"Inspired to Invest" Podcast

An Empire State of Real Estate: Big Deals in the Big Apple

• Serena Holmes • Episode 90

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An empire state of real estate! Big deals in the big apple.

Welcome back to "Inspired To Invest". This week, Ellen Silverman from Compass is with us for episode 90. To watch rather than listen, click here.

Ellen unlocks the secrets of New York City real estate. Her journey from a prolific 30-year career in banking and finance to becoming a real estate authority offers listeners a unique perspective on the city's dynamic property landscape.

With insights into prime neighborhoods like the Upper West Side and Chelsea, as well as emerging areas in Queens and Brooklyn, Ellen shares her strategies for finding hidden investment gems and navigating the high stakes of NYC real estate.

Gain an edge in property investment as Ellen recounts her personal story from buying her first apartment in 1995 for a mere $40,000 to owning a coveted condominium in Harlem.

Her experiences highlight the impressive wealth-building potential of strategic real estate investments.

Ellen also delves into the emotional and analytical elements of buying and selling properties, drawing parallels with her Wall Street background and emphasizing the importance of informed, unemotional decision-making.

Enhance your investment toolkit with Ellen's expert advice on using detailed Excel spreadsheets to assess property values and neighborhood potentials.

This episode not only covers the structural advantages of newer condominiums over co-ops but also emphasizes the value of location, particularly proximity to subway access for rental prospects.

Ellen’s journey and insights serve as a motivational blueprint for those seeking success in real estate, reminding listeners of the importance of persistence and continuous learning in the field.

To connect with Ellen, go to @ellenjsilverman on social or https://ellenjsilverman.com.

Thank you to The GeoFocus Group for bringing us this month’s episodes. To learn more about their land development and construction management services for real estate developers and missing middle housing, go to https://thegeofocusgroup.com.

“Inspired to Invest” is proud to support the Beyond Success Program, a not-for-profit financial literacy program for students, launched by More To Give & MAK Investments. Find out more at @more2give.ca.

Join us again for our next episode Apr. 23.

Thank you for tuning into “Inspired To Invest”, hosted by @serenaholmesofficial & remember, "when you invest in yourself, the sky's the limit!" 


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Serena Holmes:

Hey everybody, welcome to Inspired to Invest. I've got Ellen Silverman here with me. She's joining us from New York City. She works for a national brokerage called Manhattan or let's start it from the beginning. That didn't make any sense. Hey everybody, welcome to Inspire to Invest. I've got Ellen Silverman joining me from New York City today. She works for a national brokerage called Compass and they're headquartered in Manhattan.

Serena Holmes:

Her promise to her clients is how to find sanctuary in the city that never sleeps, and whether you're seeking that perfect space or selling a prized property, she's 100% dedicated to meeting your needs and also protecting your best interests in the unique and vibrant New York City market. She has experienced city living as a renter, buyer, seller, co-op and condominium owner, and she has a keen eye for interior design and she loves keeping on top of new condo development. So thanks for taking time out of what I assume is a very busy schedule to be with us today. How are you? I'm good, I'm good. Thank you for having me. So obviously, this podcast is focused on real estate, but we also like to shed a light on business and entrepreneurship. So any lessons that you can infuse for our audience can kind of focus on any of those topics, but with real estate in mind. How did you get involved in the industry and what are some of the things that you're seeing in the New York market right now?

Ellen Silverman:

Oh God, quite a story.

Ellen Silverman:

My background really is banking and finance but I've been an apartment owner for, I guess, since around 1995, so close to 30 years and I bought and sold my own apartment three times.

Ellen Silverman:

So I was always in the real estate game in New York City and I always had a good perspective on neighborhoods and what neighborhoods were going to gentrify and appreciate in value, in real estate value. I've been very good at that and I think it's because I was born and raised here and I just have a very good understanding of New York and how it works and it's in my blood and so and I always loved, you know, apartments and decorating and furniture and color, and no matter what size apartment I always found I always found a way to make it a home. So real estate has always sort of been in my blood and I have a financial background from banking. So I decided after about 30 years in Wall Street it was time to go. You know, it was just time to go and I thought of real estate being my next career because of my own experience in it and as well as good financial skills, which are really needed in real estate.

