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Who We Are: 
As one of NYC's largest and most successful real estate firms, Manhattan Apts. is regularly featured in the New York press and real estate trade magazines. Send your "wish list"List your property |
February 2005 >> return to MAI in the news "Welcome to Harlem"
HIGLIGHTED AGENT:
…The home-buying frenzy that has driven the average apartment in Manhattan over the $1 million mark and made every neighborhood viable for luxury development has new buyers and builders looking north, making Harlem the most enticing and promising piece of real estate on the island. And as the glorious brownstones of Harlem are being brought back to their former splendor, and new developments are rising, a cultural revitalization recalling the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s is well under way. This past fall, for example the Dance Theater of Harlem was reopened thanks to donations of $1.6 million raised by supporters, nearly a third of that said to be contributed by Mayor Bloomberg Bill Rohlfing is currently working with Toby Jenkins to develop two new properties. His entrepreneurship was featured in the article.
One of Upper Manhattan’s biggest draws is the abundance of historic brownstones, potentially the city’s finest housing stock, scattered about neighborhoods unobstructed by high-rise apartment buildings. Some 3,000 of the borough’s townhouses are here. “The brownstones for single-family townhouses in Manhattan are here,” according to Bill Rohlfing, who has made a business out of transforming dilapidated brownstones into eminently livable townhomes. His company is called, aptly, Uptown Townhouse. A former sculptor and set designer, Rohlfing bought a devastated brownstone on 118 th Street, off Lenox Avenue, for $425,000 in January 2001 and converted in into an expansive, loft-style, four-story townhome within six months, working off his own design. While Rohlfing lives there with his wife and three sons, the house serves as a prototype for prospective buyers. Once would be buyers tour the brilliantly designed townhouse, they can buy a brownstone closely resembling the model, at a fraction of the price of such a richly appointed home just a mile or so downtown. ;“The concept,” says Rohlfing, “is to buy a shell that’s been the blight of the neighborhood and turn it into the diamond on the block, not only for someone who wants to have some space in Manhattan, but to have a life here, instead of moving to the suburbs. I buy a shell you can’t walk into and turn it into a single-or two-family building with somewhere between 4,000 and 5,000 square feet of space. The taxes are about $4,000 a year, and there’s no maintenance because everything, including central air-conditioning, is brand new.” Rohlfing sold a brownstone on West 130th Street to a well known celebrity which has earned Rohlfing high esteem among longtime residents of the block. (Please note that Toby Jenkins represented Rohlfing as the seller in this purchase). He is in the process of converting two additional brownstone. |
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…Brownstone Pioneers