Privacy and security are important factors when it comes to living in New York City.
Is it really all about champagne wishes and caviar dreams? While living in a multimillion-dollar home has its perks, it’s also a lot of financial responsibility. Some new homeowners overlook the details and work required to own a luxury home. However, it’s often worth the upkeep.
“Real luxury living is the features and the peace of mind and luxury of a hotel but the warmth and hominess of your own home and your 25 staff members,” says Wendy J. Sarasohn, senior vice president of residential real estate firm Corcoran Group, which serves New York City, Long Island, N.Y., and Palm Beach, Fla. Its clients range from Wall Street bankers to entertainment industry moguls.
Pampered in Privacy
For luxury homeowners, it’s all about amenities, and luxury living in New York City is all about privacy and security, Sarasohn says.
“No one comes into the lobby of the apartment building without being screened or announced,” Sarasohn says. “The buildings have beautiful lobbies filled with fresh flowers, a white-gloved doorman and a car greeter. It’s a very stressless lifestyle. Most of the buildings offer mind-boggling views of the city so that you’re physically and psychologically above it all. You have silence and a feeling of being powerful.”
Other amenities include first-class spas with private massage rooms, swimming pools, nail services and other beauty and fitness services. If you don’t want to have your manicure and pedicure downstairs, you can have it in your apartment. As for groceries, the concierge will fill your refrigerator with whatever you need. Most luxury apartments also feature radiant floor heating, wine coolers and state-of-the-art kitchens. The buildings also provide party rooms so you can entertain guests in your building but outside of your apartment.
The Price of Luxury Living
A luxury homeowner in New York who prefers to remain anonymous (most of them do) describes his property in the esteemed Hamptons. Purchased incomplete in 2005 for $2.8 million, the 11,500-square-foot home features an infinity pool, an attached 15-person whirlpool, a cinema that seats nine, full-size gym, billiards room and full-size bar. He says he put more than $650,000 into the home’s lavish details.
The homeowner visits his Hampton home weekly during the summer and every two weeks in the off-season. Even when he’s working in New York City, his home in the Hamptons is regularly maintained. Including electric, landscape, pool maintenance and other utility bills, he estimates spending about $5,000 each month just for upkeep. Add that to the $8,000 each month he spends on his primary home in Manhattan.
With all his expenses, he admits budgeting is very important for any luxury homeowner, no matter what state the economy is in. “You have to pay close attention to where you’re putting your money,” he says. “Real estate still remains a good investment. Even though things are deteriorating, now is still a good time to buy. The decline of the stock market is far more severe than the decline of housing.”
He advises that now is the best time to purchase a luxury home, but buyers who are purchasing solely for investment purposes should be cautious and figure in the price of running and preserving the home.
“Make sure you have not only figured the cost of home and mortgage, but also the utilities and maintenance,” he says. “This is important in calculating the home’s affordability. Also, you would want to buy in an area that you feel has a good growth potential. I felt that the Hamptons were a good investment at the time. Individuals who want to purchase purely for investment need to be careful. You must take into consideration that most luxury homes do not have a high turnover rate.”
All things considered, owning a luxury home certainly has its perks. But keep in mind that the home price is just the beginning of what you should expect to pay. Luxury living is not just about buying an expensive property. It’s a lifestyle that requires maintenance and responsibility, no matter if it’s an apartment with a terrace on the top floor, an antique estate on 200 acres of lush green property or a waterfront mansion steps away from turquoise waters and velvety sand.

