 |  The Brooklyn Botanic Garden features a wide variety of flowering cherry trees this time of year. Check out the Hanami Nights Festival below! | | Weighing in On Broker's Commissions Many people have seen the recent news about the lawsuit that now ensures that people who are selling their homes have complete discretion about how to apportion broker fees, specifically whether or not to cover the buyer's broker's commission in addition to their own broker. My take: Despite the fact that historically the seller has been paying the buyer's broker fee, in reality the buyer pays that fee because it is factored into the price. Therefore, for a buyer to consider paying their own broker, they would want to pay less for the home since they will be facing a closing cost that cannot be funded through their mortgage loan. I have been recommending to my sellers this year to pay the full buyer's side commission because of the reasons stated above - and also to provide an incentive for the both the buyer and their broker to more strongly consider purchasing the property. | The State of the Real Estate Market: Buy Now or Wait? The declining sales activity in March (see the quarter 1 Manhattan report below) suggests some would be home buyers have decided to pause to wait for a better environment for purchasing a home. This can be flawed thinking because it is hard to predict the market conditions and when they do change, it is easy to end up playing "catch up" to the latest trend. ▪ Sales prices are down slightly in general - around 4% year over year - so there are opportunities out there.
▪ Waiting for a "better" market with lower interest rates may result in more buyers entering the market. More competition and demand translates into higher prices.
▪ At some point mortgages can be refinanced at a lower rate.
▪ Rents continue to trend upwards, especially as we enter the Spring/Summer season.
| ▪ | Sales prices are down slightly in general - around 4% year over year - so there are opportunities out there. | | ▪ | Waiting for a "better" market with lower interest rates may result in more buyers entering the market. More competition and demand translates into higher prices. | | ▪ | At some point mortgages can be refinanced at a lower rate. | | ▪ | Rents continue to trend upwards, especially as we enter the Spring/Summer season. | | | Hold the Date! Home Buyer's Event Thursday, May 9th, 6:30pm - 8:00pm | The Bixi, 2164 Frederick Douglass Blvd. at 117th Street (B/C to 116th). Enjoy a nosh and a sip on The Corcoran Group as we unlock the process of purchasing a home in NYC! Brief presentations by top experts covering mortgages, legal aspects of the real estate purchase, and I will speak about opportunities in the buying market. Space is limited. RSVP to hank.orenstein@corcoran.com |  One of the performers at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden's Hanami Nights: Yosakoi Dance. | | Tuesday, April 23–Thursday, April 25, 2024, 5:00–8:30 p.m. Cherry Esplanade (Ticketed Event) Enjoy magical access to the Garden’s famous Kanzan trees!
Find a spot on Cherry Esplanade to enjoy the cherry blossoms, lit up for maximum effect, and savor the spring vibe with family and friends. Stroll in the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden and along Cherry Walk, try your hand at origami, and view a curated display of bonsai in the Lillian and Amy Goldman Atrium. The evenings feature live performances, a bar selling Japanese beer and sake, and pop-up food menus curated with Sunrise Mart. Advance tickets required. Special discounts for Garden members. | April 15–30, 2024 | Various Locations The New York Public Library's World Literature Festival shines a spotlight on books, writers, artists, and thinkers from around the globe and reflects some of the many languages spoken in our city's diverse communities. Join the Library to discover free events and programs, book recommendations, resources, and more for all ages, in a range of world languages! World Literature Festival happens concurrently with NYC's Immigrant Heritage Week (April 14–20). Monday, April 15th at 6:30pm (in-person and online) Join poets Camonghne Felix, Dorothea Lasky, Emanuel Xavier, and moderator Helena de Groot for readings and lively discussion about poetry, language, and labor. From day to day labor to the work of writing, this conversation explores the way poetry embodies work, using our multicultural city’s rich labor history as the backdrop. Pioneering home recording artist Linda Smith will close out the event with a special musical performance. Last Monday of Every Month Through October Free with RSVP This April, Jazz at Lincoln Center celebrates Jazz Appreciation Month, spotlighting the rich history behind our music and the diverse voices shaping its legacy. Join us in the House of Swing and via our