When the 13-Year-Old Picks a $14 Million Condo

[v]

Happy Friday everyone!!!

Teens and preteens are getting involved in finding multimillion-dollar homes for their families, and in a few instances, doing everything but writing the check.

When New York Kids Help Find the Family Home

By JOANNE KAUFMAN
MARCH 20, 2015

A year and a half ago, Skye van Merkensteijn was shooting hoops with a friend who lives at the Aldyn, a condominium-rental hybrid on Riverside Boulevard with its own indoor basketball court, climbing wall and bowling alley.

Thirteen-year-old Skye was impressed — and envious. Well, his worldly pal told him, he just happened to know of an apartment for sale on the 21st floor.

Skye went home, jumped online and called up a video of the property in question — a 12-room spread with a hot tub and private 37-by-15-foot outdoor pool.

“When my husband, John, came home,” said Skye’s mother, Elizabeth van Merkensteijn, “Skye announced: ‘We’re moving and this is the place we’re moving to.’ ”

Mr. van Merkensteijn, an investor, told his son he couldn’t afford a $14 million apartment. As for Mrs. van Merkensteijn, if you wanted her to leave the family’s eight-room apartment at the Beresford on Central Park West, she said, you were going to have to carry her out. In a box.

Still, for a lark the couple strolled over to check out their son’s find, which, in addition to the pool and an expansive terrace, had bedazzling views of the Hudson and the Palisades. “We looked at each other and said, ‘This is unbelievable,’ ” Mrs. van Merkensteijn recalled. “The idea that you could own a place like this in New York City was amazing.”

In New York, teens and preteens are becoming savvy connoisseurs of real estate.

Perhaps it’s because they’re so utterly at home on the Internet. Perhaps it’s because they’re lured by online images of condo amenities like an indoor pool or a children’s playroom or because they’re fans of “Million Dollar Listing New York” on Bravo. Or maybe it’s because it’s become business as usual for children in certain precincts of Manhattan to participate in family decisions.

“They choose where they and their parents are going to have dinner or where they’re going to go on vacation,” said Stuart Moss, an associate broker at Corcoran. “So why shouldn’t it extend to where they’re going to spend several million dollars for a residence?”

Bonnie Hut Yaseen, an associate broker at Fox Residential, is used to the youth vote by now. “I’m seeing this trend where parents are coming in to look at my listings and proudly announcing that it was their son or daughter who found it,” she said. “They’re finding an unexpected resource in their children.”

Of course, there is cinematic precedent for all this. In the 1947 classic “Miracle on 34th Street,” a skeptical little girl will believe in Santa Claus only if he can arrange the acquisition of a house she saw in a magazine listing.

Ms. Yaseen said that in the past children saw their homes-to-be only when it was time for the parents to assign them their bedrooms. “Now, in some cases, the kids are coming on the first visit to an apartment because they want to know if it’s as good in reality as it looked online,” she said. “They’ll sometimes be there with paperwork, with a printout from a website.”

Their knowledge can be quite granular. “We had one teenager who knew the specifics of our floor plans. He knew that the C line apartments are 2,296 square feet and that the L units are 2,277,” said Justin D’Adamo, the managing director of Corcoran Sunshine, the marketing and sales team for River & Warren, a condominium development in Battery Park City. “He told his mother that the C line would be better because of his baby grand piano.”

Ultimately, he and his Steinway carried the day.

When Yovanka Bylander Arroyo, a widow with two children, began going to open houses, it was her son, Alexandre, 10, an HGTV and Zillow fan, who asked about square footage and the number of bedrooms and bathrooms. “And I was like, ‘Gee, I don’t know,’ ” said Ms. Arroyo, the executive director of a financial services firm. “Maybe I should be going on Zillow.”

Katie Haggerty, a fashion designer, has worked as a real estate broker. Her mother was a broker, too. She and her husband, Sean, who works in finance, own investment properties. So it makes perfect sense that their three children, most particularly their daughter Patty, 14, have become interested in the ins and outs of the business.

When the Haggertys moved to New York from Chicago last year, they rented so they could get the lay of the land. Now that they’ve decided to buy, “Patty has made it part of her daily routine to go online and look up properties,” said Mrs. Haggerty, who is looking for a doorman building, preferably on the Upper East Side, with a live-in super, two or three bedrooms, a gym and, if possible, some outdoor space.

“When she searches, she shows us different square footage, amenities and the taxes,” Mrs. Haggerty said.

Patty’s frequent visits to the sites StreetEasy, Trulia and Zillow led her to Carnegie Park, a condominium on Third and 94th. “We looked at it and are still seriously considering it,” Mrs. Haggerty said; they are also mulling over 515 East 72nd Street, another condominium.

