Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections: The Real Estate Record

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iiSo RECORD AND GUIDE. June 28, 1902. The Realty League is such an association. Us membership is at present composed of some of the most active and public- spirited brokers, aud builders and unprofessional owners of real property and their representatives in the city; but this member¬ ship ■!vill undoubtedly increase and broaden according as its work becomes effective and popular. And it can only become effective and popular by the adoption of a liberal and energetic policy This policy should have at least two main purposes- distinct, but equally important. The first of these should be to protect local and particular real estate interests against official neglect, ignorance, or extortion. It should urge necessary im¬ provements, sci-utinize their cost, and in every possible way make the city officials realize that they are being rigorously held up to their work by the agents of a representative and powerful association. The second purpose should be the larger one of trying to make the municipal policy of the Greater New York as far-sighted and efficient as possible. It should put the same test to a regenerate as to an unregenerate municipal ad¬ ministration. Has that administration spent the money con¬ tributed by the property-owners with honesty, economy and wis¬ dom? We are well aware that this is not the whole question of municipal governmentt; but it is the question in which tax¬ payers are most interested, and it is the question, which in spite of much newspaper talk is never seriously and intelligently put. The other aspects and opportunities of our local government receive the close attention of many men and many associations; but the business aspect has no special and persistent representa¬ tive and advocate. That is the opportunity and tbe work of the Realty League. ------------•------------ ANOTHER draft pay-window ordinance has been introduced into the Board of Aldermen and is now awaiting action by that body. This is intended, while providing regula¬ tions for the construction of bay, oriel or show windows, to re¬ move the objections, or some of the objections to the ordinance drafted for the same purpose and reviewed in these columns some time ago. It will be remembered that the position of af¬ fairs is this: According to tbe legal advisers of the City the charter requires that permits for projections in the street shall only be granfed under a general ordinance, and that fees shall be charged therefor. The disclosure of this fact coupled with the additional fact that the Board of Aldermen have not framed a general ordinance is delaying a number of building operations in the City because, until such ordinance bas been passed, the Building Bureaus cannot approve plans. The ordinance now offered to the Board of Aldermen for their approval, recognizes the right of the Park Department to issue permits for bay win¬ dows in, and within a distance of 350 feet from a park, square or public place, and make the Commissioners of Public Works the issuing authorities elsewhere. It requires that the consent of property-owners within a distance of flfty feet on each side shall be first obtained and endorsed upon the application for the permit. The amount to be paid for the privilege is fixed at "not less than one dollar, and not more than flve dollars, for each and every square foot or fraction thereof of area covered by the window beyond the building line and every story through which it is carried, the rate to be based upon the assessed value of the property as conflrmed by the City authorities." To apply these charges it is provided that: "The Commissioners of Public Works and the Park Commissioners shall divide the City into districts, throughout which, in each district, the rate per square foot shall be uniform, the maximum rate being charged where tbe assessed valuation per square foot is the greatest, and the minimum rate where the assessed valuation per square foot is the least; the intermediate rates being proportioned accord¬ ingly." Construction is to comply with the Building Code, and regulations are framed for cases of reconstruction, the super¬ vision and control of the issuing of permits and penalties for any violaton of their terms, etc. property-owner—the taxpayer—who directly provides six-sev¬ enths of the municipal income, cannot have the smallest privil¬ ege without being asked to pay handsomely for it. In this case, for instance, while an extension window is admittedly a great advantage to the property, it can be built, under proper regula¬ tions, not only without injuring anyone, but to occupy space that cannot in any conceivable way be occupied by anything else. Therefore, to make more than a nominal charge for the privilege of building the window is to use the powers granted by the charter to impose a special and discriminating tax upon par¬ ticular properties. In principle this is wrong. Owners have so far not complained of charges for bay-windows