Serena Holmes:

Yeah, no for sure. What would you say is your favorite neighborhood in New York City?

Ellen Silverman:

Oh my God, I have so many. I love the Upper West Side. I love Carnegie Hill, which is sort of the Upper East Side. It's a little more isolated and quaint. I mean I love downtown. I love the meatpacking district, it's fantastic. I love Chelsea. The new developments in architecture downtown is just fantastic. Yeah, I've only been once.

Serena Holmes:

I went for my birthday, probably 12 years ago or something like that, so I got the chance to experience it in a couple days and I think by the end we walked so much I was limping to our plane.

Serena Holmes:

It's a walking city, a very unique city. Now, it's also known to be very, very expensive. So, for someone that is considering it, whether they're looking to buy a home or they're looking to invest what would you say are some tips and hints that you could offer, just so that they aren't getting it over their head? Or maybe are there any unique investments that people may not be as aware of that they should be?

Ellen Silverman:

Yeah, I think when people think of New York City they watch Sex and the City or they watch Succession and they see these gorgeous apartments in the major central neighborhoods of Manhattan. But there's lots of new up and coming areas in Queens, in the Bronx, in Brooklyn, where you can buy an apartment for less than they do have monthly common charges and taxes and unfortunately interest rates are going to stay at that 6%, so that's just a given. You know I can't do anything about that, but what I can do is guide clients to neighborhoods where I feel their gentrification will take place. It always does. It always does. I mean. I've been doing this a long time. I've lived here my whole life. So if you can't afford Manhattan or you don't want to live in a small box for half a million dollars and I don't blame anyone for not wanting to do that consider the other areas that are near a subway. You know that are three and four and five subway stops into the city. So that's what I would suggest and always go condominium. I don't like co-ops.

Serena Holmes:

Yeah, I can understand. I know that they've got a different level of complexity. Now, for someone that's looking to invest in New York, what would you say are some of the more popular rental properties? Like, obviously, condos, I'm sure, but do you guys focus on things like midterm rentals? Are Airbnbs permitted, like what would you say is really attracting the majority of investors?

Ellen Silverman:

Yeah, we are not like Miami. There are very, very few buildings in New York City that allow for month-to-month rentals and we don't allow airbnb. I mean they may, I'm not, they happen but it's under the radar and it's not a. It's really not a good thing to do, especially in a condo building where there are condo owners that have invested and they don't want heavy traffic back and forth in their building. Yeah, but there are a few buildings that allow the month to month rentals. I think you know the the shortest term for a renter now is 12 months. It has to be at least 12 months in a condo. Yeah, there are. There are, you know, rentals, rent. Rents are high right now in these buildings.

Serena Holmes:

What would the average like a one bedroom condo rent for.

Ellen Silverman:

It depends on the neighborhood, but I would say a one bedroom would probably be four to $6,000 a month in a decent neighborhood with a doorman and an elevator.

Serena Holmes:

Yeah, Now I'm just based outside of Toronto and you know, here in Canada things can really vary when it comes to landlord, tenant roles. What is it like in New York city? Do you guys have more favorable laws for the landlords or for the tenants?

Ellen Silverman:

Wait, I'm sorry, I I you froze a little bit. What was?

Serena Holmes:

the question. I was going to say so here in Canada I'm just outside of Toronto, and from province to province the landlord tenant law is really very significantly, so I'm curious to know what they're like in New York City. Are they more favorable to the landlord or to the tenant?

Ellen Silverman:

Oh, they're more favorable to the landlord. Most landlords want to see income of 35 to 40 times the rent in income. Yeah, and if you don't show that, but you have a guarantor, the guarantor has to show 80 times the rent in income.

