UPPER WEST SIDE — New York City is an "amusement park."
That's the philosophy of Amelia Gewirtz, one of Halstead Property's top residential real estate brokers and a lifelong Upper West Sider.
Her sense comes from New York's status as a global city, with apartment buyers coming from across the world to own a piece of property here, outbidding locals.
But it also comes from the excitement people get just from strolling outside, Gewirtz said.
"You're paying to walk out your door and have a blast," she said.
The city has given Gewirtz the opportunity not just to break real estate records for the neighborhood in terms of price per square footage, but also to perform as a singer and songwriter.
Throughout her 26 years as a broker, Gewirtz has led a double life performing at clubs and festivals across the city with her band, Amelia's Dream, as well as writing songs for film and television.
Her music career took a turn when she had a child and started a new band, Parents with Angst, to air her experiences as a new mom, putting her frustrations with parenting front and center in her songs.
DNAinfo reporter Emily Frost spoke with Gewirtz about living such a full life, why she's never been able to leave New York City and the places people should "run" for property in the neighborhood and across Manhattan.
Emily: Amelia, tell me about how you first ended up on the Upper West Side, and why you're still here. You've been here for your whole life.
Amelia: My whole life. I grew up here. I grew up near Columbia University, on Amsterdam and 119th street, before people knew it was called Morningside Heights.
Emily: What was it called back then?
Amelia: It's funny because I used to listen to WBLS in the old days. There was this huge contest about what is it called in the 100s around Amsterdam Avenue. I never even called in. I always was very lucky with radio shows, but I never called in because I just assumed everybody would know the answer. I guess everybody who was listening to BLS was calling in and saying "Harlem." Thirty minutes went by and the DJ got very frustrated. He's like, "Doesn't anybody know what this area is called?" I was like, "Oh please." I just picked up the phone as a joke and I called in. I said, "Morningside Heights." He goes, "We have a winner." I was like, "Are you kidding me?" I got tickets to Billy Ocean from knowing the area I grew up in was called Morningside Heights versus Columbia University.
That was my playground. My playground was Columbia University. I loved it. I used to say to people, it felt so safe that in those days the parents would just send their kids out into the street and nobody watched anybody. That's how safe it was. There was a gap between ... in the old days 72nd was not what 72nd street is. That was a little wacky. 86th Street was a little wacky. The 90s was a little wacky. I will tell you, 114th street, from Riverside, Broadway, Amsterdam, and Morningside was something out of a serene fairy tale. I would come home from even high school, Music and Art High School, which is now called LaGuardia. I would come home, it could be 1 o'clock in the morning and you would just feel so safe over there. It was just wonderful. It was a great place to grow up.
Emily: Did the neighborhood change at all? What's different now?
Amelia: That neighborhood has really not changed. Columbia has tried to basically buy everything they could buy to keep that neighborhood as serene as they can. It really has such a wonderful calm feeling to it. What has changed is around that neighborhood. They put millions and million of dollars into that park, which used to be told you couldn't go into; Morningside Park. Now it's so high end, so expensive. Everybody's trying to live near that park now. A lot of those buildings that were rental, if Columbia didn't buy, they did turn into co-ops or condos. Really, now you get a lot of artists and musicians who, maybe originally their first place they were going to live would be in the Village. A lot of them are saying, "You know what, can you put me somewhere between 90-something Street and about 120th Street." Because it still has an artsy vibe to it. It's chill.
Emily: Then you went to high school here. You stayed and are you raising a family here?
Amelia: Yeah. I went to B'nai Jeshurun. Then I went to Music and Art, which was on 135th Street, which is now called LaGuardia at Lincoln Center. Then I went to Hunter College. I have tried to leave. It's a very interesting thing. You don't appreciate where you grew up until you leave and you come back. I moved to California for six months. I even moved to Queens, to Astoria and I lived in New Jersey. I will tell you that certain people ... and maybe it's if you're born and bred, they're born and bred New Yorkers. My sister left and went to Colorado. There are certain people that are born and bred New Yorkers that you either grow up here and go to the suburbs or leave and go somewhere else, or you try to leave and your cells in your body just can't even imagine being anywhere else.
