I was taking the Metro North with a family member into Westchester when we got delayed at one stop. The conductor announced the delay was caused by train traffic caused by a fatality at Scarsdale. The moment he said that there was a murmur of speculation in the car.
As we stopped by Scarsdale we saw the train on the northbound track and a ladder that led to the rails and which I assume where they found the body. Standing on the platform in between the ladder and the train was a conductor with a grim look on his face.
Later on that night, I would learn that someone did jump in front of the train but didn’t know the full details until Monday morning.
SCARSDALE - Students walked to Scarsdale High School silently this morning, their somber faces reflecting the widespread shock at a freshman's suicide over the weekend.
Akshay Menon, 14, jumped in front of a Metro-North express train at 9:10 p.m. Saturday, about a mile from the Post Road school building. The tragic news quickly spread to his classmates, more than 200 of whom are connected to him through the Facebook social networking Web site.
The school is offering mental health services today for its students, particularly the school's 375 freshmen, said Victoria Presser, district spokeswoman. "Administrators are going into the classrooms, particularly the ninth-grade classrooms, throughout the high school just to listen to the students and help them with the process of dealing with this," she said. "We provide as much support as we can."
Scarsdale High School has about 1,450 students in grades 9 through 12. Presser said she did not know how long Menon had been a student in the district. Chloe Baum, 16, a Scarsdale High sophomore, said she did not know Menon well, but mutual friends had told her he felt pressured to achieve top grades. Still, she said, no one had thought he was depressed enough to kill himself. "They didn't see any signs," she said. "A lot of people seemed to like him and thought he was a funny kid."
Look at this beautiful face.
Akshay Menon was just a baby. A child. He was a young boy that barely knew life, what demons tortured him to take his own life? I can’t imagine what his parents are going through right now. They have my heartfelt condolences.
Remember my rant against going to my reunion? So it is no big surprise that I hated high school. There was many a day when I felt my life was falling apart because of my grades, my social life,getting into college and other incidents. When I look back on it now, it all seems rather foolish. But back then it was all I knew. It is all any of us know when we are at that age.
For a lot of people, high school is the highlight of their lives. For some of us the fact that we simply survived 4 years is good enough for us. I was in the latter category.
You know what I learned? Life does not end with high school; in fact it does not even begin there. It is just 4 years of your life. After that you have the rest of your life to see what is really out there and what you are really about.
I got an email from Kelly Kreth who just landed a primo tv client. Here's the trailer.
NEW YORK, NY - Sparkway Media and Sokol Media announce their first joint full-length television production, NY Residential TV. The weekly, hour-long show will debut on CW11 at 9am.
Experienced hosts Cathy Hobbs and Jeff Appel bring eager couples, interested viewers, brokers and real estate experts together as they scan all five boroughs of New York City for the perfect home. Location and price all come into play as Hobbs and Appel give tips and tricks of the trade, ranging from the latest trends to current market values on city properties.
With real estate television programming booming, NY Residential TV sets itself apart by catering to a regional market as well as being multi-faceted in ways other shows are not. Aside from traditional house hunting, showcasing properties and open houses, NY Residential TV will also be a program that assists those who have found a home, decorate; those who need to flip a home, renovate; and those who are looking to buy or sell, negotiate. Hobbs and Appel will show viewers how to find foreclosures, as well as the best way to make your new home "green." In addition the show will include segments on new gadgets, how to “go green,” open houses and new development launch events in the area.
While NY Residential TV can stand on its content alone, Hobbs and Appel bring credibility and charisma to the show. Cathy Hobbs, an Emmy-award winning television journalist and interior designer who was just nominated for this year's annual DIFFA "Dining by Design" Event perfectly complements Jeff Appel, a real estate industry expert and lecturer. The two bring help and humor together in a way that's educational and entertaining.
NY Residential TV will prove to be a powerful medium for sponsors--such as builders, developers, agents and financers--that align with the show's mission of providing great content while showcasing great properties.
In addition to traditional TV spot ads, NY Residential TV's real estate and development sponsors will take viewers on guided tours of homes that their companies are offering for sale. This is an innovative and experimental approach to marrying the right advertisers with quality targeted programming.