“I feel I’ve been a big contribution to the process,” said Patty, whose wish list includes “a view of Central Park.”

Michael Schultz, an associate broker with Corcoran, affectionately refers to 15-year-old Max Srulowitz as “the president.” That’s because last year, when Max’s parents, Jeffrey and Jennifer Srulowitz, were looking for a summer rental in East Hampton, N.Y., Max went online and found some prospects that had eluded Mr. Schultz, including the winning property.

Now, the Srulowitzes are hoping to buy in East Hampton, and once again, Max is playing a key role. Mr. Schultz even includes him in the emails he sends to Mr. and Ms. Srulowitz. “When I get listings,” Ms. Srulowitz said, “I print them out and before I show them to my husband, I’ll show Max. I take pride in his acumen, and he’s very mature.”

All this speaks to the evolving parent-child dynamic, according to Dr. Gail Saltz, a psychiatrist. “I think particularly in affluent areas, there’s now less of a separation in terms of what children are privy to and what privileges they get to have,” she said. “These parents aren’t saying: ‘We need to move and it’s your responsibility to find us a place.’ This is about children being helpful in ways that are fun for them.”

“Would it be more helpful for them to take out the garbage?” Dr. Saltz asked. “Maybe, but it’s not as much fun. And of course it’s easy for them because they’re Internet savvy,” she continued. “And I think it’s fun for some parents to feel that their child is their friend: ‘Oh, you found that great apartment. That’s cool.’ ”

“I had clients who were looking at places that were under $3 million, and their daughter, a high school junior, went online and found a visually stunning place on the Upper East Side that was $3.5 million,” said a broker who requested anonymity so as not to scuttle a deal in progress. “She got her parents to go look at it and they loved it so much they decided to raise their price point.”

In a few instances, children are doing everything but writing the check. “There are international buyers who want to buy a pied-à-terre or want to buy an apartment for investment purposes, but they’re not familiar with the New York market and don’t speak English very well,” said Bruce Ehrmann, an associate broker with Douglas Elliman Real Estate. “They have their children who are in the United States in boarding school or college do their research for them.”

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At the moment, Mr. Ehrmann has a Manhattan apartment in contract thanks to a college freshman who found a long-term investment property on the Internet for her Asian parents.

Sometimes the children apply the brakes instead of stepping on the gas. Ms. Arroyo recently went to check out an apartment in Midtown, Alexandre in tow. It had three bedrooms and everything else the family was looking for, and the building was great. “My son saw me getting excited and began looking at the sell sheet,” Ms. Arroyo said. “As I was asking the broker a few more questions, Alexandre was tugging at my sleeve and saying, ‘Mommy, Mommy. Look at the maintenance!’ ”

The number was astronomical, she said. “That’s why the apartment was so well priced. He had noticed and I hadn’t,” Ms. Arroyo added ruefully. “And I was like ‘O.K., broker, have a nice day. This deal is not going to happen.’ ”

While many parents are happy to indulge their children’s interest in real estate, they also want to educate them. The van Merkensteijns gave Skye and his brother, Jan, 17, a tutorial on mortgages, interest rates and bridge loans. Skye kept a flow chart that tracked the offers and counteroffers for the place at the Aldyn.

Meanwhile, thanks to her mother and father, Patty Haggerty now knows the difference between a co-op and a condo, and is learning about the advantages of buying versus renting, and vice versa. “Patty,” Mrs. Haggerty said, “feels this is the time to buy.”

But parents don’t necessarily want to share everything with their young consultants. “We don’t discuss our financial situation with Max and we didn’t discuss our budget,” said Jeffrey Srulowitz, while acknowledging that on his own, “Max realized that we were looking in a certain price range.”

When one Upper West Side woman began looking at apartments, her architecture-mad 10-year-old son “starting injecting himself into the process,” she said. “He found StreetEasy and then he started looking up where our friends live and he’d say, ‘You wouldn’t believe what so-and-so paid for their co-ops.’ I shut that down right away and told him he could only search the architects of the buildings his friends lived in.”

The boy’s mother requested anonymity because she did not want her friends to know what her son had been up to.

Elizabeth van Merkensteijn shrugs off such concerns. “You can’t hide the ball on these kids,” she said. “They hear the numbers. We talk about everything in front of everyone. I get it that the air is thin and that it’s rarefied. But it’s the reality of New York City.”

www.nytimes.com/2015/03/22/realestate/when-new-york-kids-help-find-the-family-home.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=mini-moth&region=top-stories-below&WT.nav=top-stories-below

[EmilieMadison]

All I got from this article is that there are a lot of dumb people who have money to buy expensive apartments. Thank god they have kids who know how to use the interwebz to find out how many bedrooms these places have and what the square footage is!