Serena Holmes:

Okay.

Ellen Silverman:

And you have to show documentation that shows that income level.

Serena Holmes:

And then if there is an instance of non-payment of rent, how easy is it to get a tenant evicted?

Ellen Silverman:

Well, that's an interesting question.

Serena Holmes:

It's not easy to evict a tenant, but if they're not paying their rent after, I would say, three months, the city marshal comes or someone comes and you are evicted it can honestly be like over a year or longer, and if there's one little mistake on your application to the LTV then you can literally get booted to the back of the line. So I know people that have taken sometimes two or three years to get a tenant out here. So it's awful Like if you're a real estate investor especially for a condo like that would be your sole source of income to cover those expenses, right? So it's much more challenging here in Ontario, but there are other places like Alberta and New Brunswick that are more favorable to the landlord, where you can get people out within 30 days.

Ellen Silverman:

Yeah, yeah, okay, you know that's a question I need to do a little more research on. I've never been asked that. That's crazy. Yeah, because I think the vetting process is so strict and by the time a renter is approved by a landlord they've gone through so much vetting with financial documents and credit checks and criminal checks and background not criminal background checks yeah, well, here, right here, they call them like professional tenants.

Serena Holmes:

So oftentimes they can get through a lot of that screening and then know that if they stop paying the rent, they've got like a lot of time to burn through before they're going to get kicked out. So again, you have to be very careful, and I'm not going to say that people don't have apartment buildings and rentals and stuff like that. It's just you have to understand, from a real estate investing standpoint, what your appetite is to deal with those situations if they do occur. So sometimes people will invest outside of their backyard because they just don't want to deal with stuff like that. Yeah, yeah. So in terms of your own experience real estate investing, can you talk a little bit about what you've done? Like, do you have a portfolio of properties right now and what do those look like?

Ellen Silverman:

You know, I was listening to your podcast and I could see people are real estate investors. I don't have a portfolio of properties, although I have thought about investing in Miami and I still I'm very Miami focused. I love Miami. The development is off the charts. I mean, everyone keeps telling me it's going to sink. It's going to sink, but the top developers and investors are there still.

Serena Holmes:

So I don't know. The question is, is it going to sink or is it going to flood right Like? I've seen a lot of things to do with like no, there's one called, I think, a sunny day flood and just it wasn't raining but all of a sudden all the water just started coming up. Water just started coming up. So I know Miami is investing a lot of money in precautions to try to combat climate change, but nobody can see into the future. So I guess we'll see where things head.

Ellen Silverman:

Look at California. I mean you know, we don't know, we don't know what will be, but I do think Miami is still a good place to invest. I mean, I have bought and sold three times and here in Manhattan, and I've always bought in neighborhoods that were not the greatest, but we're going to gentrify I had a really good sixth sense about it. Yeah, I bought my first apartment in 1995 for about $40,000. Oh, wow and. But it was way uptown in Manhattan and everybody thought I was out of my mind, crazy, why are you living so far away? I said it's still Manhattan. It's at the time, area code two, one, two. I have a two, one, two. That was. That was, you know, a prestigious thing to have area code two, one, two. And I thought here I'm going to have, I'm going to. The apartment was huge, a thousand square feet. It was beautiful and I couldn't have been happier.

Ellen Silverman:

I had been living in a. I've been renting a very tiny studio downtown in the village and I had enough of living in a little apartment. So I bought that and eventually I sold it about 10 years later for about $350,000. The market, you know. Again, the neighborhood gentrified. Then I went further down on the Upper West Side. I bought another co-op. I was there about nine years pre-war building with a lot of problems, so I sold it and now I'm in a condominium in Harlem and this building was very, very inexpensive. It was sort of like we were. It was right before the the um market was increasing in 2014. I bought this in 2012. Uh, the developer was desperate. I bought this apartment for about $425,000. Yeah, and I could more than double my money today on this apartment.

