Handshake
I came to a handshake agreement with the owners of the neighboring apartment, 4B, late yesterday. The agreed upon price was actually a hair less than I was hoping, which is very good. I would have been willing to pay probably another 5% if he had wanted to negotiate some more. He did simple math, and split the difference between our initial positions, rather than split the difference between the latest positions; the latter would have been more advantageous for him.
Anyway, I’ve started talking to a real estate attorney who happens to be my aunt, so hopefully we’ll have a formal contract signed by end of month. She works at a bank, so that may simplify matters if that bank does mortgages for co-ops: the pursuit of synergies that lead to behemoths like Citibank may finally work for me.
I’ll need to contact the co-op board and management company soon. I’m not sure how long closing and renovation will take. The upstairs apartments, 5B and 5C, and in a similar process. 5C bought 5B with the intent of combining the apartments; they’ve been in contract since October, but haven’t closed yet. Their paperwork is, however, more complicated, since 5C’s fiance bought 5B, and he has to go through a seperate vetting and filing with the co-op board, as well as have architectural plans filed. I’ll contact them for the name of an architect, who should be at least familiar with the apartment layouts. I’ll also need a contractor, though Grace’s friend’s brother does that kind of work.