[v]

Mar 20, 2015 18:22:18 GMT -5 EmilieMadison said:

All I got from this article is that there are a lot of dumb people who have money to buy expensive apartments. Thank god they have kids who know how to use the interwebz to find out how many bedrooms these places have and what the square footage is!

I think that's all that there was to get from the article.  But you're kind for only calling them "dumb."

[EmilieMadison]

Mar 20, 2015 18:24:23 GMT -5 v said:

Mar 20, 2015 18:22:18 GMT -5 EmilieMadison said:

All I got from this article is that there are a lot of dumb people who have money to buy expensive apartments. Thank god they have kids who know how to use the interwebz to find out how many bedrooms these places have and what the square footage is!

I think that's all that there was to get from the article.  But you're kind for only calling them "dumb."

Dumb wasn't exactly my first word choice

[emisi]

While the prices they're looking at are crazy, I think it's interesting that kids are so interested in something like this, and actually I kind of applaud the parents for encouraging their interest and helping them advance their skills. Research skills are research skills, whether it's history lessons or learning about what goes into buying real estate.

[EmilieMadison]

Mar 20, 2015 18:29:08 GMT -5 emisi said:

While the prices they're looking at are crazy, I think it's interesting that kids are so interested in something like this, and actually I kind of applaud the parents for encouraging their interest and helping them advance their skills. Research skills are research skills, whether it's history lessons or learning about what goes into buying real estate.

I dont think it's unusual that kids are interested in where they may potentially live. In fact, it would be quite strange if they weren't. But the parents aren't helping them advance their skills. If anything, the kids are helping their parents advance the basic comprehension skills they should have anyway. Sounds like the parents are the ones who should be honing their research skills. I'm also a bit judgy about letting your child make (not simply be included in) such huge decisions. 

[scout8]

Had the internet been around when I was a kid, this would have been me. My mom and I would go to open houses when I was a kid for fun. I used to go through the paper and pick out the ones I wanted to see. I suppose it is no surprise that I decided to be a real estate agent.

[212]

We looked at a few apartments in the Aldyn and that freaking building is geared towards kids pestering their parents into buying there. Thankfully my kid was still in utero, so he had no say, but I can imagine never hearing the end of the rock climbing wall-- it's prominently displayed right past the foyer. It's like putting candy by the effing register.

Beyond that, just WOW at the kid who googles his friend's apartments. Yuck.

[imojoebunny]

We moved last year. We didn't give our kids a tremendous say in which house we purchased, but their needs were very much on our mind and decidedly the reason we moved. We bought a house that is walking distance to all the schools they will attend, 1 block in either direction to a park, one with a pool, baseball field, and skate park, so will grow with them. There is also a college within walking distance that has a pool with a competitive kids swim team, a dance studio, makers club,and some other fun stuff. Oh, and the public schools are excellent, and DD's private school is perfect for her.

We looked at a lot of houses. We found our house on Christmas Day, and we moved in a year ago this week when it was finished. Obviously, our kids were with us. We don't hide how much things cost or how we pay for them (look, daddy's at work before you get up!)

I have had more than one 5/6 year old at DS's class's at school (I work in the class 1 morning a week) ask me why my house has a blue tarp (when the tree fell, apparently google street view stopped by). It's not uncommon.

[oswin]

Mar 20, 2015 19:18:05 GMT -5 212 said:

Beyond that, just WOW at the kid who googles his friend's apartments. Yuck.

Why is this yuck? What's wrong with knowing how much someone paid for something? If I look at Zillow for my neighborhood I can hardly avoid knowing what neighbors paid or around what their houses are worth. Being secretive about money doesn't help anything, and acknowledging that different places cost different amounts can lead to good lessons on money management.

[212]

Mar 20, 2015 21:25:52 GMT -5 oswin said:

Mar 20, 2015 19:18:05 GMT -5 212 said:

Beyond that, just WOW at the kid who googles his friend's apartments. Yuck.

Why is this yuck? What's wrong with knowing how much someone paid for something? If I look at Zillow for my neighborhood I can hardly avoid knowing what neighbors paid or around what their houses are worth. Being secretive about money doesn't help anything, and acknowledging that different places cost different amounts can lead to good lessons on money management.

There is nothing wrong with knowing how much things cost, and obviously money management is an important skill to teach children. But I live in Manhattan. I see the competition and it starts young-- my 2 year old went on interviews for preschool. The kid in this article is 10. You're an adult. I cannot imagine that you're using the information you zillowed as playground banter. I'm sorry, but it's different in my book.

