And for the record, I just picked up my last load yesterday and my shirts are clean as can be. Consider me one happy customer. A happy green one.

]]> http://www.theurbanbrain.com/denver/index.php/2007/08/08/greenclean-that-shirt/feed/ 0 http://www.theurbanbrain.com/denver/index.php/2007/08/07/money-money-money/ http://www.theurbanbrain.com/denver/index.php/2007/08/07/money-money-money/#comments Tue, 07 Aug 2007 19:58:52 +0000 mike http://www.theurbanbrain.com/denver/2007/08/07/money-money-money/

Is too much of our life about the money?

The New York Times this past Sunday had an article about how the millionaires out in silicon valley just don’t feel rich anymore. Apparently, once you make $2 million, or $5 million, or even $10 million you still feel the need to work 60, 70, 80 hour weeks to make sure that you can keep up.

For some folks the money goes into bigger, and bigger, and bigger houses. Or faster cars, expensive gems, boats, trips, etc.

Basically, you will always spend what you make and need to make more.

That is so sad. And yet I seem to be spending what I make. I make more than I did when I was just out of college, but I don’t seem to have a great deal of extra. Isn’t it amazing that people just keep finding new things they “need” that they would never dream of years ago under a different tax bracket.

I have to wonder why it is that we just keep buying more and more instead of saving more and more. Are material items really that much more important than our free time, our ability to travel perhaps for a year and see the world? Do we really need the 10,000 sf house and the six figure car if our budgets grow. Is it keeping up with the jones.

Don’t get me wrong, I have my toys that I buy with extra money. But I don’t mind having a new scooter when my car has been paid off for a year. I really don’t feel the need to have the newest and greatest automobile. I do, however, want the coolest blue tooth ear bud for my iphone.

But given the opportunity to have a couple million in income I don’t believe any amount of peer pressure would make me choose to burn through it as quick as I could. I would like to think I would buy more time. More free time, more flexibility, and more freedom.

Check out the article and let me know what you think. Do you believe you will always be spending what you earn, regardless of how high that income goes? If you say you wouldn’t, let me ask you this…. are you currently making more than you made 5 or 10 years ago and are you spending it all? If so, what makes you think it would change?

Perhaps it was meant to be a sob story, but it is a bit more of a reality check. Here is my advice for you future millionaires who might get trapped into working 80 hours a week. Stop buying stuff.

Duh, and yet not the easiest thing to do. What does that say about our culture.

Here is that NYT article

August 5, 2007

In Silicon Valley, Millionaires Who Don’t Feel Rich

By GARY RIVLIN

MENLO PARK, Calif. — By almost any definition — except his own and perhaps those of his neighbors here in Silicon Valley — Hal Steger has made it.

Mr. Steger, 51, a self-described geek, has banked more than $2 million. The $1.3 million house he and his wife own on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean is paid off. The couple’s net worth of roughly $3.5 million places them in the top 2 percent of families in the United States.

Yet each day Mr. Steger continues to toil in what a colleague calls “the Silicon Valley salt mines,” working as a marketing executive for a technology start-up company, still striving for his big strike. Most mornings, he can be found at his desk by 7. He typically works 12 hours a day and logs an extra 10 hours over the weekend.

“I know people looking in from the outside will ask why someone like me keeps working so hard,” Mr. Steger says. “But a few million doesn’t go as far as it used to. Maybe in the ’70s, a few million bucks meant ‘Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,’ or Richie Rich living in a big house with a butler. But not anymore.”

Silicon Valley is thick with those who might be called working-class millionaires — nose-to-the-grindstone people like Mr. Steger who, much to their surprise, are still working as hard as ever even as they find themselves among the fortunate few. Their lives are rich with opportunity; they generally enjoy their jobs. They are amply cushioned against the anxieties and jolts that worry most people living paycheck to paycheck.

But many such accomplished and ambitious members of the digital elite still do not think of themselves as particularly fortunate, in part because they are surrounded by people with more wealth — often a lot more.