Every time I left I was like, "I will kiss the dirt on the ground." You know what, it has helped me help my buyers and sellers, because when you leave and come back you then have a different perspective. What I learned is you are not paying for the interior square footage, you're paying to walk out your door and have a blast. Actually, there's so much free entertainment here that you could say you're paying for what you're living in, which is smaller, but you could sit on a park bench and be entertained here. Where if you are in the suburbs or somewhere else, you've got to get in a car. Literally you just walk out your door and just feel the energy of the street and it's free entertainment. I think of it like we live in an amusement park.
Emily: Absolutely. The people on the street. People watching.
What section of the Upper West Side do you live in now, and why did you choose it?
Amelia: I landed up not moving too far away from where I grew up. We tried to aim to be near a train. We found a home in the 90s, right next to where Whole Foods is.
Emily: What do you think about the 90s. How have things changed since when you were growing up to now?
Amelia: 180 degrees. Oh my God. I grew up wen there was a Woolworths where Whole Foods is. I loved my mom-and-pop shops. I actually miss my mom-and-pop shops. I'm one of those people who try really hard to keep the mom-and-pop shops. I will say, where they put the Whole Foods is one section that needed it because there were a lot of issues there. I am a huge fan for that whole shopping center, even though I am always, ra-ra mom and pop. It's pretty 180.
If you walked today on Amsterdam Avenue from 90th to 96th street, and actually Columbus Avenue, they are transforming all of these 1950s, 1960s post war buildings. What they're doing, which is so smart, because they're realizing that people are saying, "I'll move to the 90s." Which used to not be the safest place to live. Now it's all trendy restaurants, boutiques, all this stuff. It's moving so fast that in two weeks it'll look different than it looked two weeks ago. Actually, I tell a lot of people I think that's a very smart investment right now, because it is transforming so quickly. If you look at the ground floor and then you look up to the fourth floor, you will notice construction happening everywhere. They were so smart. They took the first floor through the third floor, most of these post-war buildings, and they made them feel like slick glass towers. If you look up it's the same building that's been there from the 1950s. They're turning them all into condos.
Emily: Interesting. They're renovating the bottom half.
Amelia: Just the bottom three floors. There's a new condo conversion that goes from 95th to 96th where HSBC is. The first floor is stunning. Look up, it's the building that's always been there. 93rd street where now Party City is, look up, you can't believe that's the building that was there. They're just being very slick, where they're wrapping these buildings so the lobby area fees slick and glass. You think it's part of where the Ariel is on Broadway and 99th street. To give you an idea of how things have changed, I sold the penthouse in the Ariel, which is 99th street, for $8.5 million recently. It was actually the highest dollar per square foot in the history of the West Side.
Emily: Wow, in the 90s.
Amelia: The condo deal on 99th and Broadway and the Ariel that apartment was just magnificent. It was so gorgeous. I believe that you're going to be looking at an apartment that ... I think that's the beginning. People are just starting to get what's going on in the 90s and the 100s. The fact that we have a 60,000-square-foot Whole Foods, a Home Goods, Sephora. It's just starting to transform. Can you imagine where those prices are going to be, even three or four years from now. Columbia's building that huge new campus. To me, the 90s are going to become what the 80s were. It's just going to ...
Emily: That was one of my questions for you. What are your predictions for residential real estate trends five, ten years from now?
Amelia: I think that anyone who can figure out a way to invest in the 90s on the West Side right now, I would be running. Because the fact that they came up with this whole thing where they're wrapping these buildings with glass, I don't think anybody has ... Let me just say that I made a mistake and did not invest in what used to be called Park West Village, which is now called Central Park Towers. I could have bought a one bedroom for $80,000. I said, "Ha ha, who would ever pay that? Ha ha." Let me tell you, that's now $1.1 million. Learn from my mistakes.