[oswin]

Mar 20, 2015 21:50:40 GMT -5 212 said:

Mar 20, 2015 21:25:52 GMT -5 oswin said:

Why is this yuck? What's wrong with knowing how much someone paid for something? If I look at Zillow for my neighborhood I can hardly avoid knowing what neighbors paid or around what their houses are worth. Being secretive about money doesn't help anything, and acknowledging that different places cost different amounts can lead to good lessons on money management.

There is nothing wrong with knowing how much things cost, and obviously money management is an important skill to teach children. But I live in Manhattan. I see the competition and it starts young-- my 2 year old went on interviews for preschool. The kid in this article is 10. You're an adult. I cannot imagine that you're using the information you zillowed as playground banter. I'm sorry, but it's different in my book.

I guess to me what matters is how the parent "shut that down right away". Did they just tell the kid not to do it or did they have a meaningful discussion about how different people prioritize spending differently, how spending is not necessarily correlated with wealth, and that it is not appropriate to talk about other peoples' financial situations or flaunt your own situation? I'm not around many people who are trying to keep up with the Jones' so I could be wrong, but I think avoiding talking about and (and especially forbidding it without discussing) is not doing anyone any favors.

[redheadk]

Ms. Arroyo is a complete moron.

[212]

Mar 20, 2015 22:14:24 GMT -5 oswin said:

Mar 20, 2015 21:50:40 GMT -5 212 said:

There is nothing wrong with knowing how much things cost, and obviously money management is an important skill to teach children. But I live in Manhattan. I see the competition and it starts young-- my 2 year old went on interviews for preschool. The kid in this article is 10. You're an adult. I cannot imagine that you're using the information you zillowed as playground banter. I'm sorry, but it's different in my book.

I guess to me what matters is how the parent "shut that down right away". Did they just tell the kid not to do it or did they have a meaningful discussion about how different people prioritize spending differently, how spending is not necessarily correlated with wealth, and that it is not appropriate to talk about other peoples' financial situations or flaunt your own situation? I'm not around many people who are trying to keep up with the Jones' so I could be wrong, but I think avoiding talking about and (and especially forbidding it without discussing) is not doing anyone any favors.

They shut it down so much that it's in a NY Times article. Lol.

[v]

Mar 20, 2015 22:14:24 GMT -5 oswin said:

Mar 20, 2015 21:50:40 GMT -5 212 said:

There is nothing wrong with knowing how much things cost, and obviously money management is an important skill to teach children. But I live in Manhattan. I see the competition and it starts young-- my 2 year old went on interviews for preschool. The kid in this article is 10. You're an adult. I cannot imagine that you're using the information you zillowed as playground banter. I'm sorry, but it's different in my book.

I guess to me what matters is how the parent "shut that down right away". Did they just tell the kid not to do it or did they have a meaningful discussion about how different people prioritize spending differently, how spending is not necessarily correlated with wealth, and that it is not appropriate to talk about other peoples' financial situations or flaunt your own situation? I'm not around many people who are trying to keep up with the Jones' so I could be wrong, but I think avoiding talking about and (and especially forbidding it without discussing) is not doing anyone any favors.

These kids are growing up in such a unique (and competitive) environment that I don't know that the ordinary rules apply.  "Please don't shame Tommy for living on the other side of Lexington Avenue.  I know his apartment doesn't have park views, and that he and his brother have to share a bedroom, but some people just don't want to spend over $5 million on their homes.  That isn't something to ridicule him for."

Also, he's 10.  10 is young.  My niece who is 10 does have some concept of money but certainly not a concept that would lead her to look up what her friends' houses cost.  She still thinks $10 is a lot of money.  THANK GOD.  I hope to god that that's the typical 10 year old's concept of money.

[tacosforlife]

I hate these kids. LOL.

[MrsE]

Wow. Just wow.

I remember when my parents were house hunting and I fell into the "kids who got excited to pick out their bedrooms" camp. I can't imagine helping them pick out a house - or knowing enough at such a young age to actually help with the decision making process.

[Deleted]

My parents would have taken us to see homes in that age range and would have taken our opinions under consideration. It helps knowing what your kids think and they can bring up some pretty valid points you may have overlooked.

When I was 13-14, my parents were pouring through books of house plans so we could build. I was obsessed. I marked pages of the ones I loved, but also knew what my parents were looking for and looked for homes I thought they would like. They took a few of my finds into serious consideration because they were along the lines of what they wanted. At 15-16 I designed the layout for their back deck. I used the basic ideas they had, drew out a variety of options on graph paper, then modified as needed until they found their favorite.