When chief executives are routinely paid tens of millions of dollars a year and a hedge fund manager can collect $1 billion annually, those with a few million dollars often see their accumulated wealth as puny, a reflection of their modest status in the new Gilded Age, when hundreds of thousands of people have accumulated much vaster fortunes.

“Everyone around here looks at the people above them,” said Gary Kremen, the 43-year-old founder of Match.com, a popular online dating service. “It’s just like Wall Street, where there are all these financial guys worth $7 million wondering what’s so special about them when there are all these guys worth in the hundreds of millions of dollars.”

Mr. Kremen estimated his net worth at $10 million. That puts him firmly in the top half of 1 percent among Americans, according to wealth data from the Federal Reserve, but barely in the top echelons in affluent towns like Palo Alto, Menlo Park and Atherton. So he logs 60- to 80-hour workweeks because, he said, he does not think he has nearly enough money to ease up.

“You’re nobody here at $10 million,” Mr. Kremen said earnestly over a glass of pinot noir at an upscale wine bar here.

Not every Silicon Valley millionaire, of course, shares that perspective.

Celeste Baranski, a 49-year-old engineer with a net worth of around $5 million who lives with her husband in Menlo Park, no longer frets about tucking enough money away for college for their two children. Long ago she stopped bothering to balance her checkbook. When too many 18-hour days running an engineering department of 1,200 left her feeling burned out and empty, she left and gave herself 12 months off.

Yet like other working-class millionaires of Silicon Valley, she harbors anxieties about her financial future. Ms. Baranski — who was briefly worth as much as $200 million in 2000 but cashed out only $1 million before the collapse of the tech bubble — returned to work in March.

Along with two partners, she founded a software company, Vitamin D, and already she is resigned to the sleepless nights and other stresses that await her. “I ask myself all the time,” Ms. Baranski confessed, “why I do this.”

Working inside a start-up has always been invigorating, she says. But she and her husband, 62, who also works, have concluded that she must stick with it if they are to continue to live the life they enjoy here.

Recently the couple hammered out an agreement: Ms. Baranski will work at least five more years for the sake of their bottom line.

“People around here, if they have 2 or 3 million dollars, they don’t feel secure,” said David W. Hettig, an estate planner based in Menlo Park who has advised Silicon Valley’s wealthy for two decades.

The Luck Factor

Many of the more modest millionaires here feel sheepish, even guilty at times, about their piles of cash. Talent played in a role in their financial success, but so did being at the right place at the right time.

“They recognize that if they happened to walk into a different office,” said Marilyn Holland, a Menlo Park psychologist who has been counseling the Valley’s elite for 25 years, “things would have turned out very differently.”

That is one big difference between these working-class millionaires and the country’s wealthiest tycoons, who tend to see themselves as pillars of the community worthy of the hundreds of millions of dollars, perhaps billions, they now possess.

“A lot of the money here is accidental money,” said Bruce Karsh, 51, an engineer who puts his net worth at $2 million to $4 million. “People weren’t setting out to become gazillionaires.”

Ms. Baranski is one of them. The daughter of a college professor who died when she was 12 and left her mother to raise three children, she began college intending to become a musician. But worries about the debt she was racking up prompted her to transfer to the engineering school, where she eventually earned a master’s in electrical engineering.

That today she is worth around $5 million, said Ms. Baranski, who helped to put herself through school cleaning houses, “was unimaginable in my 20s.”

“I always ask myself, ‘Do I deserve it?’ ” she said. “It never feels like you do, because that’s a lot of money.”

Ms. Baranski is hardly the only working-class millionaire asking herself this question. Ms. Holland said she regularly works with multimillionaires who wonder why they are so well compensated when others, like teachers, who contribute so much to the world, are not.

The lucky moment in Ms. Baranski’s career came when she took a job as the head engineer at Handspring, the hand-held device maker, in September 1999. By the end of 2000, Ms. Baranski’s stock holdings briefly made her one of the wealthier women in Silicon Valley.