payday advance

For the hip home seeker who longs to be near great food and culture, neighborhoods in a city’s downtown area hold a nearly irresistible attraction. The “urban core” typically has a higher crime rate and less favorable schools than the suburbs, but many downtown areas across the country are undergoing a revitalization of sorts, as cities invest in projects and amenities to attract new residents. And as more people look for alternatives to long commutes and urban sprawl, homebuyers are flocking to the urban core. Homes in urban core neighborhoods come in a variety of styles, such as these brownstones in Boston.
Advantages of Urban Core
Professional writer Toni Kamins has owned a co-op in Manhattan’s trendy West Village for 16 years. “What I most appreciate is the constant availability of just about anything you want,” she says. “I know I miss that when I go out of town.” In a centrally located urban neighborhood, you can typically walk or take a bus, taxi or subway to restaurants, bars, shops, museums, libraries and parks — not to mention use public transportation or your own two feet to get to work each day.
About the Neighborhoods
Homes in the urban core can be skyscraper apartments, converted lofts in old warehouses, spaces above operating businesses, row houses, brownstones — if someone can build it, someone else will figure out a way to live in it. Neighborhoods often vary widely in demographic and socioeconomic development, sometimes even from block to block. Bob Eychner, a real estate broker and owner of Eychner Associates, Inc., in Greenwich Village, remembers trying to sell homes in a very different West Village in the early 1980s. “I can vividly remember the last block of West 12th Street,” he says. “I’d drag customers over there to try to sell them something. There was a banner up that read, ‘Hookers and johns beware! We are taking your license plate number.’ So I trumpeted the strong neighborhood watch system. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.”
But the West Village experienced a fairly common phenomenon for cities: a series of historical landmark designations began to prohibit old buildings from being torn down and new high-rises from going up, preserving the neighborhood’s architectural character. This move eventually attracted buyers and crime rates fell. “We moved to the West Village because it’s charming,” Kamins says. “It’s sort of got a small-town feel within Manhattan. It was, at one point, a lot quieter than other parts of the city.”
Climbing Popularity — and Prices
Trouble is, urban core neighborhoods by nature have defined geographic limits, so it’s difficult to keep a great little spot all to yourself. “In the last eight to 10 years, this area has become white-hot,” Kamins says. “It’s absolutely ridiculous. We get a lot of TV and movie crews — Sex and the City was always filming here.” Demand for such unique space can attract crowds and everything that comes with them: noise, congestion and skyrocketing prices.
“Prices are nuts,” Kamins admits. “We paid high prices 16 years ago for this place but nowhere near what they’re paying now.”
Cost of living in the urban core is a major issue to consider, because the real estate market there may not reflect what’s going on in other parts of the country — or even other parts of the same city. “The average number of days on the market for homes in Manhattan has increased in the last year,” Eychner says, “but our inventory has not increased.” Translation: prices aren’t rising as fast as they were, but they’re rising. In vibrant cities, someone will always covet access to great spaces.
Living downtown can sometimes mean getting rid of your car and all the expenses it entails, but the savings can be more than offset by steep mortgages, monthly condo or co-op fees, and increased living expenses. “Co-op and condo fees in Manhattan generally run anywhere from $1 to $4 per square foot per month, depending on the level of service provided by your building,” Eychner says. (In smaller cities, fees tend to be less than $1 per square foot.) “You should also budget for more expensive restaurants. And if you do have a car, parking can be insane.”
In smaller metropolitan areas, core neighborhoods often feature a diverse selection of properties with a wide price range. But be advised that in a given neighborhood, converted lofts and condominiums may arrive long before the amenities do; you may buy into the urban aesthetic but end up waiting a few years for jobs, restaurants and shops to follow your lead.

payday loan

The observations starkly reverse assumptions by some scientists that fast-growing urbanization and the efficiencies of global trade might eventually slow or reverse tropical deforestation. The study, which covers most of the world’s tropical land area, appears in this week’s early edition of the journal Nature Geoscience.

Deforestation has been a rising concern in recent decades, especially with the recognition that it may exacerbate climate change. Studies in the late 20th century generally matched it with growing rural populations, as new roads were built into forests and land was cleared for subsistence agriculture. Since then, rural dwellers have been flooding into cities, seeking better living standards; 2009 was recorded as the first year in history when half of human lived in urban areas. Large industrial farms have, in turn, taken over rural areas and expanded further into remaining forests, in order to supply both domestic urban populations and growing international agricultural markets, the study suggests.

“The main drivers of tropical deforestation have shifted from small-scale landholders to domestic and international markets that are distant from the forests,” said lead author Ruth DeFries, a professor at the Earth Institute’s Center for Environmental Research and Conservation. “One line of thinking was that concentrating people in cities would leave a lot more room for nature. But those people in cities and the rest of the world need to be fed. That creates a demand for industrial-scale clearing.”

DeFries and her colleagues analyzed remote-sensing images of forest cover across 41 nations in Latin America, Africa and Asia from 2000-2005, and combined these with population and economic trends. They showed that the highest forest losses were correlated with two factors: urban growth within countries; and, mainly in Asia, growth of agricultural exports to other countries. Rural population growth was not related.