For more information on NY Residential TV or other Sparkway programming, please visit: NYResidentialTV.com or www.sparkway.com For interviews or any other press inquiries, please contact Kelly Kreth at Kreth Communications: 201-417-8691 or KKreth@KrethCommunications.com
Propertyshark has rolled out its monthly pdf foreclosure report for the month of April and it is pretty much more of the same.
Queens still reigns supreme with 58% of New York City’s foreclosures, right behind it is Brooklyn and Staten Island while Manahttan and the Bronx have been able to weather the foreclosure storm with only a combined 11% of the month of April.
As I have stated before, if you have the fortitude, the resources and a plan, you can probably find a lot of investment opportunities out there.
On the flipside, it probably sucks ass to be a seller in those neighborhoods or to be a broker.
So when will this all bottom out? Who knows. But it is till going to hurt.
Craigslist scams targeting renters desperate for affordable apartments BY MATT LYSIAK DAILY NEWS WRITER
Monday, February 11th 2008, 4:00 AM
The apartment sounded too good to be true.
A fully furnished two-bedroom with a balcony in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, going for $950 instead of the $2,200 it would normally fetch because of the tenant's sudden job transfer.
The catch: You have to take it sight unseen - and send a security deposit.
The bogus rental was even more of a steal than unsuspecting would-be tenants thought, part of a growing number of scams cooked up to profit from gullible people desperate for affordable housing in the city, according to Internet fraud and security expert Craig Solomon.
"It is becoming more common because New York apartments have become such a hot commodity," said Solomon. "People are so desperate that they aren't always thinking clearly."
This particular listing on Craigslist.org, the go-to site for frazzled city dwellers, featured appealing photos and a quick response to inquiries from a scam artist who used the alias "JoAnn Rinaggio" and a tale about being transferred to North Carolina.
"I will like to tell you that we are doing this based on trust and I would like you to trust me as I trust you. ... You can see the beautiful apartment in the pictures, but not in person yet," she writes, asking prospective tenants to wire a $550 security deposit and promising a return envelope with the apartment keys.
According to Solomon, "countless" victims fell for this ruse, sent money, never heard back from "Rinaggio" and learned the hard way that the address for the dream apartment, 8235 Fourth Ave., also was bogus.
Documents obtained by the Daily News show the phony name was used by a convicted serial rubber-check writer, JoAnne Smith, who was convicted nine times between 1986 and 2004 for fake checks totaling $20,000.
"Craigslist is made to sell local, and whenever anyone from out of state is involved, red flags should immediately go up," said Solomon. "Avoiding the scam is simple. Try to always do business face-to-face, and never, ever, wire money anywhere."
This is also the advice posted under "avoiding scams and fraud" by Craigslist on its Web site, which urges users not to wire money, give out personal financial information or respond to any offers requiring you to provide escrow money.
"Know that only a scammer will 'guarantee' your transaction," Craigslist warns.
Beth Ann Bovino, a senior economist at Standard & Poor's, found herself caught up in such a scam when someone posted her address and photos of it as a bargain rental.
"Rents are higher and people are in real need of an affordable place to live," said Bovino. "It is sad to say, but these kinds of scams appeal to desperation and greed."
"People need to remember that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is."
Here's how it works folks. Never ever give put up the money until you are approved and have a signed lease.
The process is very simple, you pay for the processing fee for the credit check. If you are rejected, you look for another apartment. If you are accepted, then you prepare the checks for the lease signing which will be usually 3 months of rent in certified checks. This covers the safety deposit, first and last month's rent. And the broker's check, if you have used one.
You bring the checks to the lease signing. Once the lease is approved by all parties and signed. Then the checks are released.
Co-ops and condos, the process is different since the board will want to see everything up front in the board package. So you should make copies of the checks and have a signed agreement that will return the checks if you are rejected or if you find another place during the review process. As we all know, it could take a week or month for the board to make a decision. So you should be prepared to be rejected and look for a back up.
Preston over at the Observer sent me this link which I sounded like a complete joke.
Developers Vornado Realty Trust and the Related Companies are grasping for options to keep alive a multi-billion dollar redo of Penn Station and related real estate development, as they have asked the city and state to back a loan to build a new Madison Square Garden in the Farley Post Office across Eight Avenue.
