

We also like the friendliness of the block. People talk to each other and in my mind people watching what’s going on and knowing each other makes the block a lot safer.

As odd as it may sound, we also like the music on the block. When we looked at some blocks in Hamilton Heights and Sugar Hill salsa and merengue were blaring from the windows. We never listen to salsa and merengue and thought it would get pretty irritating pretty quickly. On our block there are guys hanging out on the stoops, some with carts of CDs, playing R&B, soul and the gentler side of hip-hop – that’s all music we listen to ourselves and makes the block sound like home to us. It also means we’re less likely to be irritated by our neighbors’ loud music.

But most importantly our new neighborhood reminds me of what New York used to be like when I first moved here 20 years ago. Back then New York was this wonderful mix of extremes. Today most of Manhattan seems to safe, “pedestrian” and rather bland. I like the edginess of Harlem. The chaotic, uncertain energy makes you feel alive – it’s why I fell in love with New York and chose to make it my home…

If our sale really was a bit of a low water mark, then I think the sordid history of our block may have factored into the low price in some way. Personally, I really like the idea of buying into a place that has seen hard times but is turning around. There’s a little risk to it, but you can see much bigger gains in situations like that than you can in neighborhoods that are well established.

How We’re Configuring Our Townhouse

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I thought I’d share how we finally decided to (re)configure our townhouse… It’s a 5 story brownstone. We’ll have a 4 story owner’s quadraplex over a duplex rental unit (that has “accessory” space in the cellar)…

Layout of 168 West 123 - brownstone in Harlem

Starting at the top… There will be a roof deck on the rear of the building. We only learned after buying the building that we had views of the midtown skyline (off in the distance). Mind you, climbing up all those stairs to get there won’t be a lot of fun, which means we’ll need some sorta buzzer system for the front door. We’ll eventually mount a retractable awning on the bulkhead for shade. We opted for bulkhead windows instead of a skylight because they let in more light in the winter and less in the summer.

There is some dispute on the proper width of the bulkhead. The architect has a 3 foot passage to the side of it, the plan examiner says it’s a “side yard” and should have an 8 foot passage OR be the entire width of the building with a ladder over it. The architect noted that if he encloses the walkway it becomes interior space and 3 feet is appropriate. We’re still trying to figure out which solution we want to go with.

The next floor down, the 4th floor of our unit (8-9′ ceilings), will be art studio space for Dan. He’ll have a clean studio / office in the front of the building, and a dirty studio in the rear of the building. The small utility room in the middle will be his wet area. The floors in all his studio space will be commercial grade vinyl flooring (inexpensive and practical). There will be clerestory windows letting lighting from the stairwell into the front room (which is on the North side of the building). We’ve configured it in a way where the next owner could turn the utility room into a bathroom and then have two additional bedrooms / playrooms, etc.

The 3rd floor of our unit (9′ ceilings) will have the master bedroom in the rear and a spare room in the front. The spare room will most likely be a den / exercise room – have a treadmill, a couch and a TV. Like the clean studio above it, the den will have clerestory windows letting in light from the stairwell. We wanted the bedrooms in the back since the back of the building should be quieter.

The 2nd floor of our unit (one floor up from parlor, 10′ ceilings) will have the spare bedroom in the back and a home office in the front. Having the office in the front achieves two goals… First, the office isn’t noise sensitive, so it’s on the noisy side of the building. And second, it’s used during the day, so air conditioning bills will be lower since there’s far less heat gain on the North side of the building. (We’re using a mini split ductless system where each room is a separate zone). On this floor, attached to the bathroom is the laundry room. Having been in apartments for the past 20 years, we can’t wait to have a washer/dryer in our unit! Oddly it’s one of the things we are most looking forward to.

Our original plans had the 2nd and 3rd floor swapped, then we realized that we’ll be going up and down stairs to the office a lot more than we would be going up and down to the master bedroom, so we put the master bedroom up higher and the office down lower. Swapping the floors also lets us have a laundry chute from the master bedroom closet directly into the laundry room. We’re going to love that feature!