There's three places in Manhattan I would be running to buy right now. One would be the 90s on the Upper West Side, really anywhere you can get anywhere near Whole Foods you should be running. I would be thinking about the Hudson Yards area, because again I will never get over these people from Connecticut who I could have given a whole building for $6 million dollars. They're like, "We're not sure anything's going to happen there." Are you crazy? It a whole building. I would be thinking about anything near Hudson Yards. I would be thinking about anything near the 2nd Avenue subway. These are the three places ...
Everybody complains they can't find a place for appreciation in the city. Before they did Time Warner, and I said, "Time Warner is coming, get something in the 50s before it's done." They tripled their money. I always say to people ... I've been doing this 26 years, I've never had anybody lose money. I've had one person in 26 years break even because she didn't give me any notice. Traditionally, if I know about that you're thinking of moving within two years, it is very hard to lose money. You just have to strategize the timing and the location. I say to people, "Please don't tell me three weeks in advance." Because guess what, if you tell me August 1st there's a very different market August 1st versus September 10th. Give yourself the option to have flexibility.
Emily: I see what you mean.
Amelia: I've had people say to me, "I'm just letting you know, one year from now I'm going to sell." I'll say, "Okay, can I come over and just say if you painted that little spot or spent $5 here?" If you can give your broker - and you trust your broker - some notice, you could probably make 20-30 percent more just not giving them a couple of weeks. Give them a year.
Emily: Do you advise that they stage their apartment?
Amelia: I have an art background and my partner has a fashion background, so one of the things we do is we save people money, we do stage the apartment. We do 99 percent of the staging our self.
Emily: They don't have to hire someone?
Amelia: They don't have to hire somebody. One of the tips that I give a lot of sellers is the camera does not lie. It doesn't even lie for me. I do this before a party and I have this blog post, seven tips for sellers. Also, if you're having a party, it's great for a party. Take your phone and do a bunch of selfies of the apartment. It will blow your mind what you've been living with. Even if you think it looks neat and orderly, it does not feel as streamlined as you think it does.
What we'll do is we'll go around, we'll take photographs. Sometimes I'll say, "I know you have kids or I know you work 24 hours. I'm not even going to tell you you have to get rid of stuff, but I'm going to say, go to the Container Store, go get bunch of boxes that match, throw the drama in the box." If you get all these boxes that match, no one sees what's going on inside the box and it looks very streamlined because it's just one consistent pattern. That took what, 15 minutes, and now you don't have to do any work. You're selling a feeling. People think you're selling brick and mortar, but you're selling a feeling. You want somebody to walk in and go, "I have to live here." There's emotion attached to what they're willing to pay. You want that emotion to be positive, and happy and exciting, because they will give you more money.
Emily: You talk a lot about compromise. What are the compromises that people have to get their head around or how do you try to encourage them, especially with prices the way they are on the Upper West Side?
Amelia: If you have a limited budget, that's your budget. Even if the bank is going to give you money, unless you're buying a condo, the bank is only giving you money to attempt to get into the club. The club can still reject you. Figure out what you're financially qualified for. Don't go past 25 to 28 percent debt to income ratio. Have some liquid left over. Figure that out. Now you've got your budget. Now you say to yourself, what's my number one priority? If your number one priority is location, you need ...
Emily: Next to the best school or the park.
Amelia: It's now illegal for brokers to talk about schools. They changed the law because, I don't blame them, what happened was everybody at Lincoln Towers was supposed to be able to go to P.S. 199. They built all these buildings and now they couldn't. The city of New York actually said to us, "We don't care if your apartment is touching the school ...
Emily: Can't even mention it.
Amelia: We can't even promise you can go. That's the reality. They said, "Even if you're touching the school, we can't promise you can go. Your instructions are to say, 'Go to the NYC DOE website. You can see what the zone is, but there's no guarantee until the week your child's supposed to go. Then you find out if there's room for them'."
Emily: That is quite a change.
Amelia: Dramatic.
Emily: Because I was hearing about real estate brokers who were taking a tour of P.S. 452, the nearby school, just to check it out to be able to talk it up.
Amelia: You can't. That's what they said. They said, "You could touch P.S. 87 and not land up having space for yourself." It's absolutely against the law. These are either new brokers or brokers that are in denial, because we had the state come to a hosted training session and say, "Do not ever mention schools. Send them to the website and tell them, I still can't promise you."