Serena Holmes:

And also when you look at things like growing your wealth, like obviously part of it's you need a home, but for someone that is just starting out, you know there's a lot of different strategies, but I think that's one of the tried and true just to make sure that you are, you know, planning for your future and that's why you don't want to waste your money on rent. We're just going to take a really brief break forward from our sponsors and we'll be right back, Okay great.

Serena Holmes:

Thank you. Hey everybody, welcome back to Inspired to Invest. I've got Ellen Silverman joining me from New York City and we're talking about her experience living in the Big Apple and what things have looked like in terms of where she started, buying her first unit for 40,000. And now, after buying and selling a few times, she could probably, you know, make it easily 10 times that, if not 20 times. Now you also talked about having this experience working on Wall Street, so I just wanted to dig in that a little bit because obviously it's seems like quite the fast paced, crazy environment. Do you have any crazy stories that you can share from when you were working in that type of environment?

Ellen Silverman:

in 2016. And even in 2016, which is only 10 years ago, I was still amongst a sea of desks 200 men, maybe there were three women still, so it is definitely a boys club. Yeah, and why do you think that is? Why is that?

Serena Holmes:

Well, you know, it's Wall Street, it's finance, it's like women can understand numbers and make phone calls Like what do you think it is that? Well, you know, it's Wall Street, it's finance. It's like women can understand numbers and make phone calls Like what do you think it is that would attract?

Ellen Silverman:

Oh, absolutely. And women are excellent traders and are detail oriented and are sharp as hell and are much more pleasant to deal with than men that are screaming and screaming and breaking phones. And China dishes yeah, I'd much rather deal with a woman. China dishes yeah me, I'd much rather deal with a woman. Um, I think. Well, you know that was about. You know it was 10 years ago.

Ellen Silverman:

I do think things are changing in the world of finance. I do think women, um are making inroads and there are more women in high positions in finance. But back then, you know, not as much I I worked with some really incredibly brilliant people and I'm very grateful for those opportunities and I learned a lot. And I I have a good math mind. I always had a good, I was always good in math, so that helped.

Ellen Silverman:

But it is very fast-paced and you really have to learn how to assimilate a lot of information in the morning to get out to investors and to other stockbrokers and to other investment bankers quickly and clearly. I think if you're good at your job, it really doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman. You know people want the right information at the right time. Yeah, the same way in real estate. You know, look at Barbara Corcoran. She's in her seventies. People really listen to her and I think, just do your homework. Just do your homework, be sure of what you're talking about, speak with confidence, speak with a sense of calm. Don't be emotional, because it's like finance and the stock market Real estate is very emotional. Yeah, it is, and it's personal.

Ellen Silverman:

It is, and it's personal.

Serena Holmes:

Yeah, that's one thing that I was very surprised by. I came from a B2B background, running an events company, and you know you are doing corporate events and different things doesn't mean things can't come up, but obviously it's a very different relationship that you have with those kinds of clients compared to working on the B2C like residential real estate side right, so, very emotionally charged, you know people are dealing with their own money, their life savings and stuff like that. It's not like corporate budgets and it's even hard to put into words sometimes just how different that dynamic has been. So I think it's been an interesting transition. But what would you say are some of the skills that you've taken from working in finance that have really, you know, served you well when you transition into real estate?

Ellen Silverman:

Yeah, I think I do a lot of Excel spreadsheets for buyers. You know, when they've looked at 20 properties and they just forget what are things cost? What are the monthlies, what is my mortgage payment, what is this really going to cost me? So I do a lot of spreadsheets. I put everything in one Excel chart so they can see it. I think really talking numbers is my strength, but also understanding. Is this a good investment? Is this a good building? Are they solid financially? Does it have good quality materials? Was it built well? I can tell sort of looking at finishes and the walls and the doorknobs, if it was shoddy or not yeah, I can also advise on neighborhoods and blocks and corners and crevices.

Ellen Silverman:

You know, is it near a restaurant? Are you going to have rodents? Are you going to have? Is it going to be a clean, a clean street? Are you is it going to be easy access to a subway? So I think knowing finance, but also really understanding New York City, are my strong points.