virtual community as we pay tribute to this incredible art form. Among the highlights are the Sarah Vaughn Centennial April 19-20 featuring Dee Dee Bridgewater |  Congressmember Shirley Chisholm announced her candidacy for President in 1972. Photo Libary of Congress | | Available on Netflix Starring Oscar Winner Regina King Shirley tells the story of the first Black congresswoman, political icon Shirley Chisholm, and her trailblazing run for president as the first Black candidate to seek the nomination by a major political party. It chronicles her audacious, boundary-breaking 1972 presidential campaign. Chisholm’s campaign slogan, “Unbought and Unbossed,” reflected her individual spirit and a promise to voters that she would work for them, rather than for wealthy special interests. It was also the title of her 1970 autobiography. | Jane’s Walk is an annual global festival held the first weekend in May. Jane’s Walk NYC, organized by the Municipal Art Society (MAS) of New York, is the largest chapter of the festival anywhere in the world. MAS staff organize a fleet of volunteer walk leaders, to create 175+ FREE, in-person, virtual, and on-demand walks with over 10,000 participants. During Jane’s Walk NYC weekend, the simple act of exploring the city is enhanced with personal observations, local history, and civic engagement. Jane’s Walk NYC encourages people to share stories about their neighborhoods, discover unseen aspects of their communities, and connect with visitors and neighbors alike. The 2024 festival roster of walks will be published in early-April.
The walk I am leading will be Friday, May 3rd in the afternoon: Washington Heights and Sugar Hill (featuring the Audubon Park and Jumel Terrace Historic Districts). | | Hank's Picks for Art Gallery Exhibits |  "What Was Once Familiar" Unique Exhibit at the National Arts Club. Image by Thomas Sgouros | | Hollis Taggart Gallery, 521 West 26th Street Through April 20 A survey of works by historic female artists who were members of the National Association of Women Artists (NAWA), in celebration of the organization's 135th anniversary. This exhibition will be selected by the personnel of the Hollis Taggart gallery. While honoring NAWA, the exhibition is organized in accordance with the standard practice of a commercial art gallery – that is, the art will be chosen on the basis of quality and sales potential. Because of the significant reputation of the Hollis Taggart gallery, the artists chosen will not only represent NAWA in an important Manhattan venue, but will additionally receive the visibility and potential career benefit of display within a major commercial art venue. 508 West 26th Street, Suite 9F Through April 18, 2024 Joan Thorne is a NYC-based artist who has been painting since the 1970's. The works in this exhibit includes recent paintings from 2022-2024. Her compositions are organically derived from her thinking about the marks and colors combined with conveying space and depth within each composition while also unifying the emerging shapes that must be in dialog with one another. 513 West 20th Street Through April 20 Jack Shainman Gallery presents Born Black, an exhibition of Gordon Parks’s photographs—curated in collaboration with The Gordon Parks Foundation. This presentation is inspired by the 1971 book Gordon Parks: Born Black, A Personal Report on the Decade of Black Revolt 1960-1970, which brought together a collection of essays and photographs by Parks that were originally created for Life magazine. 545 West 25th Street Through April 20 Marlborough New York is pleased to present an exhibition of the Japanese-born Swiss painter, Teruko Yokoi. The exhibition will also mark the artist’s first ever solo presentation in New York and the first exhibition since the artist’s passing in 2020. Teruko Yokoi’s story is one of courage and tenacity. She arrived in the United States of America as an outsider and persevered through barriers of race and gender.(Marlborough New York). |  Image courtesy of the Brooklyn Paramount Theater | | Through December 8, 2024 The experience of walking El Barrio—the Museum of the City of New York’s own neighborhood—would be vastly different without the artworks of Manny Vega (b. Bronx, 1956). His mosaics and murals adorn street walls, subway stations, cultural centers, and business facades throughout East Harlem. Many of these works celebrate important figures—particularly women—in the history of the Puerto Rican and Latinx communities. Vega has proven himself deft at negotiating the sophisticated tastes and appetite for spectacle of an extremely diverse and fast-moving population. His style has been dubbed “Byzantine Hip-Hop” for his uncompromising technical command that encompasses ancient Mediterranean mosaic-making and the electrifying lines of hyper-detailed Sharpie pen-and-ink