Emily: You were saying location.
Amelia: Yeah. You can think in your own head about the school, but don't have a conversation with your broker. Think location. There are people who don't want to give up their dry cleaners. Believe it or not, we sold people on West 77 Street and they moved two doors down because there's a dry cleaner they like, there's a restaurant they like. Figure out when you walk out the door what would break your heart if you were not near. Might be the park, might be your favorite restaurant - I hope it's still there with the rents - might be the dry cleaner. Figure that out.
If location is the number one priority then you say to yourself, "What is available to me in this location? Is it a studio? Is it a one bedroom, two bedroom?" I don't think that one bedroom or two bedroom buyers understand that somebody with $20 million in Manhattan compromises. That's the thing they don't get. It doesn't matter what your price range is, you will always compromise. They need to get that. It's also not your grandparents' New York City anymore. Twenty-five years ago you were in competition with your neighbors. Today think about how many people say, "I want to buy other places in the United States." Versus how many people in Europe, or wherever they're from, say, "I need to have a home in Manhattan." You are now in competition internationally. You are not in competition with your neighbor.
You really got to laser beam on what your priorities are. If location's your priority, are you living by yourself, are you living with a kid? How many people are in that apartment with you that you need to fit in? If it's really just you, what is the priority? I say to people, these are the two things you give up. You've got location, you've got light and view, and you've got space. I'll say to somebody, "We really need to figure out would you take 2,000 square feet facing a wall that you could touch, versus 1,000 either facing the back courtyard or facing open city?" Because I have sold a one bedroom for $2.5 million that had a view, and for $2.5 million you could get three bedrooms facing a wall. You have to get clear on that.
The other thing is that I say to people, "You could replace a kitchen, you can replace a bath, you can do a paint job." I have a joke in one of my blog posts, it says, "some of the best deals in town have sag and have wrinkles." It the truth. You would be so much smarter to buy a home that is in the location you like, with the view or light you like, and deal with an Ikea kitchen, or whatever kind of kitchen or bath you're going to do. You cannot replace the location, you cannot replace the light or the view, but you can always replace everything else inside. That's how you find your path to happiness. Everyone compromises. It could be a studio buyer, it could be a penthouse buyer, $300,000, $300 million. This is Manhattan. You are choosing to buy in an amusement park in the city of the world. This is not the city of New York, this is the city of the world. That's what you've got to get clear on.
Emily: That compromise part, I'm sure that's hard for people to ...
Amelia: Emotionally.
Emily: .. get their head around, because when you were listing it, it's like, no I don't want to give up any of those things.
Amelia: Right. I know. I do something called boot camp here at Halstead, and we do train new brokers. The very first thing that comes out of my mouth is, 'if you are not prepared to be an emotional therapist then you need to go into another business.' Because really, getting married, having a child, and buying a home are the three biggest emotional roller coasters in somebody's life. It's real to them. It can't be an inconvenience to you. You have to have empathy, try to get to the bottom of emotionally what is going on. I always say to the buyers and sellers, "What can I do to make you feel safe?" It's a big word to me. What do you need to feel safe. Because what seems so minor to somebody else, could really be triggering something from a childhood. Your job is to help them feel safe when they are moving into something or moving out of something.
Emily: In a chaotic atmosphere.
Amelia: Right.
Emily: It moves very quickly.
Amelia: Right, you want to make sure ... I always say, like everything in life, you plan for the worst and hope for the best. Everybody's great when everything's great, but you really know how people are in a crisis. Your job is try to, even if a crisis happens, make each blip that happens feel as calm as it could be.
Emily: Yeah. You're a leader in the real estate world. We talked about that. People might not know that there's a whole other side to your life. You're also a rock star.
Amelia: Apparently, yeah.
Emily: You have a band. Then you also launched a new band. Tell us about how you manage to be a real estate broker and a musician/singer/songwriter/artist. How did it all start?
