Manhattan Midtown East

Midtown East: from Fifth Avenue to the East River, from 42nd to 57th streets.

Midtown East is the combination of corporate headquarters and residential living. Citigroup, Chase, Boston Consulting Group, Unilever, Ferrari, Mercedes, Bloomingdale’s and Saks are amongst some of its corporate residents. In terms of residential, Midtown East is the location of prominent addresses such as The Plaza, Trump World Tower, Trump Tower (building in The Apprentice), Jumeirah Essex House, Beekman Place and Sutton Place.

Grand Central Station and the United Nations overlooking the East River are additional Midtown East icons. Many foreign consulates and permanent missions to the United Nations are in Midtown East because of proximity to the United Nations. Hence be prepared to see diplomats walking around the neighborhood dressed in their best walking on 2nd Ave and 3rd Ave.

Many Midtown East residents have the luxury of walking to work, to 5th Avenue for shopping, to Central Park for summer picnics.

Don’t want to be too close to corporate offices? Most residential buildings are east of 3rd Ave. Being an island, one block can mean the difference between being smack in the middle of Corporate America’s headquarters and a quieter residential neighborhood. There are even secret gardens with waterfalls that makes one forget being in midtown Manhattan.

The area has an abundance of restaurants and entertainment. NBC’s Today Show and CBS’s morning show both are in Midtown East. Other well known corporate residents are the Apple Store, Ferragamo and Prada.

Why live anywhere else? I too call Midtown East home and I love it here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oE26nRW7uZg&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqOoTx60pCU

Start Up science - graph

Start Up science from Y Combinator.
Ha ha ha .... quite accurate

Steps:

1. Tech crunch of initiation
2. Wearing off of novelty
3. Trough of sorrow
4. Wiggles of false hope
5. Acquisition of liquidity
6. Spike of misconfigured Google analytics
7. Public - selling to biggest fool

http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090601/the-start-up-guru-y-combinators-paul-graham.html

Interior Design for Small Spaces, from Observer Living expo

I attended the Observer Living 2009 event held at the Puck Building last Thursday 5/14/09 and greatly enjoyed the panelist session on Interior Design for Small Spaces. Interior Design is not my forte but I did take some good notes on pointers shared by panelists including Simon Doonan and Jonathan Adler.

* Best item to brighten up an apartment: Pillows, pillows, pillows.

* Get things off tables and onto walls via wall racks.

* Use screens to separate space. This creates segments in your apartment and makes it look bigger. Instead of backing your furniture to the wall, you can use furniture as separators.

* Splurge on throw carpets, sofa and mattress. These are the main items for an apartment. You can save on others. A throw carpet is probably the single most impactful item to make a statement.

* The easiest "green" activity to do are to (i) use flourescent bulbs (ii) remove your shoes when inside the apartment. Removing shoes leaves all the toxic and unhealthy particles outside.

Streeteasy Manhattan Market Report Q1 2009

Streeteasy's report for Q1'09 breaks the numbers down by neighborhood. Similar trend as reported by Miller Samuel. Condos down 7.5% while coops down 16.7% compared to a year ago. I like the many details - by neighborhoods, most searched, most expensive etc.

Streeteasy Manhattan Market Report Q1'09

Ownership by property type

Cooperatives used to be about 70% of total. It's now 59%, driven by the new developments which are all condos. Got this from Brachablog.

1Q'09 Market Report

Manhattan may start getting affordable and not just for the rich? Median Re-sale price declined 20%.

Miller Samuel Manhattan Market Report Q1'09

New York price to rent ratio

Price to rent ratio for New York (blue line) still has room to fall as compared to Miami and LA.