Not really “a few hundred”, as the building has a ton of staff. They are all excellent, and in general, I am a good tipper when it comes to good service.
+1 Fedex has a pick up spot around the corner from me open till 9 or 10pm so even that hasn’t been an issue. It does help not to shop online that often.
My gf does a lot of online shopping, thankfully most amazon stuff and whatever she gets is usually USPS/UPS and we havent had any problems. The buildings super keeps an eye on eveyones packages in the common area and I havent heard of any problems (a few other regulars who get lots of packages in the building havent had issues either)
I plan to avoid doorman as long as possible, but obviously depending on your location/style of building it may be the only option. I used to miss a ton of packages at my old building w/ no doorman.
Nah, I did conduct extensive research that is probably 3x as much as the normal person who buys anything here. However, my conclusion was that it was not worthwhile, since I am not likely to stay in one place for a long time, and there seem to be good capital deployment opportunities in liquid markets.
Yeah, people do like services like doormen, but they also like saving $500 or more on maintenance costs…
Regarding buying real estate during market downturn, maybe I would have if I had more money. However, I was just starting out in my career, and the truth is that I did not have much to invest. Plus, everything else was cheap as well. I still have some stock that I bought when SPX was in the 700s, for instance.
buying in NYC right now is not worth it… should probably start a new thread… but for a $1m apartment between paying maintenance fee >1500 and property tax another +1000 you might as well just rent…best case scenario is after 10+ years you sell and break even after commission/fees/taxes… most people buying today are going to lose