Amelia: I grew up in the city in the 70s were everything was very artsy, music. While I as at Music and Art I was in little rock and roll bands. We used to play all over the city. I have had a ton of licensing, TV and film. Had a lot of situations where you're done, you're signed, but it never comes to fruition. Then the world started transitioning from records, to CDs, to digital. Somewhere in there the whole evaporation of the economics for musicians occurred. Right now there's no value in original art.
Personally, myself, I just got a check recently that I'm not going to cash. I'm actually going to frame it. What did it cost for the stamp, what did it cost for the paper, what did it cost for the envelope? It's all my original; it's my voice, my writing, my words. The check was .01 cent.
What ended up happening is I had my music on 80 radio stations, I was on all these different TV shows. I think the final snapping point for me was I had 26 spins or something. We're talking, I was in Wishmaster 4, Lifetime, Disney, just huge things. I got a check for $326 or something. I was like, wait, 20 of my songs, my original music, my voice, and I have ... I was very upset. Somebody very big in the business who's at a corporate level said to me, "Do you know how many musicians would sell their souls for that $326?" I said "They would be homeless." Literally, that was the moment ... I was bankrolling it, because I just figured if everybody thinks that I've got what it takes, I'll just bankroll it.
Emily: Just got to keep going.
Amelia: I'll just keep going, I'll just bankroll it. I finally was told by people who are very powerful in the industry, "stop bankrolling it. It's a different business. We don't know where it's going to be 30 years from now, but right now it's a one in a million."
Emily: The economics ...
Amelia: Yeah, the economics do not work. I started out in real estate 26 years ago. All my friends who were in the arts were waitresses or waiters. I said, "I don't feel like being a waiter or waitress." I said, I'll do real estate. For a while what I was doing was I was touring on weekends across the United Sates, doing radio tours, doing, I wouldn't say stadium shows ....
Emily: This is with the band, Amelia's Dream?
Amelia: With Amelia's Dream. I was touring with Amelia's Dream. We opened up for Casey and the Sunshine band, they would show us on the six o'clock news. Really pretty major things. Then we would do that on the weekends. I was touring once in early 2000 I think. I just remember I had to go into a radio station. There was a board issue with one of my clients. I just said to my husband, who at the time was my boyfriend, I said, "You should take a photograph of me right now. This is insane." I'm on the phone negotiating board approval for a client. I got her board approval, and then going into a radio station and playing something.
Then I've had clients who came to actually watch me at the Bottom Line. I did Night Birds. I don't know if you remember Night Birds. It was a radio station that used to do Nightbirds at the Bottom Line. The client comes to Nightbirds to watch me and says to me, "What are our doing on the phone?" I said "I'm just tying to make sure I win your bidding war." She's like, "You're getting on stage." I was like, "Yeah, and you're trying to buy an apartment. My job is to get you the apartment. That's okay that I'm getting on stage. Let me go get you the apartment, I'll go on stage. I'll be okay." She got the apartment.
I just said, I don't need to tour anymore; got married. Actually, I'm going to be recording a new record. I always say, some people do antiquing or watch reality TV. I don't watch reality TV and I don't go antiquing. In my summers, when real estate is slow, I make records. Maybe they don't make a lot of money, but this is my diary, that's how I vent. I write records and they make me happy.
Emily: Yeah, your songs are personal. Now that you're a parent you have a new band.
Amelia: Yeah, Parents With Angst.
Emily: Parents With Angst. What is that all about and why did you form that band?
Amelia: That was almost a happy accident. My record Parents With Angst, there's a song on it called No More Time. That's the very first song I wrote. It's all about, I can't get in the shower, my hair is a rat's nest, I haven't had a pedicure, and I have no more time; I'm so angry. This is a rock and roll, mommy is mad, you should not be so close to me right now. Ah, I'm just freaking out. This little kid, this baby is like, "ha ha". He's all happy. I'm like, you don't mind that I'm ... I said to my husband, you know what, I'm just going to play guitar. He doesn't seem to mind that I'm complaining about him.