The proposal is intended to lure the Garden back to the table, as the company, led by Chairman James Dolan, pulled out of the larger plan in March. The state is considering the offer as one of many options for the project, a state official confirmed.
In this option, the state and city could be saddled with the cost of the arena—said to be in the range of $900 million to $1 billion—should the larger redo of Penn Station ultimately fall apart.
Gov. David Paterson said spending in the $121.7 billion state budget must be re-examined and lowered in the coming weeks, in light of dramatic drops in tax payments from major Wall Street banks.
Whether legislators in both political parties will take those actions this year remains to be seen, given that all 212 of them are up for election in November. In fact, Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno (R-Brunswick) candidly remarked that his goal for the legislation session was "to get out of session."
Paterson repeated calls for fiscal restraint that he started making before the budget passed the state Legislature on April 10, during an event in Troy on Monday. The budget is balanced, but Paterson has said he wants to identify permanent spending cuts now that will reduce a potential $4 billion deficit for the 2009-10 budget.
"We can't afford to be rolling the dice on where the economy is going," Paterson said.
In other words: NO ONE HAS ANY F**KING MONEY!
It appears that even former baseball stars are not immune to foreclosure.
Former baseball star Jose Canseco has Calif. home foreclosed Thu May 1, 10:46 PM ET
Jose Canseco, the former AL MVP who made millions during his baseball career, has had his home foreclosed.
Canseco told the syndicated TV show "Inside Edition" that he walked away from his $2.5 million, 7,300-square foot home in suburban Encino because it didn't make sense to continue making payments.
"I do have a judgment on my home and it to me is very strange because it didn't make financial sense for me to keep paying a mortgage on a home that was basically owned by someone else," he said in an interview that aired Thursday.
"You know my life, this financial thing, is a very complicated issue. Obviously, when you make all that money, people think, `OK, let's assume it is $35 million.' People have to understand that $35 million, you're paying the government 41 percent. That leaves you with about $17 or $18 million, not even. Then you're taking care of your whole family."
He added that a couple of divorces cost him $7 million or $8 million.
Canseco said his top earnings year was $6 million and that his financial situation obviously is different than most people who are losing their homes.
"What about other families that we're hearing on TV, that they're saying, `We have nowhere else to go,'" he said. "I mean, that is amazing. I've got books (he's put out two expose-type books on drug use in baseball), we're now trying to produce the movie to both.
"Like I said, my situation was a little more different than most. I decided to just let it (the house) go, but in most cases and most families, they have nowhere else to go."
Calls by The Associated Press to Canseco and to his attorney, Greg Emerson, were not immediately returned.
The lesson here is simple. Do your due diligence and make sure you have the money to cover your payments.
Sexton and NYU should heed 6:10 and on of this clip.
I heard on the radio that NYU was jacking up tuition and read on Gothamist the full details of Sexton’s grand tuition hike of 6 % which tops out to 50K a year.
Sexton’s explanation for this fiscal attack on student’s pocket books is the following.
"Many colleges and universities against which we compete to attract faculty and students have endowment resources per student many times larger," he wrote in an e-mail to the faculty.
The school is not insensitive to the financial strain. It plans a 12 percent financial aid boost for the neediest students.
But that's still not as much help as other private colleges, such as Harvard, are giving out. The Ivy League school plans to actually cut tuition for low-income students.
"We are not in a position to match these institutions, as much as we might wish that all endowments are created equal," Sexton wrote. The cost of NYU certainly puts it in league with Ivy-level tuition. Columbia University charges students $35,516, while Harvard charges $31,456.
The reason why the NYU endowment is so low is probably because he has been blowing all the money like a drunken sailor on shore leave.
Since taking over the university’s presidency seven years ago, Sexton has raised $2.5 billion—which amounts to a million dollars a day. Rather than reserving it for the school’s endowment, he’s spent the money aggressively, going on another hiring spree to increase the university’s faculty by almost 20 percent. He is intent on growing the New York campus by 6 million square feet, and when he realized that NYU needed an engineering school to become a top-ranked university, he went out and bought one: Polytechnic University, the 150-year-old Brooklyn institution. The New York Times asked Sexton in 2003 if his early attempts at raising the university’s profile were about marketing. “Yes,” he responded. “Mythology, salesmanship, branding—it’s all the same thing … The greatest power of a university president is to be the Homer of the community.”