The parlor floor (10.5′ ceilings) will have the living room, dining room and kitchen. This is where we had to get a special reconsideration to have an open floor plan since code would otherwise require having 1 hour fire rated walls around the staircase and from the staircase to the front door. I know some people hate having front doors open into kitchens, but we saw so many narrow unusable living rooms that we decided to put the living room in the rear where it could be more spacious. But it does mean that the kitchen design needs to be pretty flawless since it will be people’s first impression of the house. One thing we have noticed is that the living/dining/kitchen space is nearly identical to our old apartment. This is a 15′ wide townhouse – we may have 6 bedrooms, but some things are more on the modest side.

There will be a narrow 4′ wide deck with a pergola off the living room. We kept it narrow so the tenant’s window would still get plenty of sunlight, and we added the pergola (which we’ll have vines growing on) to give us some shade in the summer. Here’s a diagram showing how it will look…

Rear deck with pergola on Harlem Townhouse

From the beginning of our process we knew that we didn’t have the biggest townhouse and as a result our design choices were a bit limited. There just wasn’t the space (or budget) to be all that extravagant. Where we were a bit extravagant was with the staircase. It will have a 3′ x 6.5′ lightwell running down the middle of it that will help get light deeper into the core of the building. We’re also going with open risers to help let light bounce around. From the beginning I knew the stairs would be the dominant design element in the building. To that end our architect really stepped up and has given us an incredible staircase design. You can see a bit of it in this diagram…

Stair layout in a Harlem townhouse

Basically there will be swoopy translucent plastic (or fiberglass) panels that will be attached to simple metal framing. Because it’s reducing metal work it should be a fairly economical solution. It’s also changeable. I had thought the staircase would permanently define the space, but because the panels can be redesigned and executed in different materials, there’s nothing permanent about it. Not shown in the diagram is the architect’s solution for the “railing” along the hallway. We’ll be taking the existing floor joists cutting them down into thin strips and creating a “screen” (wall) with vertical strips of old floor joists. That will be our version of “original details” and should look pretty incredible if we get the right balance of colors and textures in the space.

Continuing down the building… The rental unit will have smaller rooms that are still a decen size (i.e. the bedroom will be 175 sq. ft. and the living/dining room 260 sq. ft.). We’ll be putting in a decent Ikea kitchen (not bare bones, but still Ikea). One of the things we’re debating currently is the appropriate level of security for the rental unit. Our options are metal gates/bars on the doors/windows -or- laminated security glass with a security break sensors in lieu of gates/bars. Gates and bars will feel more secure, but it may seem like you’re in a prison.

The rental will be a bit of a duplex. I say “bit of” because it incorporates cellar space which can’t legally be a bedroom. It can be a media room, a workspace for an artist or craftsman, or a home office. Because that’s the south-facing wall, there should be plenty of light down there so it won’t feel too much like being in a cellar. What this means is is that it’ll be far more than a 1 bedroom, but not really a two bedroom. The tenant will also have their own laundry room in the cellar.

The cellar will also have the mechanical room and storage space for us. There’s this incredible arched brick ceiling in the “vault” under the “front yard” which we’ll be repairing/restoring. This townhouse is rather unusual in that it has a separate entrance for the cellar under the stoop, so we don’t have to go through the tenant’s space to get to the cellar.

In terms of utilities we’ll only be providing heat for the tenant. We’re separating all the other utilities – gas, electric, even water. Given how the boiler will work if we were to put in separate heating for the tenant the heating system wouldn’t run at optimal efficiency. So it won’t cost that much more to give the tenant heat. We don’t want to have the typical over heated New York apartment. Instead, we’ll keep it at a temperature where we’re comfortable in a light sweater but not so cool that our hands get cold. That will be lower than the minimum heat required by NYC, so the A/C units in the rental unit will be “mini PTAC” thru-wall units which can also provide supplemental heat as needed to keep the tenant comfortable. That means we’ll need to have the tenant sign something saying they understand they aren’t getting full heat for their unit.