I wrote all these songs over that summer. Then we landed a place in Westport, Conn., there's something called the Slice of Saugatuck which is our taste of New York that we have here in the city. Their version of it in Westport, Conn. I never thought I would do anything with that band. This was more of a venting project almost, for me. There were parents crying in the audience, begging me, how many records could I sell them. One of them said to me "I know you wrote this for yourself, but it's the story of my life." We played Mamapalooza three years at the pier on 70th Street on the Hudson River. It was never done to make money. I don't think it's made any money. Apparently it has resonated with parents.
Emily: Yeah. You're trying to make this new genre of parenting music, or music for parents. Not kids songs, not ...
Amelia: It's not for children. This is not a kids record.
Emily: It's about the experience of parenting.
Amelia: This is the angst of ... Honestly most people do not talk about the angst of being a parent. Yes we love our children. They are fabulous. There's a lack of sleep that goes along with it, there's an amount of money that no matter how much in your brain you think, you don't take into account that that kid will be a different size three weeks from now. I am going back to Amelia's Dream because I am more of an angst-y, Alanis Morissette-y kind of song writer at heart. Parents with angst was done when my kid ... now I'm writing a whole record about GMOs. I apologize in advance to any pharmaceutical companies who hear my future record.
Emily: Do you think that there's a natural fit between real estate and being creative on the side? Would you advise a fledgling artist, creative type, to get into real estate rather than bartending, to follow your path?
Amelia: I think that there are two types of artists. That's very good question. There are two types of artists. There's an artist who maybe was a song writer, rock and roller, who has done waitressing that understands how service oriented ... which is really the key to real estate is being really service oriented. I actually think the restaurant part helps them, who gets, it's not about you, it's about the customer.
You could be right or you could have what you want, your job is to make them feel safe. Someone who's been in music and done restaurants, it seems to be a natural fit. I don't know why. My best assistants have some kind of restaurant experience and some kind of art experience. Whether they're a musician, actor. The artists that I find don't transition well are not organized. These are people's live. You cannot not get back to them. You cannot forget about .. things cannot go through the crack. Artists can be spacey, artists can be flaky. You cannot be that kind of artist and be a successful real estate agent.
Emily: Before we wrap up, I want to go back to the Upper West Side. You've lived here your whole life, what are your favorite places?
Amelia: I love Elizabeth's Neighborhood restaurant on Columbus and 93rd Street. That is my diner. They know my son. He'll be like, "I know I'm eight years old and I'm entitled to the children's menu, but I need to have a full-sized hamburger." They're like, "Oh, that's Adam's burger." Elizabeth's on Columbus makes me really happy. They don't advertise that they're farm-to-table, but they really are farm-to-table. I love them. We're there all the time. I love the Boat Basin Café. You just look at the Hudson River on 79th street. That makes me really happy.
Emily: Do you sit outside?
Amelia: We do.
Emily: How of you get a table on the weekends?
Amelia: It is a timing issue. You have to get there at 5:45 p.m.. If you are there after 6:20, you will not get a table. The other thing that people don't realize, put your name on the list. You are shocked how many people leave.
Emily: It moves. The list moves.
Amelia: Oh my God. Sometimes they'll tell you it could be an hour and you might get a table in 15-20 minutes, because they keep calling the names and those people left. Maybe they decide to stay at the bar and they're drinking. Timing. People used to say, I don't understand how you go to Gennaro. Which I love Gennaro, on 92nd/93rd and Amsterdam. My husband and I went to Italy and we came back from Italy and went to Gennaro's, and we're like, the pasta tastes just like it does in Italy. That's a really good place. Same thing, there'll be 50 people outside. Learn the timing flow. 5:45 p.m., yes it a little early, but by the time you sit down it's 6. Now you have beat everybody. Celeste is very good. That's been here for a while on Amsterdam here in the 80s. I used to love William's Barbecue. I can't believe they went out of business. That was one of the things of my childhood. On 86th and Broadway. They're gone.
Emily: These are good tips. You're giving away some secrets.
Amelia: That's okay. Feel free to say hello if you see me there.
Emily: Thank you so much, Amelia.
Amelia: My pleasure.
Emily: It was so fun talking to with you.
Amelia: Yes, you too. If you need anything else you let me now.
Emily: All right.
Amelia: Take care.
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