Manhattan Loft Guy looks back at Manhattan Loft Guy, sees 2006
Since it is still January as I write this I can (just barely) take up the suggestion of Maureen McCabe, my Ohio blogging buddy (Discover Columbus nee Columbus Best Blog) and look back at my blogging year 2006 – obviously, my first year of blogging.
First, I would like to thank the members of the academy … errr … The Three Amigos (and the cast of thousands) at Internet Crusade, who do so much for real estate professionals all over the country.
At this point – and perhaps for a long time to come – my blog is a way for me to think out loud and to draw connections between things I see in the media or in the market. Because it is a blog, I don’t edit as much as I should, so most posts are looong. I am sure that I have still not gotten the hang of it, but it wasn’t until nearly Labor Day that I began to fill comfortable doing it.
Without further ado, here is a collection of favorite posts, in reverse chronological order.
On November 8 I wrote comparing lofts and lofts ain’t so easy / 718 Broadway as lab. It was about the kind of experience that one would never hade in an “apartment” building: I visited three lofts in the same building that are very different from each other (one is “a million miles away” from the other two). I guess the subtext is that it is hard to value lofts.
On Halloween I offered Curbed means never having to say you’re sorry, in which I got to comment on Curbed.com – the big kahuna of the Manhattan real estate blogosphere. The good news is that I got a response from Lockhart Steele (Mr. Kahuna?) that scratched the itch I was feeling.
On October 15 I posted in response to reading just too many breathless agents talking about their “unique” lofts, unique ain’t what it used to be / more than 100 “unique” lofts in Manhattan??. So I counted the times the word (or similar) was used that week in MY Times.com loft listings. It got to be over 100. I was not amused. Nor was Strunk or White. Nor Funk nor Wagnalls.
On September 16 I tested as assumption I had about one way in which Manhattan loft buyers are different from “apartment” buyers. The result was loft owners open their own doors, in which I reported that an unscientific survey of open houses for lofts priced from $2.4mm to $3mm showed that two-thirds of the buildings did not have doormen. Of course, I then went on – in my anal way – to analyze the one-third with door people. How many Upper Buyers (east or west) would pay that kind of money without getting a full door? Not many….
On August 30 I posted rumination about … well the title says it all: the Tao of Lofts – essential features. This one is in the line of “everyone is entitled to my opinion”.
On August 12 I attacked one of my pet peeves in the media – the tendency to talk about The Real Estate Market as if it were The Stock Market, Timing the market when timing is everything / CNNMoney on ‘bubble-sitting’. All these seemingly smart well0intentioned people giving advice that is impossible to apply. I had a little fun (in my pedantic way) tweaking the main guy quoted. What I should have said was “the fact that I know (100%assurance) that I am going to die doesn’t help me, since I can’t tell when”. So too with an analysis of “over-priced” markets that “must” fall.
On July 5 I started a category named “truth IS stranger…” with the post You can’t make this stuff up / condo owners rue authentic TriBeCa cobblestones. I should probably do this kind of thing more often – light, breezy, amusing and short. Memo to self: find out what happened about the cobblestones in front of 44 Laight St.
Last but certainly not least was my most pithy entry, on June 21, about how obsessed all us New Yorkers are about real estate, ’nuff said.
Indeed, ‘nuff said.
© Sandy Mattingly
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