At quick glance, Ms. Baranski and her husband, Paul, live modestly. She drives a 2006 Subaru, her husband a six-year-old Saab. Their children attend public school, and vacations tend to be modest affairs centered on visiting family.

Ms. Baranski cares little for clothes or jewelry. They have a swimming pool, but only because Ms. Baranski pressed hard for one, a dream of hers growing up in Southern California.

Like most of her neighbors, Ms. Baranski splurged most on a house in a community studded with some of the most expensive real estate in the country. Early in 2001, when Ms. Baranski seemed richer than she was, they paid $1.95 million for a dilapidated house in Menlo Park, knowing they would tear it down. They spent $1 million over the next few years building their dream house.

Ms. Baranski recognizes, of course, that she is far better off than many of her neighbors. Even well-paid college administrators, professors and other white-collar professionals struggle to pay their bills in this expensive redoubt 30 miles south of San Francisco.

“I don’t know how people live here on just a normal salary,” said Ms. Baranski.

Her nanny rents an apartment in Palo Alto, Ms. Baranski said. She pays her what she described as a generous salary and gave her the keys to her old Saab when she bought the newer one. But “basically I have no idea how she survives here.”

Mr. Hettig, the estate planning lawyer, sums it up for many: “We’re in such a rarefied environment,” he said, “people here lose perspective on what the rest of the world looks like.”

‘A Dime a Dozen’

David Koblas, a computer programmer with a net worth of $5 million to $10 million, imagines what his life would be like if he left Silicon Valley. He could move to a small town like Elko, Nev., he says, and be a ski bum. Or he could move his family to the middle of the country and live like a prince in a spacious McMansion in the nicest neighborhood in town.

But Mr. Koblas, 39, lives with his wife, Michelle, and their two children in Los Altos, south of Palo Alto, where the schools are highly regarded and the housing prices are inflated accordingly. So instead of a luxury home, the family lives in a relatively modest 2,000-square-foot house — not much bigger than the average American home — and he puts in long hours at Wink, a search engine start-up founded in 2005.

“I’d be rich in Kansas City,” he said. “People would seek me out for boards. But here I’m a dime a dozen.”

No one knows for certain how many single-digit millionaires live in Silicon Valley. Certainly their numbers reach into the tens of thousands, say those who work with the area’s engineers and entrepreneurs. Yet nearly all of them still have all-consuming jobs, not only because the work gives them a sense of achievement and satisfaction but also because they think they must work so much to afford their gilded neighborhoods.

That certainly describes Tony Barbagallo, 44, who over the last two decades has collected around $3.6 million in stock and options from companies he has worked for. Despite his good fortune, though, he is surprised to find that he worries like most other Americans about matters as varied as the soaring cost of health care, the high price of college and the pressure to sock away more money for retirement.

Taxes have devoured about 40 percent of his stash, Mr. Barbagallo said, knocking that figure down to $2.2 million. Over the years, he has tried to live off his salary, but not always successfully. To limit their monthly expenses, he and his wife Catherine bought a ranch house far from Silicon Valley, in the town of Moraga, for $750,000 — by Valley standards a modest sum.

But they spent $350,000 on extensive remodeling — causing them, not for the first time, to dip deeply into their nest egg.

Today, he has roughly $1.2 million left in savings and another several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of home equity, Mr. Barbagallo said, with one child in college and a second on her way.

So he works as hard as ever, logging more than 70 hours a week at a San Francisco start-up.

“Poor Tony, he’ll never be able to retire,” Catherine Barbagallo said.

Chasing the Top 0.1 Percent

Many of these millionaires have options, of course, beyond working hard to earn another $5 million to $10 million. A few even choose to jump off the golden treadmill.

That is what Mark Gage, 51, an engineer, and his wife, Meredith, did when they left the Bay Area in 2005 with $3 million or so in assets. They bought a house in Bend, Ore. — “a bigger, much nicer home with dramatic views” — and now Mr. Gage works only when the perfect consulting job presents itself.

Yet the same drive that earned so many of the engineers and entrepreneurs who live here their fortunes keeps them tied to the Valley, which resembles nothing so much as a sprawling post-war suburb, though one whose roadways are thick with cars costing in the six figures.