drawings (MOCNY). | Through April 20 Nara Roesler New York presents Angelo Venosa's first solo show in New York City, curated by Vik Muniz. The exhibition features around twenty works executed in the last years of his career, between 2015 and 2021, as well as a set of studies and small-scale works produced by the artist using 3D printing technology. Although he began his artistic career amid the 80s Generation in Rio de Janeiro, Venosa dedicated himself to sculpture, differing from most of the artists of his generation, who were marked by their return to painting. His works in wood, wrapped in fabric, resin, and fiberglass, or composed of beeswax and teeth, evoke unusual volumes, housing an ambiguous temporality, emanating references to ancient eras. Through April 26 National Arts Club, 15 Gramercy Park South Since 2013, the Vision and Art Project, an initiative of the American Macular Degeneration Foundation, has been actively supporting artists with macular degeneration and researching macular degeneration’s influence on art. Among others, such notable figures as Georgia O’Keeffe and Edgar Degas are known to have developed the disease and adapted their working methods in ways that allowed them to continue working in their studios. Regardless of how dramatic the effect, artists working with vision loss usually change their approach to artmaking. |  Artist Teruko Yokoi photographed at her home at The Chelsea Hotel, New York, 1959 (Courtesy of Marlborough New York) | | Get excited New York, spring is here! This month, as the flowers bloom so do a host of new exhibits and art programs around the city for visitors and locals to check out. Here are the must-see art installations to look out for this April | April 12 - May 12 Lenfest Center of the Arts, 615 West 129th Street Columbia University School of the Arts presents an expanded festival of new plays written by Columbia MFA Playwriting Students. The esteemed faculty who have nurtured these students, including Tony©, Pulitzer, and Obie Award winners such as James Ijames, Rebecca Taichman, Sarah DeLappe, Steve Martin, Will Eno, Karey Kirkpatrick and David Henry Hwang invite you to experience these innovative new playwrights. | Juilliard presents more than 700 performances annually in music, dance, and drama annually—tickets are all $45 or less; many are free. 2023-24 Season of More Than 700 Music, Dance, and Drama performances by College and Preparatory Division Students at Juilliard and Venues Across New York City and Beyond, With Companion Livestreaming and New On-Demand Platform | Various Libraries Around NYC The New York Public Library celebrates Arab American Heritage Month throughout April with recommended reading, free events and programs, and a wide array of resources for all ages. Join us at branches for book discussions, arts and crafts, film screenings, language classes, and more. Plus, dive into manuscripts, fine art, and historical newspapers from our collections with a new research guide focused on early Arabic-speaking communities in New York City. |  Kelly Wang, Red Lotus 1 Ink, xuan paper, pigment and resin on aluminum, at Alisan Fine Arts. | | National Arts Club, 15 Gramercy Park South Wednesday, April 24th at 7:00 pm. (free with registration. Join acclaimed writer Carol Kino to explore the fascinating, rich and captivating history of pioneering sister fashion photographers Frances McLaughlin-Gill and Kathryn Abbe in her new book DOUBLE CLICK: Twin Photographers in the Golden Age of Magazines. This riveting blend of biography and cultural reportage documents the inspirational and ground-breaking journey of two women whose rise to prominence during New York’s glamorously glossy heyday of the late 1930s and 40s helped usher in a new world for women in media through the events of World War II and beyond. | Prospect Park Boathouse, Saturday, April 20th 2:30 - 4:00 pm In this lecture, you will explore the origins of salsa music in the South Bronx through its sound and its connection to the territory. You will discover the people who created the new genre from the traditional Latin music brought to NYC by the Caribbean immigrants who settled in the Bronx from 1940 to 1980. The participants in the lecture will receive Sursystem Magazine 08, where they can read, listen to music, and follow the tour of the places where salsa was forged on the map. By the end of the lecture, you will have a general idea of how Salsa music emerged and how the Afro-Caribbean immigration added a new musical culture to NYC. Music by Adrain Patino aka Adrian is Hungry. Wednesday, April 24, 6:30–8:30 pm. Searching for Augusta Savage, a new documentary about the acclaimed Harlem Renaissance sculptor, art educator, and The Cooper Union School of Art alumna, screens as part of the Gardiner Foundation Great Hall Forum series. Following