In my opinion, he was doing the right thing. In order to build up the academic equity of NYU, Mr. Sexton had to blow tons of cash to attract the best talent and build the facilities to make it more valuable on the college market.
I knew his spending spree was over when Sexton implemented a hiring freeze for the school.
However, what bothers me is why these events occurred in the first place. College endowments are run like wall street firms. Schools like Harvard Yale and Stanford can afford to lower tuition because they do not need to rely on their students for a cash flow. As I stated before in a previous entry, the elite schools have actually lowered the amount of acceptances because of their endowments.
Now NYU raising tuition is nothing new. However the circumstances of this particular hike have raised an eyebrow or two.
Now what I am about to present is pure speculation, however when you see the pieces put together, it does make a lot of sense.
Let’s take a look at some of NYU’s trustees
Laurence D. Fink Chairman & Chief Executive Officer BlackRock, Inc.
Richard A. Grasso Former Chairman & Chief Executive Officer New York Stock Exchange
Richard Grasso is the former CEO of the New York Stock Exchange and of course we all know why he isn’t the current one.
E. John Rosenwald, Jr. Vice Chairman Bear, Stearns & Co. Inc.
Mr. Rosenwald is a prominent figure at Bear Stearns and we know how that movie ended.
William R. Salomon Honorary Chairman Citigroup
Nuff said.
These are individuals who have played some type of role, positive or negative, in Wall Street and the world financial markets. As trustees of NYU they obviously have a lot of influence on where NYU’s money goes. And I wouldn’t be surprised if that influence has resulted in NYU getting hurt with the rest of the market.
In fact there is evidence to suggest that is the case.
"The story of NYU's endowment management over the past two decades vividly illustrates the dangers of implementing poorly founded investment strategies," said David Swensen, chief investment officer at Yale University.
Perhaps the hiring freeze and tuition hike is Sexton’s way of covering those losses, which is understandable.
But let’s take this further and I admit that this is where it gets a little outlandish but if you think about it, it is plausible and downright creepy.
The trustees that I have presented are prominent figures in their networks. If these gentlemen aren’t hurting, well then they know someone who is. Right now cash is king and credit is dead. So these Wall Street firms need cash infusions to keep them going which are hard to come by especially during these times. That is unless you control a source of liquidity that can pretty much draw blood from a stone.
Do you see where I am going with this?
Perhaps the Sexton’s hiring freeze and tuition hike is not really a response to higher operating costs or a smaller endowment. But in fact it is to create an unofficial cash trough for NYU’s allies on Wall Street who are in dire need of funds. In other words, Sexton is pulling a Bernanke. If you think about it college students are the best source of cash because they have to commit to 4 years of school and it is a tremendous hassle to transfer. And NYU students eventually find a way to cover their costs even it means selling out their future or they leave. If the true reason for this tuition hike is to bailout NYU's buddies, then you are going to have a lot furious NYU students. That is if they are not pissed off now.
Now I am not saying that the trustees themselves are pocketing NYU money. I am sure that is illegal and there are measures in place to prevent that. But I think there are loopholes for them to dole out the money to more appreciative parties.
Now obviously a lot of you are going to say I'm nuts saying that Sexton is using the NYU tuition hike to create a bailout fund similar to the Fed. Then you are going to wonder if I have been seeing black helicopters and cow mutilations. But bear with me for a moment and ask yourselves these questions.
1.Is all this money going to the students? 2.What has NYU’s endowment invested in and what do they plan on investing in the future?
In other words, where is the money trail and where does it lead? That is the only way we will know if Sexton’s reasons are truly justified.
That is not going to happen anytime soon because NYU keeps its finances under very tight security. However I was able to come up with an interesting site that sheds some light on NYU’s finances and it is really nuts, particularly in regards to its debt load.