Umberto Milletti has fantasized about downsizing his life to ease the financial pressures he feels despite a net worth around $5 million. In 2000, when his stake in DigitalThink, the online learning company he co-founded in 1996, was worth around $50 million, he bought his family of four a five-bedroom house in Hillsborough, an upscale suburb south of San Francisco. After his net worth fell 90 percent, though, he found the house more of an albatross than a dream.

“We could move,” Mr. Milletti said. “But if you do that, then you’re admitting defeat. No one wants to go backwards.”

So he works 60 to 70 hours a week at InsideView, an online sales intelligence company he co-founded in 2005, in part to prove that his first success was not a fluke — but also to meet his monthly nut, which includes payments on a seven-figure mortgage.

Silicon Valley offers an unusual twist on keeping up with the Joneses. The venture capitalist two doors down might own a Cessna Citation X private jet. The father of your 8-year-old’s best friend, who has not worked for two years, drives a bright yellow Ferrari. Temptations loom everywhere.

“You see how much money you have in the bank,” Mr. Koblas, the computer programmer, said, “and your eyes get really big.” He described it as “upsizing your life to your cash flow.”

Then there are the additional burdens on this digital elite, said Ms. Holland, the psychologist — demands they are typically not prepared to handle.

“There are all these people who come to you for money,” Ms. Holland said. “Siblings, parents, other relatives. Organizations seeking charitable contributions. There’s this assumption you have all this money — so why don’t you write a big check to the school or to this other charity?”

Other pressures can come from within the social circle. Mr. Barbagallo, for instance, remembers when several couples tried cajoling his wife and him — unsuccessfully — to fly to Las Vegas for a charity event featuring Andre Agassi.

“You look around,” Mr. Barbagallo said, “and the pressures to spend more are everywhere.” Children want the latest fashions their peers are wearing and the most popular high-ticket toys. Furniture does not seem up to snuff once you move into a multimillion-dollar home. Spouses talk, and now that resort in Mexico the family enjoyed so much last winter is not good enough when looking ahead to next year. Summer camp, a full-time housekeeper, vintage wines, country clubs: the cost of living bloats.

To Mr. Milletti, it all looks like a marathon with no finish line.

“Here, the top 1 percent chases the top one-tenth of 1 percent, and the top one-tenth of 1 percent chases the top one-one-hundredth of 1 percent,” he said.

“You try not to get caught up in it,” he added, “but it’s hard not to.”

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

]]> http://www.theurbanbrain.com/denver/index.php/2007/08/07/money-money-money/feed/ 0 http://www.theurbanbrain.com/denver/index.php/2007/07/23/a-train-to-the-mountains-revisited/ http://www.theurbanbrain.com/denver/index.php/2007/07/23/a-train-to-the-mountains-revisited/#comments Mon, 23 Jul 2007 22:02:24 +0000 mike http://www.theurbanbrain.com/denver/2007/07/23/a-train-to-the-mountains-revisited/

Why is this person so happy. Because while it is dumping rain outside and other poor souls are driving with white knuckles fighting traffic, the elements, and sleep she is cozy in her train cabin sipping a drink, reading a book, and watching the beautiful outdoors go by.

This is what we need from Denver to Vail (With a stop in Summit of course). I just drove down from another mountain excursion this morning and while I was blown away as always by the view, I couldn’t help but think how nice it would be to have been sitting and reading my paper while making the journey.

And this was a beautiful uncrowded day. But when I went up on Sunday I-70 was PACKED with cars heading down. Nothing compared to the ski season but certainly another reason to get on a train.

Just picture this. You head over to Union Station and grab a nice warm cup of coffee, a newspaper or book, and some of your best buds. You load all of your stuff onto your train car and grab a wonderful cabin with benches and curl up. The snow outside is dumping and the weather is freezing. The roads are going to be icy, if open at all. But you will make the trip to Vail in bliss surrounded by laughter, warmth and friends.

