Posts

Showing posts matching the search for largest single block

Meet the colourful residents of Sydney's 'suicide towers'

Image
One resident narrowly escaped a mass murderer, another prefers parrots over people for company and a third is a a retired conman who just wants to be left alone to enjoy some of the best inner-city views in Sydney. Welcome to Northcott towers, Sydney's most notorious housing commission complex tucked away in what has become one of Australia's trendiest and most exclusive suburbs. About 1,200 residents pay as little as $80 a week for one- or two-bedroom units in the 14-story buildings in Surry Hills, just a stone's throw from the CBD where average rents for a two- bedroom home run to more than $900 a week. Known as the 'suicide towers,' the complex is Australia’s largest single block of public housing units and has a notorious reputation involving with drug abuse, mental health and unemployment. Invited by members of the tight-knit community of residents, Daily Mail Australia spent a day in the towers to 'meet the family' and explore the colourful neig...

Rents Rose Fastest in Skinker DeBaliviere

Image
{Zillow} Great news? According to Zillow’s May 2017 Rental Market Overview , Skinker DeBaliviere has shown the largest increase of any St. Louis neighborhood in annual rents, a 12.9 percent gain. The only other neighborhoods where rents grew by more than 10 percent in the last year were Vandeventer (11.2 percent), and Tiffany (10.3). Notably, the increase in rents in our neighborhood was also higher than any town in the St. Louis Metro area , including towns in St. Charles County and Metro East in Illinois. People clearly want to live here, and we are on a roll. If you own rental properties in the neighborhood, this news might make you feel like breaking out the champagne. It also might give you some second thoughts about selling when you get those unsolicited letters from real estate operators asking to buy your home, as so many of us on my block seem to. If you own property in the neighborhood, then what’s not to like? {Zillow} Well, even if you like and will benefit from higher r...

In France’s Dordogne, a land of castles and caves, untouched by time

Image
When our children were 11 and 9, young enough to still be entirely inside the family circle but old enough to remember, we splurged on a “once in a lifetime vacation ” and rented a small farmhouse in Southwestern France outside the village of Saint-Cyprien. Each day, our son and daughter would say goodbye to the donkey that hung around our patio and we’d climb in the tiny rented Renault and drive somewhere in the fairy- tale beautiful Dordogne River region . On one of these excursions, we stumbled on the provincial city of Sarlat. An accident of history and several centuries of stagnant economy had left Sarlat’s center virtually unchanged architecturally since the days of siege engines and knights galloping over drawbridges. City fathers had wakened one morning in the late 1950s to realize that, leaning above narrow and winding cobblestone streets and alleys, they had one of the largest collections of intact medieval architecture in Europe. The French government subsidized restor...

Selling points: Sela buys NJ resi complex for $40M, Kamber acquires UWS portfolio for $50M

Image
Gebroe-Hammer Associates Coveted apartment  complex fetches $40M An apartment community in tony West Orange , NJ,  has been sold for $40.5 million. Gebroe- Hammer Associates brokered the sale of the 178- unit Crest Ridge Apartments complex . The team of Greg Pine and Adam Zweibel exclusively represented the original developer , Rockledge Realty, LLC, and procured the buyer, Sela Realty Investments , in the transaction. Located at 200 Mt. Pleasant Ave. at the base of an 80 ft. cliff, the 16-building, historically well- occupied complex posed an extremely rare acquisition opportunity within the Northern New Jersey metro. “Situated in the Town Center section of West Orange, Crest Ridge Apartments is at the heart of one of the most expensive, in- demand local neighborhoods as well as the transit- filled greater West Essex County submarket ,” said Pine. “In a township where apartment rentals make up only about one-third of the housing stock, Crest Ridge Apartments is a gem favored...