Category : Residential

In East Harlem, affordable housing comes with a price. Dozens of low-wage workers are set to lose their jobs once the city begins work on a new cultural and residential center, which will likely contain both market-rate and affordable units, on a sparsely-built, low-rise block between 125th and 126th streets and 2nd and 3rd Avenues. A gas station, a tire repair shop, an auto repair shop, a hair-braiding salon, a recycling business and a church are all facing eviction under eminent domain. The tenants’ struggle against eviction is part of a citywide trend. In many parts of Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens, businesses are being pushed out to make way for residential development. The resulting loss of jobs could pose a problem for Mayor de Blasio’s affordable housing plan.

Say you suddenly decide you want to buy an SUV. Would you call your real estate broker at 5 a.m. and tell him to drive to the next dealership ASAP? If this sounds ludicrous, you haven’t met Gennady Perepada’s clients. On a recent Wednesday afternoon, the fifty-something, Soviet-born broker sat in his small Midtown office examining the sales contract for a brand new Toyota Highlander. His workday had begun in the crack of dawn when a Russian client called him on his Blackberry, which he never switches off or mutes. The client’s wife, who lives in the Manhattan luxury apartment Perepada found for them, needed a car to drive her daughter to school. Could he go to a dealership and choose one.

First-generation Italian-American sales agent Santo Rosabianco is quickly rising in the real estate ranks in New York City — and drawing on his Italian roots to help him get there. Rosabianco was born and raised in the south Brooklyn neighborhood of Bensonhurst, after his parents immigrated to New York City from a small town in Sicily.