When you are hungry or thirsty you eat and drink. When you have to use the bathroom you do (but leave your cabin for this). When you are tired you sleep. You are safe.

The train might even have a dining or bar car where you can grab a bite or a drink. The folks going to and from the mountains might be the perfect audience to make this work. Or who knows what other luxury is possible. Perhaps a massage after hours of pow pow skiing or rock hopping biking.

Or maybe the train simply has seats that look out the mountains and allow all of these comforts with gorgeous views. Either way, it is a better experience than driving in a car.

And would you like to know what makes it even better? If it is planned out right we can

1: Promote alternative transportation

2: Reduce many many carbon footprints (my biggest violation is that drive to and from the mountains)

3: Make it a fun, fun journey for many people.

So why am I bringing this up again? Because I want to get started with planning, designing, and more before we go and add another lane of traffic to I-70. Or at the bare minimum we can try and send a message that we support this direction and promote the idea that it might happen (hopefully sooner rather than later).

And yes, I know there are challenges. But those challenges become greater every day that we continue doing short term solutions such as expanding lanes. Let’s support a long term solution with environmental responsibility.

Plus it will be more fun. And just to see if there is an interest out there please show your support at this ipetition here. Maybe it will even show enough support to encourage a private investment firm to get involved as discussed in the Denver Post. It doesn’t matter who does the train, what matters is folks get out of their cars.
Pass it on!!

Here is the scoop from when it was voted down from High Speed Monorail

Colorado I-70: state says highway, not monorail (1/13/05)
Denver, Colorado. Colorado transportation officials are sticking to their belief that a high-speed monorail is not the way to solve highway congestion from Denver to Vail. Their vision is for more pavement, by widening Interstate 70 through the busy mountain corridor. Last month the state released a draft environmental review that favors widening I-70, while rejecting both a high-speed monorail or a conventional rail line as too costly. In the first of ten public hearings on the I-70 mountain corridor study, almost 200 people showed up Wednesday to voice their opinion. Most of them favored monorail and said CDOT’s idea to widen the highway will be outdated when completed by 2025 as proposed. A plan for a Colorado High-Speed Monorail using inverted-T rail technology lost steam when Colorado voters turned down money for a test track in 2002. That proposal was described derogatorily as a “Disneyland ride” by Governor Bill Owens, which helped sway voters against the ballot measure.

The vote below is for the blog…. the real vote is available

clicking here!.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll. ]]> http://www.theurbanbrain.com/denver/index.php/2007/07/23/a-train-to-the-mountains-revisited/feed/ 20 http://www.theurbanbrain.com/denver/index.php/2007/02/05/young-fearless-buyers-a-cool-take-on-manhattan-lifestyle-and-a-bit-like-here-just-not-as-pricey/ http://www.theurbanbrain.com/denver/index.php/2007/02/05/young-fearless-buyers-a-cool-take-on-manhattan-lifestyle-and-a-bit-like-here-just-not-as-pricey/#comments Mon, 05 Feb 2007 17:36:31 +0000 mike http://www.theurbanbrain.com/denver/2007/02/05/young-fearless-buyers-a-cool-take-on-manhattan-lifestyle-and-a-bit-like-here-just-not-as-pricey/

Just a cool, cool article about how new buyers are taking on the market, and setting the stage for their future in buying new homes. When I think about it, our interest rates our lower, we have less fear of credit, and we know what we want. Plus, after watching the stock market tank a couple times, the technology stock boom and bust, and the crazy antics of enron and others I personally prefer to place my bets in my real estate over the stock market. This story is about New York, but it could just as easily be Denver… except we aren’t as pricey.

What a fun ride we are on. First, the number of people in our country and the world are increasing every day. Second, folks are realizing that the city is where they want to be and are relocating to downtowns across the country. And last, it’s just fun to be in the heart of everything.

This story talks about how the current generation is looking at real estate, their homes, and their future. It’s a story I believe in as well.

UNFAZED BY DEBT Luciana and Daniel Hyman are financing 90 percent of their $875,000 Midtown co-op.