Which brings me to my next point. This tuition hike could probably be the worst thing for NYU. First of all the cost for college is skyrocketing to the point it is not unheard for people to be in debt for the rest of their lives. We are also entering a recession and the entire country is starting to take a strong look at their expenses, especially their college costs. Even if they are accepted to NYU, students might choose another school because of the cost alone. Which brings me to a personal anecdote.
A couple of years ago a family member of mine was thinking about going to NYU even though he was already accepted to a good school on the West Coast. He felt this way because some of his high school friends were bragging about going to NYU and how they were going to experience New York City. He felt like he was missing out on something by not attending NYU. I told him that he was not missing anything, that he was better off staying on the west coast because his friends were going to encounter higher living expenses, higher tuition and resulting in little added value for their money. Besides, he had plenty of time to live in New York after graduation. So he stayed on the west coast and has never regretted his decision.
Now of course one could argue that NYU has a strong brand name. But obviously that added value is an illusion since you can get a cheaper education at an Ivy League and I don’t care how well NYU is rated, it is no Ivy League. Hell, it’s not even a Williams or a Swarthmore.
Now if I was running the SUNY system, I would be laughing with glee because this presents a ripe opportunity to cherry pick from NYU’s applicant pool. You see, the students who can barely afford an NYU education are definitely going to be able to afford a SUNY education in spades. In fact they may not have to apply for financial aid. And the SUNY schools are no joke. For instance, Stonybrook has some very well known science programs and the rest of the schools are known to be academically sound.
And SUNY would also benefit from the cash rich foreign student demographic. In a recent article in NYT, it presented the story of an elite school and here’s a quote that is of great interest.
“Going to U.S. universities has become like a huge fad in Korean society, and the Ivy League names — Harvard, Yale, Princeton — have really struck a nerve,” said Victoria Kim, who attended Daewon and graduated from Harvard last June.
Now according to Korean standards, there are a lot of stupid rich kids in Korea. I know this for a fact because I have met them. But according to American standards these kids are more than qualified for the SUNY schools. Even though it is not an Ivy League it is still an American university and it is cheap as hell. And Koreans are no different than any other race because they love a bargain. They can get the prestige of an American school at the fraction of the cost, especially with the dollar being so weak. All colleges love foreign students, because they are usually not strapped for cash and they do not complicate things with financial aid since foreign students can't qualify for it.
It is possible that NYU could see a huge drain in their applicant pool, resulting in a huge hit in their cash flow. And if that occurred it would not be inconceivable for NYU to liquidate some its real estate holdings in order to stay out of the red.
As I said before, this is all speculation on my part. And we are not going to know how it all pans out for at least the next 5 years. However, I would recommend with whatever choice you make, look at the numbers. Be aware if you do take financial aid, that unless you get high paying job after college, you are going to be in debt for a long time. And just like I told my relative, even if you do not go to college in New York City, there is plenty of time after graduation to be in New York.
One of the things that fascinates me about real estate is that how seemingly unrelated incidents have an affect on the real estate market. For instance, it appears that we are now facing a food crisis particularly with certain staples like rice. So what does this have to do with new york real estate? Actually a lot.
There are a variety of restaurants that have rice as part of their menu, these include Mexican, Chinese, Thai, Korean, Italian, Spanish, Indian and Japanese. You only need to read Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential to know how expensive and stressful it is operating a restaurant particularly one in New York City.
If the costs for these commodities start to shoot up, which they will, then restaurants are going to pass the costs onto their customers. Which is business as usual in New York city. However, that action may yield nothing, considering that we are now in a recession and everyone is making an effort to tighten their belts so they are not likely go out for meals.
Resulting in less profit for restaurants which adds to higher operating costs. I predict that we will see more commercial vacancies as those restaurants that are unable to compete break their leases.
Luke Mullins over at the US. News and World Report emailed his article on how Ohio is dealing with their foreclosure crisis. Basically the state of Ohio is undertaking a massive campaign to implement loan workouts between lenders and owners in order to avoid foreclosures. The state is also going as far as legally challenging these foreclosures.
On the flip side Master Appraiser Jonathan Miller presents a sobering perspective on the loan workout front and has come to the conclusion that it is not really working out.
