Real Estate

Millennials now make up the largest group of homebuyers in the United States. Amy Plitt is the editor of Curbed New York. She discusses trends that buyers and sellers need to know about.

Spring home-buying season is almost here. Grant Long of StreetEasy expects this to be a busy spring season. A lot of listings will come on the market in March and a really big wave will hit in April and May. Last year was a really big spring buying season, he says, because a lot of sellers decided it was the right time to list. More than 12,000 units were listed on StreetEasy in March, April and May 2018.

To rent or to buy? To sell or to hold? Where will you find the best real estate deals in New York this year? StreetEasy senior economist Grant Long says prices are continuing to fall in a lot of places in the city and buyers continue to have the upper hand in negotiations.

A day after Gov. Cuomo announced that he intended to avert a full shut down of the L-train and instead have repairs done during nights and weekends, calls started coming into Can Nomer, the director of leasing at Level, a 554-unit high-rise on the waterfront in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

A mortgage is one of the things that can improve your credit score over the long term. But what happens to your credit when you first buy a home? According to a new study from LendingTree, expect a short-term dip.​​​​​​​ Tendayi Kapfidze, Chief Economist at LendingTree, says when you take out a loan to buy a home, your credit falls for about 4-5 months.

President Donald Trump's former lawyer, Michael Cohen, confessed in a surprise guilty plea Thursday that he lied to Congress about a Moscow real estate deal he pursued on Trump's behalf during the heat of the 2016 Republican campaign. He said he lied to be consistent with Trump's "political messaging."

If those in Long Island City, Queens, failed to recognize the climbing canyons of high-rises and surging rents in their neighborhood as a boom, the arrival of the headquarters of Amazon should surely convince them.

Twenty current and former residents of one of the largest buildings owned by the Kushner Cos. allege in a $10 million lawsuit that the firm used relentless, noisy construction that exposed them to cancer-causing dust as part of a campaign to get rent-stabilized tenants out and high-priced luxury condo buyers in.

At the end of May, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the creation of a new advisory commission to change the city's property tax system. It would make it easier to understand, fairer and simpler without taking away money from the city services.

Are homeowners in one town in Rockland County, New York, being pressured to sell? State officials seem to think so after looking into the issue. Magali Dupuy of Chestnut Ridge told Fox 5 that representatives for the ultra-orthodox Jewish community have been pressuring her and many others to sell their homes to them and is grateful that the state is getting involved.

The old real estate saying is location, location, location. But that's not the only thing that can help sell a house. How you present your home for an open house and your real estate listing can make a huge difference in its selling price. You can get over $5,000 more if you have a light blue bathroom, according to Zillow.com. You can lose $2,000 if your home is too dark. And in New York, you'll get a 20 percent premium if you have heated or herringbone floors.

Remember when Brooklyn was affordable? Those days seem to be over. In the first quarter of 2018, one in three Brooklyn neighborhoods hit a record high, according to Grant Long, a senior economist at StreetEasy. The three most expensive neighborhoods in New York City by median sales price are Tribeca, SoHo, and Carroll Gardens, according to StreetEasy. The average recorded sales price in Carroll Gardens in the first quarter of this year was $2.2 million. Several other Brooklyn neighborhoods aren't far behind.

A judge says condominium owners in a New York high-rise called "Trump Place" can stop displaying the name licensed from Donald Trump nearly two decades ago. Thursday's ruling doesn't order the brassy letters removed from the tower overlooking the Hudson River. Rather, the decision clears the way for owners to vote on the issue.

These days, many people use Wi-Fi-enabled cameras and recordings inside their homes. Watching what is going while you're not there can provide peace of mind. Nowadays, if you are in the market to buy an apartment or a home, the seller may be watching you and listening to what you say.

If you rent a home in New York City, you already know we have some of the highest rents in the country. Now, finally, some promising news: rents are starting to come down a little, according to a report by appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and brokerage firm Douglas Elliman Real Estate.

Lord & Taylor's flagship store in Manhattan, known for its holiday displays along Fifth Avenue, is being sold to the office space sharing company WeWork.

A pioneer in online real estate, StreetEasy changed the way New Yorkers house hunt. But with the site's recent decision to charge a broker fee to list apartments, many are now wondering if it will continue to be the service for the largest rental audience in the city.

Now that summer is here, the rental market is heating up in New York City, but prices are cooling off. So we've got some advice for finding a great place during the busiest time of the year. StreetEasy spokeswoman Lauren Riefflin says median rents have plateaued, but they're still expensive and she doesn't expect that to change anytime soon. Lauren says thousands of studio and one-bedroom apartments are on StreetEasy for $2,000 per month or less throughout the five boroughs.

The housing market is hot this summer with more buyers than available homes. A seller's market means prices are rising. So are younger buyers priced out? With home prices near highs and interest rates rising, very few bargains are out there. In the New York City metro area the average home costs around $400,000, according to StreetEasy's senior economist Grant Long. That is making it tough for millennials to jump into home ownership.

Rachel Koenig, a licensed associate real estate broker; and Heather Harrison, executive VP & Co-Founder, Platinum Drive Realty, discuss the pros and cons to living in the city versus living in the suburbs.