Trying to find the right home in Manhattan is certainly challenging, par-ticularly when you consider that the inventory of residential properties actively for sale at any point is between 8,000 to 12,000 apartments. Be-cause there are so many alternatives, it is all but impossible for even the most vigilant buyer to see more than a miniscule portion of this enormous quantity. However, if you could approach your search with a logical methodol-ogy that helps you to define your buying criteria and then filters out those properties you wouldn’t want, you would be able to create a more rea-sonable list of choices to consider. Let me explain by an example. If you were buying a suit, you might go to a department store where there would be thousands of items to choose from. First you would eliminate those that weren’t your size. Then you would decide on a certain style, so you could eliminate those that don’t conform to that fashion. Assuming you wanted a certain color, you could reduce your choices even more. After filtering out all the undesirable al-ternatives, let’s say you end up with eight possible choices. How would you decide which one was best? One way is to look at them side by side, by putting them on hooks and evaluating the qualities you like and those you don’t. This process of comparison permits you to select the best one. This example portrays the fundamental principles of Bellmarc’s Selec-tion Portfolio® technique. We’ve put in some important refinements and added computer technology to create a patent-pending business methodology to assist in your apartment quest. Let’s apply this approach to finding an apartment using features we created just for this purpose. Instead of a floor in a department store, we’ll begin our search with the entire population of apartments for sale in Manhattan.

Looking for an apartment inManhattan?Bellmarc solves thisDaunting Challenge

SELECTION PORTFOLIO®

Your BuYing Formula

Let’s start by eliminating all those residences that are not the type you want. If you want a two-bedroom, we really don’t need to look for studios or one-bedrooms.

My desired apartment type is _________________________

Now we can use other criteria as filters. We have developed a check-off list of fundamental criteria that apply to every buyer. We call them Primary Motivators: Location, Building, Air, Light and Space.

So, let’s continue with your search:

Location

Every buyer has some opinion on the quality of the location he or she desires.

Envision a location that is unmarketable. It might be an area that is economically depressed or shows no or minimal activity for coops and condominiums. Grade this location a “1.”

Now consider a location that the market perceives as having the highest value premium, say Fifth Avenue in the 70s and 80s along Central Park. This is indicative of a “10.”

A grade of “5” might be a location on an active street with no special amenities.

Given these parameters, what is your particular preference? That is, what is the minimum location grade suitable to you?

Minimum Location Grade ___

Building

Every buyer has an opinion of the kind of building he or she would prefer. It could be a doorman or a walk-up. It could be a building of reputation or just a nice property without any glitz.

Let’s grade a walk-up building in a state of disrepair a “1.”

Let’s call a building of world-class reputation with full services, like the Time Warner Center, a “10”.

A grade “5” would, therefore, be a building with a doorman and elevator without any special amenities or reputation.

Given these extremes what is your building grade?

Minimum Building Grade ___

Air

Air is a term of art for us. It relates to the sense of openness and functionality of an apartment, e.g., ceiling height and layout. Some people are very interested in very high ceilings. Some people want particular layouts, such as alcove studios, separate dining rooms and eat-in kitchens. Most people don’t really seem to view this as a critical feature, but some do.

If you have a special “Air” requirement, what is it?

Air Requirement _________________________

Light

It is not what you think. The first reaction people have is to say they want a sunny apartment.

In this case, the level of light in an apartment can be expressed by two elements. The first is the floor height of the apartment – it can be on the 2nd floor or the 30th floor. The second is the view. We define the view more specifically as the predominant view out of the living room.

A “1” would be a dark apartment facing a wall.

A “10” is a grand cityscape view including Central Park.

A “5” would be a street view into other buildings with no skyline.

Given these alternatives, what is your minimum light requirement?

Minimum Floor ____View Grade ____

SELECTION PORTFOLIO®

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Space

We believe that all buyers are concerned about the amount of space in an apartment; however, we do not believe that all space is equal.

Certain rooms are more fundamental to a buyer’s living situation. If the dimensions of these rooms are too small, the apartment won’t work regardless of the overall footage in the apartment. We call these critical areas the “value rooms.”

The value rooms consist of the living room, the dining room (if the apartment has a separate area, this footage is added to the living room) and the master bedroom. For a studio apartment, the value room is the living room.

A good way to consider space is to evaluate your pace against three feet. How many paces make up the size you need for a living room? Multiply this by three and adjust it up or down based your approximation of you pace.

With this in mind, let’s define the space in the value rooms:

Living Room ___ft x ___ft

Master Bedroom ___ft x ___ft In putting this all together, we have defined your initial “Buying Formula.” This is your initial impression of what you want to buy.

Oops! We’re missing an important element. What do you want to spend?

