New York Values #6 - Clean Trains

Today I’m going to be optimistic. It may have snowed yesterday, but it’s still kinda spring (April showers, yo!). The trains may be awful, but they can only improve from here (because Cuomo wants to keep his job). A woman on my commute may have cussed out another person on the D and then started reading “What does the Bible Teach Us?”, but no one sat on or shoved me (Jesus would be so proud). 

OK, maybe I’m still a little negative about the trains, but today was a good commute day overall, and the process of keeping the cars not-totally-disgusting was also featured in NY Today’s email blast. 

If you’ve taken the subway home late at night, you’ve probably seen the track sweeping/vacuum cars, or the garbage hauling cars clearing the tracks. You may, like myself, have accidentally ended up in a station they were power-washing the platform with bleach. You’ve also, maybe without noticing, found yourself on cars in very different states of cleanliness. But you’ve probably never seen or even heard about the massive cleaning endeavor that happens once every 2.5 months.

In one of 13 facilities around the city, dirty subway cars are scrubbed top to bottom, an individual cleaner spending 3.5 hours scraping gum off seats; polishing the doors and poles; erasing graffiti with “Genie Wipes”; and killing the massive amounts of (mostly harmless) bacteria that call these cesspools home. Worth noting: they use Fabuloso, the cleaner also championed by my bodega The outside of the trains are pressure washed more often, once per month, so just because a train looks good on the outside doesn’t mean it’s clean inside!

As a horrifying thought experiment, can you even imagine the condition of the trains would be without this? From the adults who insist on eating fried rice en route, to the people throwing trash (or throwing up) on the floor, to the children who ooze germs on everything they touch, it would be next-level gross. It’s like if we didn’t have street cleaning — how many feet of garbage would cover my block? Maybe 25? Thanks, New York, for acknowledging how disgusting we are and helping us mediate it. 

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This real estate value is about this commercial:

This commercial bothered me immediately, because it completely misses the mark on an agent’s role. Yes, we should be helping you choose places to view, but that is far from the biggest job! We are supposed to help you GET the place you want. Nowadays, nearly all listings are available online and consumer searchable, especially sales, because a seller wants as many eyes on a property as possible in order to get the best price. Off-market listings are not entirely a thing of the past, but they’re rare, so the era of needing insider info is largely behind us. 

There are plenty of reasons you shouldn’t just go with the first broker in the phonebook (are phonebooks still a thing?), but “they won’t show you what you really want” isn’t high on that list. It falls squarely behind “they won’t be professional,” “they won’t provide value; they’re just looking to make a commission,” “they won’t listen,” and, the very worst, “they dropped the ball putting in an offer/closing and I lost a place because of it.”

So definitely shop around and work with someone you trust, but also know that this commercial is silly and manipulative. 

New York Values #3 - Snow

Last week’s NY Value was long and rambling, so today’s will be short and sweet (and full of facts). Since we are currently experiencing our third snowstorm in the month of March, it focuses on how good the city is at handling winter.

Stats from https://gearpatrol.com/2015/11/19/how-nyc-prepares-for-blizzards/ and https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/14/nyregion/blizzard-winter-storm-stella.html

New York City is home to 8.538 million people driving on 6,500 linear miles of roads. The city has 3,000 snow plowing routes, with more than 1,500 plows and over 500 salt spreaders. There are 29 permanent and 14 seasonal sites storing 300,500 tons of salt rock to prepare for each winter. 

From Mid-November to early April, city sanitation workers—who are also responsible for the snow removal process—switch to 12 hour round-the-clock shifts, meaning there will always be a team ready if a snowstorm kicks up, day or night. They receive winter preparedness training anually before this schedule change. 

Image courtesy of Business Insider

Once 2” of snow collect on a roadway they start plowing via a three tier system of attack. First are the dedicated first responder routes that connect hospitals, NYPD, and FDNY to major public streets, densely populated areas, JFK, and LaGuardia. Tier two is all side streets, followed by tier three's dead-end roads and limited-access streets. At 6” of accumulation, they also break out the haulers and industrial melters to remove plowed snow.

When a BLIZZARD hits, they open up a 130 seat “war room” in BK Heights where reps from energy, infrastructure, sanitation, etc. meet in one room to coordinate the attack. When interviewed about their storm approach, Edward Grayson, COO of the Bureau for Cleaning and Collection, explained that it's better to overcommit than leave the city’s population vulnerable. And in today’s weird, hyper-everyone-for-themselves America, that is a beautiful thing. Thanks, NY, for committing to me so hard. 