I know Julia Angwin had mentioned on her blog at the Wall Street Journal that she had a tough time trying to figure out if she still wanted telephone jacks. Our strategy for voice and data is fairly aggressive, but also a bit conservative. Half of the closet in our home office will be a mini “server room” complete with rack mounted servers, cool air intake and warm air exhaust. (Dan and I do web projects for a living – we need all that sorta stuff). All voice, data and security will “home run” to that closet. We’re assuming we’ll continue to have a Vonage VoIP system, so we see won’t have a dedicated phone line coming into the building. Other than in the server closet there will be only two voice jacks – one in the office for the fax machine and one in the living room for a phone. We’ll also have Ethernet jacks throughout the house even though wireless will be our main form of connectivity. Primarily we’re putting Ethernet jacks next to cable TV jacks because we believe video and entertainment over the Internet will be common in the near future and the video/entertainment boxes may not support wireless. The Ethernet jacks will also be used for wireless routers – we assume we’ll need several to properly cover the entire house.

There’s a lot more detail I could go into, but that covers the basics… It’ll be fun to see it all come together…

Egress, Sprinklers & NYC Townhouses

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Having just gone through a rather arduous 5 month process to get DOB approval for our renovations I wanted to comment a bit on what I see as the biggest change in the code for townhouse owners – the fire code.

Simply put townhouses must now be sprinklered when doing a major rehab of the building. Parts of the 2008 code said you didn’t need sprinklers, but other parts said you did. The parts that said you did need sprinklers have won. However, not only does the building need to be sprinklered, but all major rooms need to be sprinklered – not just egress areas as was common in the past.

The only exceptions are 1) areas with less then 65 square feet, 2) bathrooms with less than 80 square feet, and 3) stairwells. In a lot of older townhouses (e.g. SROs) you’ll see stairwells sprinklered, but over the years they found that sprinklers in stairwells were a bad idea since they created a slip hazard as the water cascaded down the stairs. (However, they do still want hallways adjacent to stairs do need to be sprinklered).  As a result townhouse owners have to sprinkler everything except bathrooms, closets, and stairs.

We’ve heard horror stories about what fully sprinklering a building will cost – $100K+ according to some. We’ll find out soon what it will cost in our case, but there are two things that will bring down the cost for us…

First, sprinkler systems in small residential buildings that have 30 or fewer heads can be fed off the domestic water supply, IF the supply is large enough. Our building requires 29 heads, so we just barely sneak in under that provision. We have to find out whether our existing water main connection is sufficient. But at least we won’t need two connections to the main.

Next, thanks to an architect and Harlem townhouse owner who commented here on the blog, we found out that you can have a wet sprinkler system with CPVC piping (“BlazeMaster” brand) in small residential buildings. I’ve heard a number of architects say PVC is prohibited in NYC due to it giving off toxic gasses in a fire, so it’s somewhat ironic that it’s allowed to be the piping for the sprinkler system that fights the fire. A CPVC sprinkler system should be an enormous cost savings since the only other alternative is cast iron pipes – they won’t even allow copper for the sprinkler system since copper melts easily (you’d think plastic would melt even more easily).

The other issue that’s related to fire is that egress areas need a 1-hour fire rating. This means the stairwell, and the hallways connected to the stairwell, must have a 1 hour fire rating. A 1 hour fire rating is stringent, but not terribly difficult to achieve. Basically it means you need thick, solid wood doors off the egress hallways, and the walls around the stairwell (and egress hallways) have to be built a particular way.

