A Townhouse In Sugar Hill For Under $1M? Yup.

Posted on October 20, 2011 by BeatingUpwind

If you’d like a townhouse but worried you can’t afford one – there are places out there that you just might be able to afford. While Washington Heights townhouses are generally less expensive – affordable townhouses are available in Harlem as well.

Case and point is 470 West 148th Street – which is just outside the Sugar Hill historic district. It sold recently for $915,000 after being on and off the market for a quite a while. In fact it was on the market for around a million when we were looking in 2009. It was one of our fallback places in case we couldn’t find something we could afford.

So what do you get for $915,000? More than you’d think…

On the plus side you get a great single family home with 3,000 sq. ft. (12.5′ x 60′ x 4 stories) that’s in generally good condition. There is some original details left and a very peaceful back yard.

The biggest problem is that it’s not the entire building you see in the picture above. It’s just the left half of the building – that means the townhouse is only 12 1/2 feet wide. On the plus side it is 60 feet long and doesn’t feel as narrow inside as you might think, but there’s no denying it’s small. While it’s technically about 3,000 sq. ft. – that includes walls. Usable square feet are closer to 2,550 (11′ x 58′ x 4 stories).

Another issue is that while everything seemed like it was in decent shape, the renovation was minimal – sort of “rental grade” in terms of quality. Doors were a bit flimsy, the sheetrock was uneven, etc. But that’s something that can be fixed without too much trouble.

Other than width, the issue that really bothered Dan was the “fashion boutique” next door. Because the two townhouses look like one building, it’s more of an issue than it would be in a wider building. Here you can see what the entrance looked like and how prominent the signage was for the store next door…

In the following pictures you can see that there is some original details left, but generally the level of renovation was just “OK”…

In that last picture you see that the narrowness of the house is a bit of an issue. There’s not a whole lot of room between a queen sized bed and the fireplace. But compared to new build condos with their tiny bedrooms it’s not all that bad – just not as good as other townhouses in Harlem.

There are some nice original details left – like the fireplaces. They do add some nice character to the house.

Back when we were looking the comps were lower and if my memory serves me, I only felt it was worth something like $650 to $700K (to us) – which was well below the $1M asking.

Comps are higher now and all in all the sales price was probably about right. $915,000 comes out to $305 per square foot. Comps with better renovations are getting $400 to $450 per square foot (or more). And honestly the renovations in some of those comps aren’t really all that much better than what you have here. But there is the issue of the width and the signage on the sister townhouse. All in all I think it’s a great little house at the price of a so-so condo or coop.

And don’t forget – this place is completely mortgageable with a conventional mortgage. There are no renovation loan hassles (or renovation hassles). So it was a good deal.

The moral of the story is that if you’ve got limited funds there are a few townhouses out there that you can buy. You just may need to get a “starter” townhouse that’s narrow…

Postscript: There’s a funny story with this house… When Dan and I first saw the place we were killing time looking at open houses while our our agents were doing an open house for our coop. We had our dogs with us since they couldn’t be home while our agents were showing our apartment. So we’d go in one at a time while the other stayed with the dogs. Dan went in first and then I got a call – he and the agent had managed to get themselves locked in the back yard! Luckily they left the front door open, so I took the dogs in and opened the back door and “rescued” them. But the story doesn’t end there. A few weeks ago I was going through another house with a client during an open house and I saw the agent from 470 West 147 with one of her clients. And guess what happened? I got locked in the back yard with my client. Luckily the listing agent heard our knocks and got us out of the back yard quickly. Not sure what it is about the listing agent for 470 W 148 – but I now know to avoid back yards when she’s around. 🙂

We’ve Got Gas!

Posted on October 19, 2011 by BeatingUpwind

SEVEN AND A HALF months after first contacting ConEd we are finally getting gas and electric! Yesterday they tore up the street, today they put in gas, and hopefully tomorrow they’ll do electric (rainy days and high voltage electricity don’t mix very well so it couldn’t be done today).

Mind you, getting gas and electric into the building doesn’t mean we can use the gas and electric – they still have to set up the meters. Julia Angwin had delays with gas service because her plumber didn’t get the gas lines inspected promptly and ConEd wouldn’t install the meters until the inspections were done. Hopefully we can avoid that problem and have heat before the weather drops below freezing.

But the good news is that the big delay is over and hopefully it will be downhill from here on with ConEd – though somehow I think there will be some problem that will crop up – in general, things just don’t go all that smoothly with ConEd.

A Time Warner engineer came by today – they’re going to reroute the wires that are on our building. Unlike ConEd, they have lots of contractors working for them and they’re hungry for work, so it should get done in a week…

Otherwise, they’re continuing to clean the brick, the woodworker is restoring the door, and the A/C guys are working on their stuff that has to be done before the walls are closed up. Unfortunately, there was one room where the A/C drip drain would have gone into the wall directly over an electrical panel, so that took some thinking to come up with another suitable location. And sometime over the past few days the roofing guy got the primer down on the bulkhead – so that’s closer to being water tight as well.

The next big thing that’s coming up soon are radiators…

Window Glazings Have A Pronounced Effect

Posted on October 19, 2011 by BeatingUpwind

Since the windows have gone in Dan has been noticing that the window make the rooms feel a little dark – that they block a fair amount of light. He’s commented that it feels a bit like wearing sunglasses.

