Author Archives: Jay Butchko
Who Needs a Senior Breakfast When You Can Get a Mortgage?
The logic of 30-year mortgages used to be that you would borrow one when you were in your 30s and ready to settle down. By the time you pay it off, you are close to retirement age, and then you get to enjoy your retirement in your paid off home. Of course, present circumstances… Read More »
What Happens If You Rent Out an Apartment and Later Decide That You Need It for Yourself?
Real estate ownership seems like a reliable way to ensure financial stability during your retirement. If you own a house, you will always have a place to live, and if you stay there long enough, eventually you will pay off the mortgage. If necessary, you can open your house to younger family members who… Read More »
Who Will Make Social Housing Affordable?
Affordable housing is supposed to be a win-win situation. Landlords get incentives to rent out some or all of their units at rent-stabilized prices. At first, everything is fine. Then time marches on, and the buildings start to need repairs. Social housing landlords, who collect less money in rents than landlords who rent out… Read More »
The Net Operating Income Paradox
New York has been prohibitively expensive, from its Gilded Age days as a feast for the senses to the 1970s, when the Big Apple devolved into an urban jungle where even sewer rats feared to tread, through the “I heart NY” era of the 1980s, and all the way to today. New Yorkers are… Read More »
Why So Much Controversy Over the FARE Act?
The conversation at housewarming parties with new homeowners is mind numbingly predictable. After a few cursory remarks about the décor, you can be sure that the host will launch into a long litany of complaints about the burdensome expenses of homeownership. First, you have to put together money for a down payment, and then… Read More »
Can Landlords Do Criminal Background Checks on Prospective Tenants?
Tenants complain vociferously about how New York’s policies about rental real estate cause financial hardship, and they often take their grievances to the ballot box. Economic conditions mean that landlords cannot afford to make repairs, but tenants cannot afford to move out of poorly maintained apartments due to financially burdensome security deposits and broker… Read More »
New York City Simplifies Requirements for Moving Into Affordable Housing
Good news is hard to find in 2025. Almost everything we can think of is measurably worse now than it was ten years ago or, if we are young adults, whenever our adult memories begin. A decade ago, before the Internet had shown the true extent of its ugliness, you could approach a food… Read More »
Geothermal Heating Is the Next Big Thing in New York City Real Estate
Around 2016, when the Internet was still innocent, a frequently shared image on social media encapsulated what makes New York City feel like home. A portly gray rat held a half-eaten slice of pizza in its jaws as it carefully maneuvered its haul down the stairs of a subway station. That rat knew that… Read More »
Low Turnover for Rentals Is Good News for Landlords
Tenants. Can’t live with ‘em and can’t live without ‘em. Landlords complain constantly about tenants who make frequent maintenance requests where the dysfunction of the appliance is at least partially due to the tenant’s careless use of it. Then there are the tenants who can’t get along with each other and frequently air their… Read More »
Starter Homes Are So Cringe
For every hundred times that journalists trash Generation Z for their unrealistic expectations and their sense of entitlement, there is one time when someone says in print what everyone knows, which is that what Gen Z is missing is not altruism or a desire for connection with other people, but rather economic opportunities. Few… Read More »