This means you can’t have an open floorplan where the stairs are open to the rest of the floor, even though the entire building is sprinklered – at least not without special approval. We were able to get a “reconsideration” that’s allowing us to have an open floor plan on the parlor floor – the bottom floor in our unit. To get the reconsideration we’re having to put in a 1 foot “smoke baffle” around the stairwell. So there will be a 1 foot “wall” coming down from the ceiling in that area. That smoke baffle will prevent smoke from going up into the stairwell. Since fire and smoke spreads up, I think reconsiderations like that would only be granted on the bottom floor of a unit, but I’m not sure.

All in all, the fire code has gotten a lot tougher for townhouse owners. Not having a sprinkler system is not an option. And just throwing a few sprinklers in the egress areas isn’t an option either. But luckily the more extensive sprinklering is balanced by being able to use CPVC piping… We’ll see in a few days what all that will cost…

Mount Morris Park Harlem Townhouse Sales Early 2010

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I’ve been meaning to do a series of blog posts on the state of townhouse sales so far in 2010 by neighborhood. Here’s the first in that series – covering the neighborhood that’s near and dear to us – Mount Morris Park…

Generally I find there are two groups of townhouses – 1) ones that need $500K+/- in renovations, and 2) ones that don’t (at least not right away).

On the high end…

Address Date Price $/sq. ft. Notes
226 Lenox 02/10/10 $1.25M 253 20′ wide, 5 story, former mortuary, needs work
22 West 120 03/31/10 $1.65M 543 Steel and concrete minimalist interior
4 W 123 06/01/10 $1.65M 647 17′ wide, single family, 2,547 square foot (probably not including ground floor), some great details but needed work
5 W 121 07/08/10 $1.55M 353 20′ wide, three family, 4,393 square foot
19 W 120 08/12/10 $1.8M 370 20′ wide two-family w/ original details, 4,865 square feet
115 W 120 08/20/10 $1.975M 412 20′ wide, 4 story, two family, approx 4,800 square feet

The very first one, 226 Lenox was a bit of a special case – it’s probably at the high end of the ones needing around $500K in renovation. Among the others you can see the trend is generally up (slightly). The standard price seemed to be $1.65M (no matter what the size, oddly), but now that’s been broken and prices are just under $2M.

On the low end…

Address Date Price $/sq. ft. Notes
21 W 120 03/01/10 $425K 95 20′ wide, 4,472 square-foot fully occupied SRO
168 W 123 03/03/10 $530K 147 (117) Our place. 15′ wide, 5 story, totally gutted shell with fire damage, SRO with a certificate of no harassment
162 W 120 03/04/10 $500K 123 17′ wide, 4 story limestone, 4,058 square feet
104 W 120 04/30/10 $550K 194
20 W 120 05/25/10 $700K 127
128 West 123 06/30/10 $415K 196 4 story brick townhouse with mansard roof
183 Lenox 08/25/09 $795K 192 19′ wide, SRO w/storefront, 4,139 square foot

The first thing to notice is that this is still a great time to buy a townhouse shell in Harlem. There’s over a million dollar difference between the price of shells and the high end places, but you can renovate a shell into a high end townhouse for about $600-$800K, so you’re likely to net between $300K and $500K on the renovation.

Price per square foot is tricky with shells. Taking our place as an example – officially it’s 4 stories and 3605 sq. ft. However, in actuality it’s 5 stories and 4500 sq. ft. Oddly, I thought the number of stories would get fixed as we went through the DOB plan approval process, but I saw the plan examiner look right at the plans and call it a 4 story building. However, they are now billing it as having 4,500 sq. ft. – at least that much is getting corrected. What this means is as you look at townhouses you need to calculate the real square footage and determine your own price per square foot.

The bottom line is, like the upper end, there is an upward trend in prices for shells. Not counting the fully occupied SRO (which you wouldn’t want to touch with a 10′ pole unless you wanted to be a landlord, not a home owner), our place was pretty much the low price on a price per square foot basis at $117/sq. ft. The others since that time have been more money on a price per square foot basis (which is how you really need to price buildings like these). Assuming the recent ones are 4 story buildings misclassified as 3 story buildings – that means the actual price per square foot for shells is now in the mid-$140s.