The New York Times
By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY
Published: February 4, 2007

DANIEL AND LUCIANA HYMAN are quick to admit that they are insufferably sentimental about how they fell in love. Seated on the half-finished floor of their Midtown co-op, they relate every detail about how they met at a nightclub in Rio de Janiero, how he asked her to move to Manhattan in the sculpture garden at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and how he proposed on a trip to Paris at the Eiffel Tower — well before Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes became engaged at the same spot.

INVESTMENTS Rovic Tomás Martínez and his fiancée, Roz Silbershatz, did lots of research before they put down a deposit on a condominium at the Nina, 450 East 117th Street.
Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

Daniel and Luciana Hyman say that if they ever need to, they can easily rent out their apartment.

But Mr. Hyman, a 27-year-old trader at Credit Suisse First Boston, and Mrs. Hyman, a 24-year-old elementary science teacher at the Grace Church School, lose all of their sentimentality when they talk about real estate.

After online research into the financial state of more than 100 apartment buildings, tours of 30 condos and co-ops and analysis of minutiae like projected future maintenance payments, they recently closed on an $875,000 two-bedroom co-op in Midtown. As owners in a building with relatively lenient policies, like 10 percent down payments and flexible sublets, the Hymans talk about their apartment as a strategic investment that they someday plan to turn into cash.

“We’re more comfortable with taking on debt and paying tomorrow,” Mr. Hyman said. “If the cards topple, you can rent your place out and go somewhere cheaper.”

There is little talk about the apartment as a romantic nest for newlyweds, and in that they are not unusual. Brokers say that younger buyers, especially those under 30, often approach their first home with cold calculation and an appetite for risk more often associated with real estate moguls.

While this approach to buying may be typical of Wall Street analysts and bankers who are used to approaching deals with extensive research, younger buyers with jobs far from financial fields — wedding photographers and advertising executives, for example — are not relying only on the advice of their brokers. In addition, they are coolly investigating the backgrounds of their developers and their buildings’ histories. They treat these purchases first as portfolio diversifiers and only second as homes. With that in mind, they are keeping their money in the bank and borrowing as much as possible.

“You have a new kind of buyer today,” said Dottie Herman, the chief executive of Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate. “Twenty years ago, it was ‘Pay everything off in cash and have no debt.’ Ten years ago, it was ‘Have some debt.’ If they want something now, they figure out a creative way to finance it.”

The mind-set of younger buyers may dominate the patterns of buying in New York City for years to come. Their liberated attitude toward borrowing is helping to keep prices stable. While buyers of the past may have coveted co-ops, younger buyers find condominiums more appealing because they allow for flexible financing and their sales don’t require board approval.

At the same time, younger buyers are exposing themselves to more risk because they are taking on so much debt that if prices fell, they could be caught with no equity in their homes.

“The whole attitude is different today,” said Barbara Fox, the president of the Fox Residential Group in Manhattan, who started her real estate career before these under-30 buyers were born. “These buyers have never lived through bad times.”

Younger buyers have such different approaches to real estate that they are prompting developers to change the way they sell apartments. Some are hyping condominiums with the promise that buyers can eventually rent them out. Others are making sure that their prices are as close as possible to similar projects because they know younger buyers have researched every comparable condominium in the neighborhood before they walk through the door.

Real estate developers and brokers are also using this information to shape how they negotiate deals and approach future projects.

Louise Phillips Forbes, a Halstead broker who represents the converters of 296 East Second Street, sent the developer the feedback she got from a potential buyer about the building’s penthouse, which was lingering on the market. The bidder, a Goldman Sachs investment banker and first-time home buyer, put together a one-and-a-half-page analysis justifying her bid, which was 11 percent lower than the asking price.

She based her case on data from PropertyShark.com, an online real estate company, and interviews with brokers about how long it had taken to sell apartments in five nearby buildings. The bidder argued that she should pay less because it would be harder to resell a luxury apartment on the Lower East Side. The argument was valid enough that Ms. Forbes thought the developer might want to negotiate.

