My Life In Brooklyn

It has been five years since we were in the midst of a real estate search here in Brooklyn.  I was looking through my former blog and decided to post the preceding entry because now it just seems absurd, though at the time was far from it.  Definitely one of the more frustrating NY experiences.  I guess ultimately the final success allows one to let go of the “in process” negative experiences.

Being a homeowner from a smallish town in Massachusetts, it was a bit of a surprise to learn the mechanisms of realtors and house-buying in NYC metro.  That is, of course, an understatement.
 
We nearly bought a place at Newswalk.  Walking in the first day, we made a tremendous error. We spoke to the agent on the premises and she managed to acquire our names.  Now, this seems incidental to you perhaps, but the company for whom she worked from that point on refused to allow us to speak to any other agents employed by that company.  It isn’t like we contracted with her or anything, and I  understood the competitive nature of the business and the rationale of the policy. Still, it was downright odd from a consumer point of view.  This realtor was, we felt, inept and way more concerned with her personal social calendar than actually working.  Ultimately she had an incident of hospitalization, during which time the company only allowed another agent to speak with us after we screamed (very loudly) about it several times.  A couple of days with no one to contact in that market can make a huge difference.
 
We didn’t buy a Newswalk condo.  And we vowed not to deal with that real estate company, and by some miracle, managed to uphold the  decision. But our time at Newswalk was memorable and if there is one valuable lesson I learned it was to never permit a realtor to think there is any kind of commitment by you to work with him or her exclusively.  We were not in a position to hire a buyer’s agent.  Honestly, from that point on in the house-hunt, we feared being stuck with a lame agent.

By the way, the preceding post is not at all embellished.

[reposted from my former blog, Oct 2001.  Funny now, frustrating then.]

I walked to Broadway to get what I expected to be the number 1 train, knowing I would have to change at 72nd street to pick up the number 2 express to Brooklyn. But there was never an express that showed up. So I ended up on the number 2, which stayed local, to Atlantic Ave. It sucked and I was a few minutes late meeting husband and the realtor.

But I made it. We love the space in Newswalk and want to buy. But in the current New York market, the price of the place suddenly increased about $150,000. I couldn’t believe it.

Our “realtor” was so lame all she wanted to do was get to a friends house where someone had saved her a piece of cake. This is no exaggeration, she kept talking about the cake.  She looked at her watch every five minutes, I assume to assess her potential loss of cake. God knows, why would one expect to spend no more than 45 minutes to sell something that would potentially reap a bakery full of cakes in her commission? I essentially ignored her time angst. After we viewed the two units again and made a final decision on the one we wanted (this is our third visit here. Hint: this means we may be interested buyers) husband, our lame realtor who I shall call Eileen, the company broker and I gathered around the polished black granite countertop. It went something like this:

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On Wednesday as I was walking around Albemarle and environs, I forgot to mention the black squirrel.  I saw several of them scampering about as all squirrels do this time of year.  I haven’t seen any black squirrels in years, but I saw three of them and tried to grab a pic without success.  It surprised me for some reason, though really they are not so unusual.

This time of year I place chicken wire over my gardening containers to protect the spring bulbs from the squirrels.  We only have grey squirrels here, but they are bold. The black squirrels look so pretty but are certain to be just as destructive.  Makes me think of my Scottish grandmother who, in her later years living in the country, kept a slingshot handy and developed skills that amused the rest of us.  No, she never actually killed one.