11/21/08

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Townhouses: A Family Affair

Townhouses have always appealed to families, but in Manhattan's sizzling hot market, some brokers say there is a growing awareness that you can get more for your money with a townhouse than an apartment.

Jed Garfield of Leslie J. Garfield & Co., a boutique firm that specializes in townhouses, said townhouses represent a much better deal per square foot for a single family on the Upper East Side than buying a co-op.

"At minimum, a house has four bedrooms, and with the traditional family moving from a classic six apartment, with two or three children, they need more space," he said. "The incremental increase in price to a spacious co-op is astronomical. It's not that a townhouse is more expensive, it's just more reasonable."

Privacy is also a draw. Fenwick-Keats co-principal Jeff Wolk believes when families grow out of a co-op, they want to own their own private home.

"A lot of people do not want to deal with co-op boards, because they have become more and more intrusive over the years," he said, "and with a townhouse they can have complete privacy and independence."

Jonathan Miller of Miller Samuel says the appeal of townhouses to families has resulted in a higher level of sales activity over the last few years, with more three- to five-family houses converted to single-family homes.

"It is somewhat unique to the Manhattan market as opposed to Brooklyn, which also has a high number of townhouses," he said. "The idea of highest and best use is converting to a single-family rather than viewing these properties for their rental potential."

But converting multiple-family townhouses to single-family townhouses is a difficult feat.

"It's a complicated and mythical task to convert multiple apartment townhouses back to single families," said Garfield. "People are under the impression that they can claim need in converting, and it's more difficult than they initially perceive to get tenants out."

Renovation of existing single family townhouses is more common, Garfield said.

"With single family houses, it seems lately that everything requires renovation, even if it was done a year ago," he said.