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 ...
I always folded other people's wash so I could use the dryer as soon as it shut off, instead of waiting for them to come back.
btt
I think the little old ladies liked me because I carried their groceries, or they appreciated my skivvies back when I had a 30” waist. :-D
I liked both Dallas and SA at the time. Now, I would hate the traffic.
vaudine
There's more to it than that.
Think of having an upstairs neighbor with a washing machine.
Think of the noise.
Then think what happens when his washing machine floods your apartment when his hose bursts after he forgot to turn the water off before he went off on vacation.
Or think of the lawsuits and dirty looks you'll get from your downstairs neighbors if you do that to them.
Then there's laundromats (aka, washaterias). Lovely places for spreading bedbugs these days.
Apartment buildings converted and sold as ‘condos’ do not have individual water meters - so the Home Owners Association fees have to include hot & cold water costs. They also raise revenue by keeping coin operated laundry rooms.
Putting one of these under the kitchen counter - near the sink works really well;)
I’m sure they liked your helpfulness and your sveltifulness, too.
I would also put other people’s clothes in a dryer, and pay the money and run the dryer, if I needed to use the washer. Efficiency is more important than 75 cents!
That's a new one on me. Are these Jimmy Carter-style Super-Rabbits?
Even our 70s trailer park home has a serviceable laundry room (and a bird feeder outside the kitchen window).
I have one of those in my bug-out van — only tested it with water, no soap: it did seem to work — but it is there to use if needed. BTW only cost $100 at BigLots at the time.
And it isn't a matter of space, really. It's a matter of water damage and flooding on the floors below. My basement has only flooded once, and it was from a loose hose. Even the melting snow didn't make that much of a mess in the basement.
Business idea: Open a "cool" laundromat with a bar, some pool tables and maybe a live band.
Older buildings configured as co-ops or condos amended their internal rules to ban them, as the assumption was the piping couldn't handle the increased load.
We live in the boonies in the south, and we’ve had a stacked washer/dryer unit for almost 25 yrs., and bigger units before that. I can remember hauling our laundry to the laundry mat as well; but glad I haven’t had to do much of that in a long time. If that fails, we have a river with big rocks to beat the clothes on down below our house.
My wife probably remembers how to do that -- or at least seeing it done where she grew up in India -- but that was WARM water. Here, our river (Columbia) is icy at the edges and, of course, the state Department of Ecology would call a SWAT Team if they saw you making suds in it.
I never received a complaint from any of my neighbors about my washing machine noise.
Then think what happens when his washing machine floods your apartment when his hose bursts after he forgot to turn the water off before he went off on vacation.
Huh?
I lived at the beach. We locals never went 'off on vacation', we lived in the perfect vacation spot, year round.
I never had to turn my water on and off to use the washer. It was hooked up under the kitchen sink. And I never had a hose burst ... why would it? Do you turn the water off to your washer when you go on vacation? Is it something I should do now that I live in Florida and do go on vacations?
I’m assuming this pic in #38 was taken with one foot on the bed and the other on the toilet.
How completely wasteful and profligate. People don’t NEED their own washing machines and dryers. They can use collective laundromat resources rather than pollute the earth with lumbering steel appliances that sit idle most of the time.
(Yes, I’m channeling the city-dwellers’ arguments against the automobile and for public transportation. Fitting, eh?)
Has anyone informed them that nearly every slack jawed, yocal household in flyover country owns a washer and dryer?
It's "The New York Times." There's not much difference.
Heh! In parts of Manhattan that would be palatial
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.