In recent years, tropical countries have been supplying growing amounts of palm oil, soybeans, sugar, meat and other processed products to distant markets abroad. Not all the products are used for food; palm oil and sugar in particular are also being converted into biofuels. Furthermore, said DeFries, as small farmers within tropical nations move away to become city dwellers, they may actually use more resources from the countryside, not less. This is because those living in cities have higher incomes—the reason most moved there to begin with—and thus tend to consume more processed foods and animal products. Pastures needed to produce meat, and large plantations and other facilities that turn out other products, in turn, require land. “Collectively, these results indicate a shift from state-run road building and colonization in the 1970s and 1980s to enterprise-driven deforestation,” says the study.

Hot spots of industrial-scale clearing include Brazil, Indonesia and Cambodia—countries that, unlike many others, still have considerable forests left to clear. The trend has not reached some forested parts of Latin America, such as Surinam or Guyana, which also have large tracts of remaining forest. Almost 60% of remaining forests occur in areas where net agricultural trade, percent of products exported, and urban growth are all relatively low. But as demand for products grows, these areas are likely to see increased pressure, the study says. According to projections by the United Nations, nearly all population growth in the next 40 years will take place in cities, and some two-thirds of people will live there by 2050.

DeFries said that some initiatives aimed at halting deforestation need to be quickly shifted. For instance, some policies that focus on getting small landowners to conserve forests—a popular mechanism among governments and nonprofits at the moment—“may not be all that productive without a focus on large-scale clearing as well,” she said. “Governments will have to look at policies that intensify yields on existing high-yield fields—not clear more land,” she said.

The other authors of the study are Columbia University ecologist Maria Uriarte; ecologist Thomas Rudel of Rutgers University; and Matthew Hansen of South Dakota State University.

The research results are important to greenhouse gas legislation being negotiated. “We need this kind of carbon accounting to help reduce global warming,” Townsend-Small said. “The current trend is to count the carbon sinks and forget about the greenhouse gas emissions, but it clearly isn’t enough.”

Turfgrass is increasingly widespread in urban areas and covers 1.9 percent of land in the continental U.S., making it the most common irrigated crop.

In the study, Townsend-Small and colleague Claudia Czimczik analyzed grass in four parks near Irvine, Calif. Each park contained two types of turf: ornamental lawns (picnic areas) that are largely undisturbed, and athletic fields (soccer and baseball) that are trampled and replanted and aerated frequently.

The researchers evaluated soil samples over time to ascertain carbon storage, or sequestration, and they determined nitrous oxide emissions by sampling air above the turf. Then they calculated carbon dioxide emissions resulting from fuel consumption, irrigation and fertilizer production using information about lawn upkeep from park officials and contractors.

The study showed that nitrous oxide emissions from lawns were comparable to those found in agricultural farms, which are among the largest emitters of nitrous oxide globally.

In ornamental lawns, nitrous oxide emissions from fertilization offset just 10 percent to 30 percent of carbon sequestration. But fossil fuel consumption for management, the researchers calculated, released almost as much or more carbon dioxide than the plots could take up, depending on management intensity. Athletic fields fared even worse, because – due to soil disruption by tilling and resodding – they didn’t trap nearly as much carbon as ornamental grass but required the same emissions-producing care.

“It’s unlikely for these lawns to act as net greenhouse gas sinks because too much energy is used to maintain them,” Townsend-Small concluded.

Previous studies have documented lawns storing carbon, but this research was the first to compare carbon sequestration to nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide emissions from lawn grooming practices.

The UCI study was supported by the Kearney Foundation of Soil Science and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

About the University of California, Irvine: Founded in 1965, UCI is a top-ranked university dedicated to research, scholarship and community service. Led by Chancellor Michael Drake since 2005, UCI is among the most dynamic campuses in the University of California system, with nearly 28,000 undergraduate and graduate students, 1,100 faculty and 9,000 staff. Orange County’s largest employer, UCI contributes an annual economic impact of $3.9 billion.

News Radio: UCI maintains on campus an ISDN line for conducting interviews with its faculty and experts. Use of this line is available for a fee to radio news programs/stations that wish to interview UCI faculty and experts. Use of the ISDN line is subject to availability and approval by the university.