Since then, Ms. Forbes has received three higher offers, and last week, the developer accepted one for the full asking price.

Ms. Forbes said the experience had made her take younger buyers — and their Wall Street bonuses — far more seriously and had made the developer realize how closely younger buyers were examining prices. “He might just need to negotiate on the product,” she said. “It’s a very valid argument.”

Jessica Cohen, the Prudential Douglas Elliman broker who represented the Hymans, said the two dozen text messages she received from them every day was standard for clients in that age group.

She had another couple who were interested in an apartment in a new building visit other projects by the same developer, as well as those built by the same construction company, to examine the quality of the work. One buyer who spent two years looking for an apartment kept thick files on the developers and projects that he had followed.

“They tell me what the developer paid for the land before they walk into the building,” Ms. Cohen said. “My older buyers want me to feed them information. My younger buyers — as much as I give to them — they do more research.”

In the case of Rovic Tomás Martínez, that research extended to all the investments made by developers, not just their real estate holdings. When he and his fiancée, Roz Silbershatz, started to look for a condominium in East Harlem, they subscribed to local real estate trade publications and researched every detail they could about the buildings.

Mr. Tomás, a 24-year-old associate at Morgan Stanley, and Ms. Silbershatz, a 27-year-old publications specialist at Pfizer, visited 10 apartments on the Upper East Side and in East Harlem before they became interested in the Nina condominiums at 450 East 117th Street.

They asked the developer, Martec Development, for more information about the company. They said they were a little concerned when they found out that Martec didn’t have a long track record, but when they learned that its financial backer had stakes in two popular gyms, they felt more comfortable.

They put down a deposit for a 1,000-square-foot one-bedroom loft selling for about $500,000. Mr. Tomás said that while they would probably have bought the apartment anyway, they felt better gathering as much information as they could about their purchase.

“It pretty much eases your mind knowing that someone behind the project has the financial means,” he said.

Some younger buyers go beyond the financials to all of the intangibles that may determine how well an apartment will hold its value.

Naomi LaHaie, a 24-year-old art director in the Connecticut office of an advertising agency, spent six months searching brokers’ Web sites for apartments. Each Sunday, she traveled from Milford, Conn., to visit as many as seven open houses. (Thanksgiving weekend was her only break.)

Even with some help from her parents in putting together a deposit, she knew she would need a roommate, so she looked at places with two similarly sized bedrooms. She ruled out buildings where she found that the doorman on duty was less than friendly, thinking that would make it less attractive to a potential roommate. She also avoided the Lower East Side and the East Village because she thought a quieter neighborhood would be more attractive for resale.

After visiting 61 Manhattan apartments, she recently put down a deposit for a two-bedroom, two-bath condo at 555 West 23rd Street, priced at $1.1 million.

“It was brand-new, and it was all feng shui-ed, and there was a gym, and it was all friendly,” she said. “If the doorman is really friendly, you get a good vibe.”

Nora Ariffin, the Halstead broker who helped Ms. LaHaie find her apartment, said younger buyers were often more willing to search for listings, instead of relying on her to do that. Still, she often encouraged Ms. LaHaie to let her follow up to weed out apartments with problems. Ms. Ariffin said she had not run into this situation with older buyers.

“The younger buyers like Naomi will do their own research,” Ms. Ariffin said. “They’re more adventurous. Older buyers haven’t e-mailed me listings outside of what their parameters are. In general, they don’t do their research as much as Naomi was.”

The Hymans, while leading a reporter on a Saturday morning through the dimly lighted rooms of their new apartment at 140 West 58th Street, peppered their talk of romance with mentions of their extensive research and of Excel spreadsheets that calculate the monthly costs of their new home.

They visited two other apartments in the building to compare how those units were laid out and to determine what renovations would increase the value of their apartment. They chose a sponsor-owned co-op over the other units partly because it would allow them to put down only 10 percent and bypass board approval. They found a mortgage broker who managed to knock a quarter of a percentage point off their mortgage.