Serena Holmes:

Yeah, I think one thing that I found, like when I bought my first home, you know, we went in the middle of the day and the street seemed so quiet and really nice, like mature trees, and you know, every time we saw it we were kind of in that timeframe like mid afternoon.

Serena Holmes:

And then when we moved in, it's very different on a Saturday night and I was like that's actually one thing that I've said now, working as a realtor to people like go at different times of the day on different days of the week just to really get a true sense of what's kind of happening. And in that particular instance there was one home where you know, I think that the person living there had some shady business dealings and it was just like a very constant, steady flow of traffic, oftentimes late, block parties and stuff like that. And as soon as they moved out, a year later, the whole street cleaned up. But there's no way I could have known, based on, like, the timeframes that I was going, and you know it still ended up being fine in the long run. But you definitely get a different perspective by, you know, seeing things at different windows.

Ellen Silverman:

Yeah, go on a weekend.

Serena Holmes:

go on a Saturday night, walk around, also just sit in the lobby and see the kind of people walking in and out. Yeah, yeah, no, that's smart. Now, in terms of things like wealth building strategies, what would you say are some of the things that you've learned from your own experiences or just from dealing with different clients that have worked really well, just whether it's connected to business or real estate?

Ellen Silverman:

Oh God, it's been such a crazy time. I think, how do you build? You know, I'm always asked what is this going to be worth in five years? Is this going to appreciate what's your crystal ball? I say stay away from the co-ops. Most of those are in pre-war buildings with pre-war problems. Yeah, go into condominiums that are newer. I love new development because you're getting the latest infrastructure design. You know AC and heat heating systems. They're easier to rent when they're beautiful. I would say invest in a condo, even if it's out of the mainstream of Manhattan. Since the name of this podcast is Inspired to Invest.

Serena Holmes:

I always like to ask my guests if they have a particular quote that motivates or inspires them. Oh gosh.

Ellen Silverman:

You know one is don't give up. If you give up, you fail. And there were so many times when I started I've been in real estate eight years and the first two or three years I'm like it was hard. I didn't have a big client base, I didn't have a lot of business, I didn't have cashflow, I didn't have a salary, no more wall street, and I really had a lot of doubts and um and it was. It was really hard but I just I didn't give up Cause I really felt like I can. I know I can do this, I know I can do this. I just I just I just kept investing.

Serena Holmes:

Yeah, I can remind. One study is like I didn't come this far only to come this far.

Serena Holmes:

So to put in a few years and it's kind of one of those things like you know you got to decide at that point in time you want to keep going, but then on the flip side, there's also the quote like the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and getting expecting a different result, right. So I think when you are at that crossroads whether it's in real estate or any career you just have to decide for yourself, you know, if you can see that turning point and continue on to succeed. Or does it make sense to just accept like this is not for me and go down a different path?

Ellen Silverman:

right, absolutely. It isn't for a lot of people, but I kept, you know, trying to. I was trying different, different ways to brand myself, different marketing, different strategies. I'm with Compass now. We're a very high tech company. We have a lot of tools and a lot of great management, so I feel like I'm. I finally feel like I'm. You know I'm there, I have business, I have, you know, a lot going on and I do feel more confident.

Serena Holmes:

Yeah, yeah. No, that's huge Now in terms of how people can find you. If they want to learn more about New York city or you know any of the ins and outs, what's the best place for them to get in touch?

Ellen Silverman:

Oh, you can reach me on Instagram at Ellen J Silverman, or email me ellensilverman at compasscom. Great.

Serena Holmes:

Thanks for taking time out of your busy day today and for anyone who is watching or listening, we appreciate your time as well. Make sure you have followed along with us on social at Inspire to Invest podcast, and remember, when you invest in yourself, the sky's the limit.

Ellen Silverman:

Thanks again, thank you so much Great, I'm just going to hit stop.