I lived in my last apartment for 30 years, in a lovely two-bedroom overlooking the ocean. There was room in my kitchen for a small table. Instead, I opted for a small washer and dryer.
Posted on 01/01/2011 12:26:32 PM PST by Sub-Driver
Manhattan Status Symbols: Washers and Dryers By C. J. HUGHES
THE final noisemaker has squealed and the last dinner guest has straggled home, so the holiday extravaganza that is Christmas and New Year’s — spread out over two long weekends and punctuated by a blizzard — is over.
Now it’s time for the cleanup, and that can mean dealing with more than the usual number of napkins splashed with red wine. For most people in the city, getting the laundry done will mean lugging it to a wash-and-fold service or taking it to the machines in the basement with a stack of quarters in hand.
But a growing number of New Yorkers can give the holiday linens a hot bath at home in their own washers and dryers. This staple of the suburbs remains uncommon in the city — apartments that have washers and dryers make up only about 20 percent of the sales and rental listings in Manhattan, according to StreetEasy, the real estate Web site. But demand is increasing, Condominium developers are making these appliances part of the standard package, and older buildings — even prewars — are relaxing longtime bans to keep residents happy and to avoid scaring off buyers.
But newer buildings have the edge. A search of StreetEasy’s listings in late December showed that 593 Manhattan co-ops for sale offered washers, versus 1,849 condos.
A washer can be worth far more than its weight in lost socks.
Jonathan J. Miller, the president of Miller Samuel, the appraisal company, said that “while there is no known empirical data to reliably measure this amenity,” a washing machine can add as much as 5 percent to an apartment’s price tag.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
??
Is it 1960?
This reads like an article in the Moscow Times.
I thought they just bought new clothes as Saks.
I always knew NY was intellectually stagnant, but I had no idea that their technological progress followed their (weak and laughable) intellect.
Heh!
I remember being a bachelor and packing the back of my truck with laundry, heading on down to the laundry mat. The advantage is that you can do 14 loads of laundry at one time... which was my personal record.
Flyover country rolls its collective eyes at the sophisticates in Metropolis.
Why, I’ll bet before long those industrious New Yorkers will create some sort of electric or gas oven, and they won’t even have to cook things in their fireplaces!
Sounds like they are writing from an alternate Universe. I’m 70 and I remember being told that my uncles had a business, renting out washing machines by the hour during the Great Depression.
Free Parking
Paging Yakov Smirnoff.
First they’d have to adopt the idea of home cooking at all. That’s not part of the standard Manhattan lifestyle.
Seriously??? NYers must be on crack.
I got a new washer right before Christmas to replace an older one. I swear, the end-of-cycle chime sounds like we’ve got another blasted cell phone in the house.
A washer? A luxury? Seriously???
Off the top of my head, the average Manhattan apartment is probably less than 1,000 sq feet. Ain’t no room for one’s own
washer/dryer...a common basement laundry is standard issue for middle and upper class buildings. It’s NOT like the rest of America. But you all knew that.
Coming soon: a box with “talking pictures...”
Really! Status symbols. I’m sure the residents of the south’s trailer courts will be happy to hear that.
I read once they don’t have garbage disposals in Manhattan.
I kept a suite at 57th and 7th Avenue {can't remember the name, French franchise, I think}, and spent two-three + weeks per month in the city.
I used my expense account and my total annual expenses were in big 6 figures, a large part was NY living.
I made a ton of money for the company, so I could slide without moving for a long time, but the cost of living in the city was insane.
One of our {back then she was a Secretary} lived with a friend in a walk up less than 400 sq ft for $1,800/month, no washer/dryer but they did have running water.
That's over 20 years ago, have no clue what the rent is today, but I'd never pay my cash to live in NY, with or without washer and dryer.
I lived in my last apartment for 30 years, in a lovely two-bedroom overlooking the ocean. There was room in my kitchen for a small table. Instead, I opted for a small washer and dryer.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.