Your Requested Price $ ________________________

5 The Selection Portfolio MethodologyDefining the Search Range

Now that you have developed an initial buying formula, your Bellmarc salesperson can analyze your needs using Selection Portfolio® and apply them to all the apartments available for sale in Manhattan. This population includes all listings registered by Bellmarc salespeople and every other firm in Manhattan that we received through the Manhattan Multiple Listing System (the REBNY system). It also includes all “for sale by owner” apart-ments where we have received permission from the owner to promote their apartment (which is the vast majority of them). Our listing system covers 98% of all apartments for sale in Manhattan. Your salesperson will first consider the amount you want to spend. In Manhattan it is common for buyers and sellers to negotiate. Therefore your agent will look for properties priced at a number higher than your requested price, assuming that some negotiation will take place. This Ne-gotiability Factor changes all the time, based on supply and demand, and is an expression of the agent’s sensitivity to current market forces. We call this higher price the “Seller’s Asking Price.” We also want to explore possible opportunities that might exist below your requested price. If there is a chance that we can find what you like for less than you expected to pay, this is an opportunity that shouldn’t be missed. We call this lower figure the “Low End Extension.” The difference between these two figures comprises the “search range.”

Creating Comparability

The search range gives us parameters for investigating alternatives to show you. However, we don’t merely intend to show you apartments; using Se-lection Portfolio® we will develop a means of comparing them in order to understand which are better and which are worse. This requires a benchmark — a standard against which all properties are to be judged. The benchmark we use is the Seller’s Asking Price. By taking the search range we have determined, and doubling this sum, the Seller’s Asking Price becomes an average point. We refer to the top figure generated by “doubling up” as the High End Point and the upper range as the Comparability Extension. (See chart on the following page.)

Why does this matter? Pretend that you are not buying a whole apart-ment, but rather you are buying components of your buying formula put together like a puzzle. Some elements of your buying formula require an above-average qual-ity, while for other qualities you are more than happy to accept a below-average condition. The challenge is to put together all the pieces of the puzzle in such a way that you end up getting what you want. This process of “doubling up” permits us to create a framework for evaluating pieces of the puzzle in which all the primary motivators can be compared across apartments, with a benchmark of “average” as the point of comparison.

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Filtering the Population of Apartments

Your Bellmarc salesperson can now start by eliminating those apartments you obviously won’t want to buy. He or she will first remove all apartments in the scanning range which do not have the number of bedrooms you want. Even after this reduction, there normally will still be an enormous number of properties in the Raw Inventory of Apartments. (See chart below.) Within your buying formula there is a hierarchy of importance to the primary moti-vators. The first item on your list is your top priority. For example, if that first item is space, you would evaluate the dimensions of the apartment before you would consider the quality of the location or the building. You would real-ize that if the space isn’t adequate, the apartment will be unacceptable, and none of the other primary motivators will matter. This first criterion is your Crucial Determinant. Your salesperson will attempt to quantify your minimum standard and remove all apartments be-low that threshold. Your salesperson will then further re-duce this population by filtering the other criteria defined in your buying formula un-til he generates a population of between 100 and 300 apartments. That’s small enough for us to engage in a process of comparison. This remaining group of list-ings is referred to as the Viable Population of Apartments. Every listing in Bellmarc’s custom-designed computer system is assigned a quantifiable measure for each of the primary motivators you chose in creat-

ing your Buying Formula. The computer system is able to generate average values for each.

Comparing Selected Apartments

Selection Portfolio® generates a report in which each apartment in the viable population is listed and compared to the averages for location, building, air, light and space. The salesperson will analyze these comparisons to determine which apart-ment best matches your buying formula

at the lowest possible price. When a good possibility is found, comprehensive listing information on that apart-ment will be printed out. This process will continue until the salesperson has identified a number of relevant choices, possibly five to as many as 10. The printouts from this group will then be closely reviewed to select the best one for you. We refer to this best choice as the Target Apartment. Then, the salesperson will evaluate the listing informa-tion from the other selected apartments to discern which of these should also be shown as a contrast to the target. The result is a list of alternatives that were logically defined to help you not merely find the right apartment, but understand why it is the right choice.

Bellmarc is a premiere real estate brokerage and prop-erty management firm in New York City, with offices throughout Manhattan. For more information, call 212-874-0100 or visit our website at www.bellmarc.com.

Below AboveAverage Average Average

Low-End Seller’s High-End Extension Asking Price Point

Search Range

Scanning Range

Comparability Extension (“double up”)

Buyer’s Requested Price

Negotiability Factor

Below AboveAverage Average Average(-) (=) (+)

Seller’s Asking Price

Filter #1 The Crucial Determinant

Filter #2, #3, … Other Primary Motivators

Viable Population of apartments

Raw Inventory of Apartments (based on number of bedrooms)