We actually have three different types of glazing on the building. All three are on the back of the building…

Back of our townhouse - 3 types of window glazing Starting from the bottom, the rental unit has what Gaulhofer calls G28 glazing – which is their standard glazing. 80% of visible light is transmitted through the glass, but only 23% of UV gets through, and 62% of “solar heat”. (The more “solar heat” you block the lower your A/C bills in the summer, but the less help you get with heating in the winter). We use that glazing on most of the front of the building as well.

Going up one floor to the parlor floor security was important and there we have “smash proof” glass which Gaulhofer calls “G50”. That lets through 78% of of visible light, but only 4% of UV, and 58% of “solar heat”. Blocking the UV is important since it means artwork won’t fade, but we’re not sure how it will affect our plants. We use that same glass on the roof and on our kitchen window in front (the other locations where security might be an issue).

The top three floors we use a fairly aggressive glazing (Gaulhofer’s G23) since, unlike the lower windows, there will be no shade and it’s a south exposure (the deck shades the tenant, and the pergola will shade the parlor floor). G23 only lets through 61% of visible light which explains why Dan feels like he has sun glasses on in those rooms. Like the G50 glazing it only transmits 4% of UV, and solar heat gain is a lower at 42%.

Thing is, the sunglasses effect would actually be worse with American-made windows. For example if you look at Marvin Windows (considered the best big American window company), a PDF on their site shows their windows typically only transmit 40 to 50% of visible light. A few get up to 57% but those are somewhat inefficient windows that don’t qualify for tax credits. Our most aggressive glazing transmits more visible light than Marvin’s least aggressive glazing, and some of our windows transmit twice the light of some Marvin window.

Because Marvin blocks so much light, they also block more “solar heat” – typically only 18 to 33% of solar heat gets through a Marvin window. That difference between the manufacturers reflects the difference in their markets. Most of the US is hot and bright in comparison to Austria and northern Europe where most Gaulhofers are installed. Gaulhofers excel at insulation (the “U Factor”) which is the critical component in a cold climate. So our energy bills would be lower if we had gone with Marvin, but that just is what it is – we like the trade off we made and prefer more visible light transmission.

The sunglasses effect is only really an issue for us because we’re now accustomed to the house with no windows. If we had only known the house with windows installed we probably wouldn’t have noticed it. But the glazing you choose for your windows does make a difference both in your energy bills and your experience living in the house (how much light you have in your rooms) – so choose carefully.

One thing I should add… You may think “we live in a fairly cold climate, wouldn’t solar heat gain be a good thing since it reduces winter heating bills?” I thought the same thing, but the bottom line is electricity for A/C is far more expensive than gas (or oil) for heat, so you should favor lower SHGC values.

And another thing – if you research it you’ll find recommended values for NYC, but they’re averages. Realize that the north side of your building will only get light in the morning. SHGC just isn’t important for north facing windows. The U-factor (good insulation) is far more important for north facing windows. So go for low SHGC for south facing windows and high U-factors and high VLT (visible light transmission) for north facing windows.

Back Of The House Looking More Complete

Posted on October 18, 2011 by BeatingUpwind

Nearly all the windows are in now and the back of the house is looking more complete. Here’s a before picture…

And here’s what it looks like now (in dim light and bright light)… We’re still getting used to the color Dan picked for the rear windows. 😉 In bright light the color is so bright it almost glows. In dim light it’s just cheery. While I probably would have chosen a more conservative color, in a city where everything gets dingy and dirty, I sorta like the brightness.

Needless to say a HUGE improvement over where we started. It’s still not the final look though. We’re adding a deck with a pergola plus fall protection bars on the windows, and a roof deck railing. Here’s the drawing for the deck and pergola…

That’s just 4 of the 5 stories (6 if you count the cellar, 7 if you also count the windows in the bulkhead at the roof deck). Here’s the entire wall from a different perspective – you can see where the deck will go…

The dividers in our tilt-n-turns do make your mind think double hung – so that part is true to the objective, though I still wish we didn’t have to have the dividers.

[If you’re wondering, parts of back wall (to the right in the pictures above) still need to be power washed. Long story, but it wasn’t completed when they did it the first time.]

Otherwise there are huge stacks of sheetrock in our place at the moment…

But before they can start putting drywall up they need to finish off all the little stuff – electrical, plumbing, low voltage wiring, etc.

Sheetrock Gets Delivered

Posted on October 14, 2011 by BeatingUpwind

Our contractor just e-mailed us a photo – the Sheetrock for our place was delivered this morning with a crane truck…

That’s a lot of Sheetrock!

You can also see that they’ve got windows in the front of the building – the window just below where the Sheetrock is going in is closed, and at the window below that you can see the plywood framing around the window. That means all the windows are in the back of the building as well since they did those first.

Now the contractor just has to focus on getting the last bits of the roof done and we’ll be all sealed up.

The other incredibly good news is that ConEd will put gas and electric into the building next Thursday/Friday (Oct 20-21) with a fallback date of the following Monday/Tuesday (Oct 25-26). So it “only” took them 7.5 months to get gas and electric into the building. That means we can have a working security system soon – which is really important as expensive finished materials are brought into the house.