REAL    ESTATE





ĨKi'E(§®^'»røDfln®Ê







B UILDERS





Vol. CII.





NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 7, 1918





No. 10





Many Private Houses East of Central Park Sold





Good Demand This Year for Desirable    Residences
Who  Formerly Lived in Apartments





by   People





By LAWRENCE B. ELLIMAN
of Pease & Elliman.





THE scarcity of well-appointed a])artnieiits has led
to a m'ovement iii real estate that is interesting
and significant and which may easily be pro-
ductive of a great change in conditions in the residence
districts of the city. In the section in which my firm
bperates—south of 96th street and east of Central Park
—there has been, siiice January Ist of this year, a
decided demand by our clients for private houses, and
a considerable number have been sokl to people who
formerly lived in apartments or rented houses in this
or other uptown neighborhoods. The movement
started in a small way, but has grovvn more important
as the season has advanced, and the number of trans-
actions of this character handled by our company and
by other brokers has attained such dimensions as to
indicate a more than ephemeral or sporadic interest in
this class of property.

It is not difîĩcult to find the cause for a growing
change in sentiment of the large number of people who
can afford to Hve in dwelHngs of the more expensive
kind away from the jointly occupied apartment build-
ing towards the privately owned house.

There is, of course, no comparison between the free-
dom and exclusiveness of the latter as compared with
the former. The introduction of modern conveniences
like the private elevator, which puts the liouse on a par
with the apartment so far as faciHty in reaching any
part of the dwelling is concerned, and of the various
mechanical devices in the service part of the house
reducing manual labor, have minimized many of the
objections to the three or four story building as a home.

There is character and exclusiveness in the private
house which cannot Ije successfully emulated by the
apartment building, however fine its appointments.
Especially is it true that the private house affords the
lîctter location for social affairs, and notwithstanding
the great imjjrovement recently made in the planning
of apartments there is no doubt that in the house the
social and living rooms are more effectually segregated
from the service departments.

But while these considerations are now doing their
share towards bringing back recognition of the desira-
biHty of the privately owncd house they are not new,
but are only eft'ective because other things have allowed
their claims to be brought forward. What is, of course,
the real cause for the renewal of interest in private
houses is the lack of apartments such as are usuaHy in
demand by our cHents, ranging in price from about
$2,500 or $3,000 per year up to about $15,000.

Under present war conditions, it is practically out of
the question for any Ijuilder to erect a large apartment
house on account of the uncertainty in gettirig supplies,
building materials and labor, and there wiU be during





the continuance of the war a very great shortage of
such accommodations.

Due to this shortage of new buildings, and also due
to the fact that private house rentals and sales prices
have been radically reduced so that to-day private
houses are relatively very much cheaper than apart-
ments, we beHeve that now is the proper time to lay the
facts before owners of private houses in order that
they can take advantage of this situation.

In the last few years previous to 1918 there have
been built each year in the section referred to an
average of twelve to twenty buildings, say, from 300 to
600 apartments counting thirty apartments to the
building. With a building program of this extent the
supply of apartments kept up fully with the demand,
but this year there has been no new building and only
one which work was started last year has been thrown
open to occupancy. Consequentjy there has been a
great scarcitj^ of apartments to rent.

The demand has been so great and the supply so small
that owners have been able to advance rents from 10
to 15 per cent. Incidentally I may say that this does
not indicate, nor is it, "profiteering." For one thing
it is the working out of the old rule of supply and
demand regulating prices. For another and more
cogent reason it has been necessary for owners to
secure larger incomes to offset the greater operating
expenses so that they might obtain suitable returns on
their investments.

It can be said without successful controversy that
four years ago rents could not have been advanced as
they have been during the war period even although the
landlords were not being adequately paid for their
enterprise in building up the city. There were too many
vacancies at that time and tenants could not be forced
to pay more than they were accustomed to even if the
landlord was out of pocket, but the situation has recti-
fied itself and justly so. At that time the apartment
house had tremendous vogue, due to the extraordinary
success of the leading architects and builders in design-
ing and perfecting this kind of domicile to the require-
ments of modern life in a great city. It is not surprising
that people were weaned away from the old-fashioned
idea that a man's house is his castle to the later dictum
that his apartment is his throne room. Certainly some
of the modern buildings are regal in their appointments.

There are also a great many people who prefer their'
own front doors and who wish to feel that they are
"lords of all they survey," which is not possible in an
apartment house, subject to certain well defined rules
which are perfectly proper and necessary for the peace
and comfort of a majority of the tenants.

But there was another reason other than the surpass-