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 ...
Space in NYC is at such a premium, it’s a fair guess that your laundry room is larger than the average living room in Manhattan. Maybe larger than the whole apartment.
Now that w/d’s are so much smaller, and stackable, it makes sense to fit them into an apt, give up a closet for the convenience.
And so New York, in terms of in-home laundry, reaches forward past college dormitories into 1950.
Many of the posters here have never been inside one of those Manhattan apartments. There is no place to hook up a washer & dryer - let alone physically place on on the floor.
A friend of mine who lived in Brooklyn had a washer/dryer combo. Everything done in one unit. The water had to drain down the kitchen sink.
Which is why the liberals in Manhattan are always whining about urban sprawl and "McMansions", it's envy.
One of the joys of living in my hometown of Manhattan... the weekly trek to the laundromat. By 13 or so I was expected to do my own ... always hated it. Fortunately it was on the corner of my block at 12th and 2nd Ave. Some peeps have to schlep 4 blocks or more.
In addition until 12 years ago it was illegal to have a garbage disposal. A dishwasher??? dream on ...
I hate going to laundromat and fortunately haven’t had to go to one in over a decade.
The best setup I’ve ever seen in an apartment living was in Cincinnati. For every 4 apartments (on each floor) there were 2 coin operated washers and dryers on each floor. I could go out my front door and walk a few yards to the laundry room. Rarely were all four of us on that floor home and doing laundry at the same so it was the closest thing to having my own private laundry room.
Every redneck trailer and even log cabin in flyover country, generally has a washer and dryer, and most people consider it an absolute essential bit of life. Our FIRST purchase moving into a new house... washer and dryer.
Only in NYC and DC, I guess, is it a ‘status symbol’.
No wonder they’re insane, they’re just out there totally on the fringe. Can’t have washers and dryers in apartments? What numbskull thought of that? Money-grubbing landlords, that’s who. Sheesh.
Getting their own washers and dryers will the biggest mistake that they ever made. What I’ve always found attractive about New York is the urban lifestyle, and that goes beyond eating out every night, into such mundane things as cleaning services that pick up and deliver. If they’re not careful, they’ll lose such amenities. It will be just like Denver or Dallas where you have to drop your cleaning off and pick it up.
oh, you don’t know chauvinism till you meet a Manhattanite. Those folks wouldn’t live anywhere else. They may have a condo in FL or a ranch in MT, but live there? You kidding?
There’s a laundry room in almost all the apartment buildings and they’re (mostly) fine with that ... they think the world (theatre, museums, shopping, concerts, fine dining, etc) is all in their back yard, a subway or taxi ride away. Taking an elevator to do laundry is no big deal.
Actually, if there is blame, place it on the architects who designed many of these buildings long before washing machines were a common household appliance. My building was built in 1929.
When I first moved to Albuquerque I got an apartment in a building that had the washing machines in the basement. Unknown to me the building had been a “retirement” complex for about 20 years and had recently changed. Not only was it quiet, but after helping the elderly carry and move stuff, I’d go to the laundry room and find my clothes folded in the basket on occasion.
Be nice, be nice! I lived in NYC for thirty years. Apartments there don’t come with washers and dryers because there is usually no room for them. Plus, if it’s a rental you can’t just go rearranging the plumbing to hook them up even if you had the space (which you don’t).
My son now lives in Brooklyn and he takes care of his laundry the yuppie way. He drops it at the laundry and they wash, iron and fold it for him.
Is it true that garbage disposals are illegal in NYC?
In our little rural town, we have a 4 bedroom, 3 bath 3200 sq. ft. ranch on an acre lot. Our yearly taxes are under $400 with homstead. I have taken a laundry room with washer, dryer and cabinets to house supplies for granted for 35 years. We eat breakfast every morning on a glassed in back porch and watch the squirrels, birds, chipmonks, and deer feed and play. Sometimes, we have a rabbit drop by. We keep our lot woodsy with little to mow. A first class hospital is 10 minutes away.
When we are out and about, we know a lot of people who speak and visit a little. When we want to see shows, different places, we take a vacation.
vaudine
vaudine
The topic of conversation was almost always about someone they knew or a neighbor getting robbed or beaten up.
Your lifestyle sounds a lot like ours. Our taxes are higher (thanks, Michigan), our house is a two-story on 2.2 acres, and we have more wildlife than we want to sometimes. The rabbits chase the deer and get gently shooed-off now and then.
We’re trying to get our property to the “woodsy” stage, but that means undoing a lot of damage the state DNR did in the 70’s. They planted a bunch of autumn olives to “improve the habitat,” and now our section of the state is overrun with them. They’re choking out native trees so we’re putting them back.
NYC is a nice place to visit (I was there on 9/9/01) but there’s no way I’d ever live there. All that concrete makes me claustrophobic.
It’s a too each their own thing. Took me years, but I finally convinced my wife to move out of the stix and into a major city (Dallas), but I don’t think I could talk her into Manhattan.
I myself would love it. City boy that I am, I love the idea of a kitchen you never use because you’re surrounded by the finest restaurants in the country, no laundry because the dry cleaner picks up and delivers, no yard to take care of, no tires to rotate etc etc. Manhattan would be paradise to me, but the wife, not so much.
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