the screening, the film’s creators, Charlotte Mangin and Sandra Rattley of Audacious Women Productions, are joined by curators Jeffreen M. Hayes, Ph.D., and Tammi Lawson for a conversation about Savage’s life and work, including why many of her works of art have been lost or destroyed and why evidence of her accomplishments appears to have been erased. The documentary is part of American Masters Shorts, a new PBS digital-first documentary short series. | Hot Off the Presses! First Quarter Manhattan Sales Market Report Check out the full 23-page report here: The report contains data on different sections of Manhattan along with coop, condo, new development, apartment size and price ranges. Manhattan’s tough market continued in First Quarter 2024, but there were glimmers of hope despite high mortgage rates, rising homeownership costs, and world events. Closed sales fell but only slightly; signed contracts grew in January and February before pulling back in March; tight inventory marginally expanded; and prices adjusted to lower budgets. In a market eager to recover, the start of 2024 suggested a market in flux but poised for earnest improvement. Low supply and the lack of fresh inventory remain key challenges in the market today. During First Quarter 2024, roughly 6,300 units were listed in Manhattan, up 2% year-over-year but still 15% below the five-year first quarter average. Manhattan prices fell across-the-board in First Quarter 2024. Buyer hesitancy and price sensitivity plus even higher mortgage rates than last year pushed sales to lower price points and more affordable areas, which combined with few super-prime closings to drive pricing lower. Median price slid year-over-year for the sixth time in eight quarters, down 5% to a four-year low. Overall, Manhattan prices are comparable to the level seen from 2014 to 2016. Though First Quarter 2024 results were mixed, the early-in-the-quarter uptick in contracts suggests pent-up demand is building in the marketplace. As we enter Second Quarter, we’re hoping for positive turns of events for mortgage rates, the economy, and world events that will draw buyers and sellers waiting on the sidelines back into the market for a springtime boost. | Brooklyn Q1 Sales Market Report Read the full report here: ▪ 1Q 2024 experienced signs of potential improvement. Borough-wide sale and pricing statistics all grew versus a year ago, suggesting that Brooklyn remains both a market in demand and on the verge of a meaningful rebound.
▪ Closings rose 13% annually to almost 1,300 sales. The 6% quarterly increase is also in line with the typical seasonal rise in closings.
▪ New development sales surged 40% YOY as several buildings closed around 20 units apiece.
▪ With the increase in closings and uptick in pricing, sales volume this quarter rose 21% annually to $1.3B.
| ▪ | 1Q 2024 experienced signs of potential improvement. Borough-wide sale and pricing statistics all grew versus a year ago, suggesting that Brooklyn remains both a market in demand and on the verge of a meaningful rebound. | | ▪ | Closings rose 13% annually to almost 1,300 sales. The 6% quarterly increase is also in line with the typical seasonal rise in closings. | | ▪ | New development sales surged 40% YOY as several buildings closed around 20 units apiece. | | ▪ | With the increase in closings and uptick in pricing, sales volume this quarter rose 21% annually to $1.3B. | | February Residential Rental Market Report - Manhattan and Brooklyn Read the Full Report here: “In Manhattan, landlords continue to push the envelope in terms of pricing. February’s median rent rose both from January and year-over-year to reach $4,500 per month — matching the all-time high seen last spring. Signed leases declined when compared to January and last year, which could mean some tenants simply feel priced out of the borough’s current market. However, it is interesting to note that the number of reported leases in Manhattan doorman buildings rose 10% on an annual basis despite overall leasing activity slowing over the same period, which is evidence that more tenants are seeking ‘premium’ apartments. Many in this contingent are likely would-be buyers who are waiting on the sidelines for more favorable interest rates and have chosen to upgrade their rental in the meantime. In Brooklyn, the median rent of $3,950 remained unchanged from January but climbed 13% year-over-year. The number of signed leases dipped over both periods, but only slightly — a sign that higher rents in the borough haven’t yet had a significant impact on tenants’ willingness to transact.” | Upcoming Walking Tours For more information, email me at hank.orenstein@corcoran.com Saturday, April 20: Earth Day Walk in Hudson Heights & Inwood
Saturday, April 27: Bay Ridge, Brooklyn
Saturday, May 4th: Jackson Heights, Queens | | |