Image via Vivienne Gucwa

And now for the extremely long-winded part: your real estate value.

For today’s real estate value, I’m addressing some questions I’ve encountered in tenant-side rentals. These are things that I didn’t understand before starting classes, so it makes sense that there would be confusion. To clear it up, I’m answering the questions I’ve gotten below. For these purposes, “broker” means any kind of real estate agent (next week I’ll explain the different kinds):

FIRST AND FOREMOST: If I use a broker, will I pay extra? 
NO!!!! If you are viewing an apartment by responding to an ad, attending an open house, or contacting a listing you saw online, YOU WILL BE PAYING THE FEE REGARDLESS OF WHETHER YOU BRING YOUR OWN BROKER TO THE TABLE. Let me say that again: YOU WILL BE PAYING THE FEE WHETHER YOU REACH OUT YOURSELF OR GO THROUGH A BROKER. In fact, you will likely end up paying MORE if you reach out solo, because you are not being represented, and are now dealing with someone who has the landlord’s interests in mind rather than yours. It’s like turning down a court appointed lawyer and representing yourself; you are missing out on an expert’s help in the hopes of saving money when it’s actually free. And, unlike a court appointee, you get to CHOOSE your broker (i.e. me). 

What about no fee apartments, though? 
No fee apartments are divided into different categories, some with the landlord paying a fee, some with the fee baked into the rent. Even if you're dead set on limiting your search to no fee places, you should still talk to a broker you trust first (emphasis on trust). Depending on the place, there are a few things you need to look out for, which I may discuss further in a later post. 

But if I can find all these places on my own on Street Easy, why would I use a broker? 
Again, it’s like representing yourself at trial: you don’t save any money and you are likely to make a mistake or miss out on an opportunity. You don’t pay a broker to FIND you apartments; there are millions of apartments and you have access to most of them online. You pay a broker to GET you the apartment. We have relationships with others in the industry; we know how to make your application most attractive and nip any issues in the bud. Also, many NY rental listings are in co-op and condo buildings, meaning your agent will need to put together a massive stack of paperwork and deal with the building’s board. This is complicated, precise, and should be done by a professional you trust, not whomever happens to be representing the apartment’s owner. 

But I don’t want to pay a fee. I shouldn’t have to pay to get a new apartment!
Why not? I see the train of thought: you may have found the apt yourself; you walked in there and decided you wanted it; you got all your documents together. But, as discussed above, that’s only the tip of the iceberg, and a broker has to do the rest. There may be a low barrier of entry to be a real estate agent, but it's still a barrier! If you really want to avoid paying, you’ll need to take (and pay for) the 75 hour course plus two exams, find a broker willing to sponsor your license, and pay the licensing fee as well as REBNY dues. You’ll have spent over a hundred hours and may save about $500. I’m not a lawyer, doctor, or CPA, but I still had to go to "school" for this, and I still provide a valuable service.

My friend is the broker; they need to give me a discount!
Again, I see the logic here. Why wouldn’t you get a friends and family discount?  It’s not that simple, though. The fee you pay does not go directly to your friend. Depending on the apartment, I may only be getting 25% of what you shell out. So if you insist on a price cut, I either have to get everyone else on board, or essentially work for free. Can I come to your place of business and ask you for free shit? If so, please let me know where you work and I’ll be there! Joking aside, I now work 100% on commission. That’s exciting but terrifying. Think about your friends who are creative freelancers; would you ask them to film a video or build a website for you for free? Well, maybe you would, but that's an issue, and Fiverr has an entire ad campaign surrounding that! Respect your friends’ jobs and skills by paying them for their work. 

But it’s so expensive!
Yeah, it is. Moving in this city IS expensive! So are gym memberships. But I can’t guilt Equinox into waiving its fees for me. Moving in NY, at least if you want to be on a lease, is an ordeal. And you should be ready for that. Even without the broker fees, you still need first, last, deposit, application fee, credit check fee, and moving costs, potentially plus an additional move-in fee for condos or co-ops. If all of this is too much, you’re probably better off finding a room in a shared apt. There is nothing wrong with that! It's how I moved here! It just won’t get you on a lease.

I've been asked more questions in this vein, but instead of writing another 1,000 words I’ll instead leave you with Compass’s NY rental guide (linked here) and circle back next week. Until then, thanks for reading, tip your waitress, and stay warm out there. 

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