After the couple spent $35,000 on a number of changes, including expanding the closet in the master bedroom and installing new floors, Mr. Hyman predicted that they could easily rent the place out and cover the mortgage.

His wife is ready for any move. “His work can take us many places,” she said. “I can teach English as a second language.”

While many buyers under 30 are getting financial help from their families, they are also turning to aggressive financing. Data collected by the National Association of Realtors show that nearly 65 percent of first-time home buyers finance more than 95 percent of the cost. A first-time buyer is also far more likely to have a mortgage that begins with an attractive interest rate and adjusts periodically.

Because co-ops in New York often require deposits of 20 percent, younger buyers tend to look at condominiums that require only about 10 percent and allow for creative types of mortgages.

In the most extreme cases, Joseph Gallagher, a Corcoran Group broker in Brooklyn, has had clients with high credit scores finance everything, even their closing costs. He finds that some developers are willing to take down payments as low as 5 percent to fill their apartments.

In the wake of the recent record Wall Street bonus season, brokers say that buyers who have made enough money to put down 20 percent are choosing to keep their money in their pockets.

“Younger buyers want to retain their cash,” Mr. Gallagher said. “They don’t want to empty their bank accounts for a deposit. They want to finance 100 percent if possible.”

One of his clients, Charlotte Lewis, a Brooklyn-based photographer, was more conservative than most about financing her condo. She spent six months looking at nearly two dozen apartments in Brooklyn. With her savings and help from her parents, she put down 20 percent for a $340,000 one-bedroom on the outer edges of Williamsburg that she thought was distinctive enough to retain its value, even in an area with many new buildings.

She sought help from a mortgage broker in her rental building to negotiate the best interest rate, and now pays about $1,630 a month. But even with all this thoughtful research, she rattled her family when she told them about the kind of mortgage she had chosen for what she considers a five-year investment.

“My parents freaked out when I said I was doing a seven-year, interest-only ARM,” she said. “They’ve always bought properties that they’ve owned for life.”

In the end, they agreed with her that it was smarter to own than to rent — they even paid for the crown moldings. Since she moved in December, Ms. Lewis has painted her walls a creamy Edgecomb gray and has framed watercolors she painted as a child. She’s feeling more comfortable with her decision every day.

“I really think that real estate will not go down,” she said. “At the very least, it will stay the same. In the meantime, I need a place to live. So the worst-case scenario still isn’t that bad.”

]]> http://www.theurbanbrain.com/denver/index.php/2007/02/05/young-fearless-buyers-a-cool-take-on-manhattan-lifestyle-and-a-bit-like-here-just-not-as-pricey/feed/ 1 http://www.theurbanbrain.com/denver/index.php/2007/01/09/apple-announces-iphone/ http://www.theurbanbrain.com/denver/index.php/2007/01/09/apple-announces-iphone/#comments Tue, 09 Jan 2007 19:08:28 +0000 mike http://www.theurbanbrain.com/denver/2007/01/09/apple-announces-iphone/

It’s amazing how quickly things change. Just over a year ago I was a total PC fan, using the database management tools. Then a buddy I know, Chris, told me I would be on an apple platform when I moved down here to work on the launch of Glass House. I think he was shocked that I was actually excited to try it out.

And guess what, I loved it. So much so that today when he told me that Macworld was announcing the Iphone I did backflips. He found this great blog where someone actually at Macworld is taking photos and blogging the announcement real time. Key features that were announced today…

1: No buttons, the screen adapts for what you want
2 The screen adjusts from portrait to landscape as you turn it
3: Detects when you are putting it up to your face and turns off flatscreen
4: Feeds for maps, weather
5: Free Yahoo push mail or blackberry feed

And as of this posting the folks at engadget.com are still doing announcements and the photo credit for the above pic is to them… so check out this blog at www.engadget.com to track it.

I am so excited to try this out and ditch my razr!! I called cingular and they don’t have it in their profile yet, but they announced it will work with cingular. I checked with the apple store and they are expecting some news in a few hours. Chris heard that it might not be until June due to FCC approval. Either way, its cool.

Apple also has announced the specs here.

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