December 7th, 2006 at 7:48 pm
Real estate brokers in New York say that New York renters need their space just so, even if it mean making some pretty strange requests. Heres a few good ones that brokers have had to deal with:
- “One buyer asked for a large terrace for a pot bellied pig. The buyer, a prominent attorney, had married a cute young woman from the Midwest who came to the marriage with cats, dogs, a ferret, tortoise, and pot belly pig. They obviously needed a huge outdoor space for the menagerie. The building they found on the Upper East Side wouldn’t let the pot belly pig in. So they had a veterinarian sedate it, rolled it up in a rug, and smuggled it in.”
- “One of our clients had a phobia with the number four. None of the apartments could be on the fourth floor or be on 84th Street or any other street with the number four.”
- “A few months ago a client was looking for apartment that had to be close enough to a Starbucks. I kid you not.”
- “Years ago I had a gay couple that wanted a loft space that had to have concrete floors with, hopefully, a floor drain. When I asked why they would want a floor drain, they informed me that they hosted invitation-only sex parties that would be attended by 40-50 men, three to four times a week. They intended to cover the floors and walls with latex and wanted the drain so they could hose down the space after the party! I was not successful in finding them their dream house.”
- “A recent college graduate who just moved to the city was looking for a $1,000-per-month studio in midtown. I just had to laugh because no such place exists.”
- “A single woman in her mid-50’s was looking to rent an apartment only on an odd-numbered floor because every time she had lived on an even floor, one of her pets died.”
- “One guy was looking for a ground floor apartment with a basement that he could turn into a dungeon.”
Are any of my readers Real Estate Brokers? What kinds of strange requests have you heard?
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November 7th, 2006 at 9:20 pm
If you are a Roman Catholic and you’ve vowed to make the pilgrimage to Fatima in Portugal, famous for religious visions, but you can’t fulfill your promise you can now rent-a-pilgrim.
Pilgrim Gil will make the journey in your place for the low fee of 2,500 euros (1,671 pounds), and he’ll even send you a certificate stamped along the way to prove he walked your every step.
Carlos Gil, 42, is also a rent-a-pilgrim. He took up this practice four years ago when he suddenly “felt an urge to walk to Fatima” and said charging each client was simply a way to keep doing what he loves. Gil says “It is a romantic way for my clients to thank God for what they have, like buying a candle or a plaster statue of Fatima,”.
To guarantee to his clients that he made the trip on foot, Gil has a system of handing his customers a certificate after every journey with various stamps from places along the way.
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November 4th, 2006 at 11:57 pm
Are you a Do It your Self type of person? We are. We’ve been busy renovating our home since the very first day we moved in, I guess you’d call it a remodeling job. We got a lot done in the first year, but we’ve slowed down over the last two or three years. The last project that we finished together was the installation of a sunroof on our enclosed front porch. We did that so that a little bit more light might come into our living room since the front of our house where the living room is faces North.
It’s really saved us a lot of money by doing things ourselves. Of course we haven’t always known exactly what to do. I think our friends who are contractors and construction workers are sick of hearing from us because we’re always asking them- how do we do this, how do we do that? Or else we are researching techniques on the internet.
If you are like us – a DIY type person you might be interested in visiting this great site that I just found. It has a ton of information on home repairs. I only wish that we’d discovered this site a few years ago. It would have really helped us out.
I know it’s going to help us with the projects that we started a while back and haven’t finished yet, and also for the projects that we hope to start in the next few years such as redoing our kitchen and our basement too. Those will be big jobs.
This site is full of helpful tips for the DIY type of person whether you be a renter as we once were, or a home owner. There’s even tips for automobile owners there too. There are several categories to choose from such as carpentry, cleaning, decks, painting and flooring just to name a few.
Oh yes I also wanted to tell you that while I was visiting the Handy Household Hints site I discovered that they are having a $50,000 Extreme Home Makeover Contest. Naturally I entered. I’m a DIY renovator but I’m not stupid. If your home could use a makeover you might be interested in entering too.
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