by Laura Matiz

In another one of those New-Yorkers-are-amazing stories comes the latest urban planning idea for the Lower East Side. Co-founders James Ramsey and Dan Barasch have proposed The Lowline, the city's first underground park to be housed in a football-field-sized trolley terminal that has been vacant for over 60 years. They plan to harvest natural light using a custom-designed fiber optics system during daytime and use LED lighting at night. This weather-protected space would be accessible year round adding much needed public green space to the densely-developed Lower East Side. 

We are excited by the recent announcement from our firm, Douglas Elliman, joining forces with the British outfit, Knight Frank Residential. The new logo adopted for the merger looks quite lovely as does the other marketing material. The merger will certainly make it easier to market to foreign buyers, but the one caveat in the merger is that only luxury listings will be co-marketed. Our experience working with many foreign buyers from Europe, South America, the Middle East, and Asia is that many of those investors begin at more moderate levels. Of course, we would love that they all came for sky-high top 10% of the NY market. Below is the logo and an excerpt from the September 10, 2014 press release.

In the real estate press, we see more and more articles touting the power of data, specifically big data and open data, to change our understanding of the world around us. New York City participates in this movement with a program called NYC Open Data. Although knowing the language of statistics is becoming more and more important, most of us are not statisticians, but people who are, such as Ben Wellington, Visiting Assistant Professor in the City & Regional Planning program at the Pratt Institute, can enlighten us. He runs a blog called I Quant NY with the purpose of "telling a story one data set at a time." (Follow him on Twitter: @iquantny.)

Professor Wellington's in-depth analysis of data sets cover city flood zones, the most ticketed parking spaces (fixed), and why $19.05 should be your purchase amount at the MetroCard machine. My favorite thus far is about Medicare's huge massage-therapy payments to the Brighton Beach area—the punch line is that Medicare doesn't even cover massage therapy. Of course, a picture tells the story even better: see map of payments for massage therapy using Medicate data from 2012.

Duplex at Victoria House (200 East 27th Street, 7/6M)

This one-of-a-kind, recently renovated duplex in the Murray Hill area is an excellent value for any type of buyer. The  2-bedroom, 2-bath apartment is in mint condition with a new state-of-the-art kitchen and spa-like bathrooms with high-end finishes. The spacious and bright living room and dining area features a wall of north-facing windows that open to city views. Special amenities include a home-office niche, large closet and storage spaces and a separate laundry room sure to be the envy of other apartment dwellers.

by Laura Matiz

The NYC REgals love exploring new technologies and the Hyperlapse app from Instagram has been fun to test. It takes timelapse movies using your iPhone. The app does an excellent job at stabilizing your movie—the samples below were taken from a bouncy vehicle. A number of RE-related blogs have already touted its potential for real estate. 

Here are a couple of neat hyperlapse movies driving into Manhattan. Of course, we can only wish that the traffic moved this smoothly. The first clip, "10 Seconds on the Gowanus Expressway," shows a drive toward threatening skies over Manhattan on the Gowanus straightaway. Second clip is crossing the Battery (Carey) Tunnel into lower Manhattan.