where they have been imposed, but they will surely do so if this ordinance, which so extends the system of charging for them, should pass. The Board of Aldermen have the matter in their hands, because, if the charter does require them to flx a fee for the privilege, It leaves them entirely free to say what shall be its amount. IT will be noticed that it is still intended to include all window projections within the scope of the ordinance and that pay¬ ment would, after its passage, have to be made for bay-windows' outside of the jurisdiction of the Park Department and for show- windows everywhere for which hitherto no payment has been made. In tbis way it is probably thought, and, in fact, would be the case, that a respectable addition to the public revenue could be raised. An attempt is made to reach an equitable basis for the charges by distributing them to some extent according to tax valuations, but would it not be better to make no charge at all beyond a nominal fee to cover the cost of issuing tbe permit? It is a remarkable thing how anxious public offlcials are to wring every cent possible from real estate. A carrying or a trading coi-poration can, or could obtain the most valuable privileges from the City without anything like adequite payment, but the The Real Estate Situation. The conditions prevailing in the private sales market, as far as the published reports reveal them, are almost those of mid¬ summer. What few investors tbere were have almost entirely disappeared, and the little business that is being done is by the individual operator. The Arrival Even the realty corporations have stopped of buying. The purchase this week by W. W, Summer. & T, M. Hall, of the Clark lots on Seventy- third and Seventy-fourth Streets, west of Cen¬ tral Park 'West, is the one particular interest¬ ing item of news; in fact, brokers and owners on the West Side are pointing to it as the forerunner of a movement in that sec¬ tion, such as the East Side has had this spring, with this differ¬ ence, that they think the buying will be for occupancy and not for speculative building. If such a movement does take place it. will undoubtedly be sustained by intending residents, as the operators have long since forsaken the section, and the only thing they will touch at tbe present time is lots, and these must be available for improveraents with apartments. One of the largest operators stated not long since that private houses on the West Side were being almost given away. To come back to the Hall purchase, the lots are certainly the best ones left in the section suitable for improvements with private houses; in fact, the ouly others nearly as desirable are those from Eighty-fifth to Eighty-Sixth Streets, just west of Central Park West, owned by the Clark Estate. Then, again, Mr. Clark is erecting for in- i vestment eighteen high class dwellings on Seventy-fourth] Street adjoining the lots bought by the Halls, and it may be con-] fidently assumed that they will be- rented only to a very de-j sirable class of tenants, thus making a choice neighborhood audi one in which it should not be hard to dispose of a half a dozeiq good houses. The other transactions raake public are the usual' kind heard of at this season and are hardly worth special men¬ tion. One has been closed in the lower section involving seven figures, to which title will pass on June SOth, and which we are not at liberty to make public; this, however, is a transaction closed a month ago and can hardly be figured in the present business. The construction of private dwellings in Manhattan has been controlled by very different tendencies during the flrst six months of this year compared to the same period in 1901; and the purchase.of W. W, & T. M. Hall of six lots on 73rd & 74th Sts., for the purpose of erect- Dwellings ing residences thereon calls attention to these on the changes. It cannot be said, indeed, that this ■West Side, purchase foreshadows an immediate return on the part of the speculative builders of private houses to the West Side as their field of opera¬ tions, for the area of speculation on tbe West Side in such build¬ ings is extremely restricted. Tbe present operation seems to be a shrewd attempt to take advantage of the interest iu expensive private houses in that vicinity which will be caused by the erec¬ tion of 18 dwellings on 73rd St., for investment by the Clark estate. But the operation is also Indicative of the fact, to which the fllings for the last six months in the Building De¬ partment plainly testifies, that speculative builders are a little afraid under existing conditions to undertake any additional operations on the East Side. During 1901 plans were flled for fully thirty-flve expensive residences, on locations to the south and east of the Central Park, which would subsequently be of¬ fered for sale. Most of these residences have come upon the market this spring, and while some few of them have been sold, enough of them have remained unsold to make it inadvisable to further increase the supply in that part of the city. The conse-