Slides That Follow Your Voice: New York Accent Open House

Slide 1: The whole apartment

0:17Okay, come in, come in, shoes are fine, the floors have survived ninety-seven years, they'll survive you. [laughs] I'm Renata, I have the listing, and I'm going to walk you through the whole apartment in about fifteen minutes, and then I'm going to stand in the Uh... the kitchen and let you argue with each other in private, because, listen, that's where the real decision gets made.

0:42So. This is a two-bedroom, one-bath, in a nineteen twenty-eight co-op, eleven hundred and forty square feet, which in this building is a lot, because the architect, whoever he was, believed in hallways. You're standing in one. It's twenty-two feet long. People put bookshelves here. One owner put a canoe here. No? It was a canoe. Okay. It's on the floor plan, I'm not making that up, and it's why the ceiling in the front hall has been redone twice.

Slide 2: The floor plan

1:15Living room. Three windows, facing south, over the courtyard, so you get light all day and you don't get the avenue. The radiators are original, they're cast iron, they work, and they uh, knock twice in October when the boiler comes on for the first time, which the super describes as the building saying hello.

Slide 3: Living room

1:37The parquet is original too, the previous owner refinished it in twenty twenty-one, and if you look very carefully by the window you can see where a dog named Biscuit lived for fourteen years. Biscuit is fine. Biscuit moved to the suburbs. [chuckles] There's a photo of Biscuit if you need one. There's a photo of every dog in this building. It's not part of the job. It's, I don't know what it is. Moving on.

2:05Kitchen. Renovated in twenty eighteen, no, nineteen, so you're not going to tear it out, and if you do, please don't tell me, I was there for the renovation and I have feelings about the tile. Gas range, dishwasher that fits full-size plates, which is not a given in a nineteen twenty-eight kitchen, and a window, which is also not a given.

Slide 4: Kitchen, renovated 2019

2:30There's no island. There's no room for an island. If someone tells you that you can put an island here, they're selling you something, here, they're selling you something, and it's not this apartment.

2:44Bed, the bedrooms, okay. Bedrooms. The primary is fourteen by twelve, fits a king bed with room to walk around it, two closets, one of them cedar. Yes, open it, that's the cedar one. Smell that. That's nineteen twenty-eight. Okay. The second bedroom is eleven by ten, which is a real bedroom and not a closet with ambition, and it has the best window in the apartment, looking at the one tree in the courtyard that everyone in this building has an opinion about.

Slide 5: Bedrooms and bath

3:18The tree's a honey locust. Half the building wants it trimmed, half wants it left, and the super waters it at six in the morning so nobody sees him take a side. I'm not taking a side either. The window's good. That's all I'll say.

3:34The bathroom is original tile, black and white, in good condition, and the tub is a cast iron tub that would cost you four thousand dollars to replace and three men to carry, so you keep it.

3:48Numbers. The maintenance is twenty-three ten a month, it was twenty-two ninety last year, it went up in July, which includes heat, hot water, and the super, who's been here thirty-one years and knows which pipe is which by sound. The building allows seventy-five percent financing, it allows dogs under forty pounds, it allows pied-à-terre on a case-by-case basis, and the board interview is, I'm told, friendly, which in this city means they'll only ask about your finances twice. [laughs]

Slide 6: Numbers: 2,310 a month

4:22The asking is on the sheet. It's a real number. The sellers have a new job in another city, they want to close by spring, and they told me straight out they'd take a clean offer over a high one.

Slide 7: It's a real number.

4:38That's the tour. I'll be in the kitchen. [sighs] I sat on that floor myself, first time I saw this place, eleven years ago, with the previous listing, and I didn't buy it, and I was going to say something about that, and, no. It's a good floor. Go sit on it.