Yorktown Heights, NY Real Estate News

When I sat down with my lawyer Dan Tota of Durante, Bock & Tota PLLC in Yorktown Heights, it was to discuss his project of installing crown molding in his home but, after we talked for a while, I was as interested in the “why” of his project as the “how.”“After working all day in a high pressure ... 08/02/2015

When I received the email from Vicki Jimpson-Fludd, a real estate agent with Better Homes  & Gardens Rand in Briarcliff, to have my historic house listing in Ossining join a group of other historic houses in Westchester and Putnam Counties for a joint Open House tour on a Sunday in July, I though... 07/28/2015

As told to me, it was a LMAO (to use the texting lingo of the day) kind of story that may get lost in translation when cleaned up, but I am assured first hand, it’s true.  A woman who owned a condo locally was in bed for the very first time with a new boyfriend when suddenly the ceiling fan light... 07/19/2015

When we moved to Westchester in the early 1970s, our home had a curious architectural twist: the front and the back were switched, as is frequently the case with 18th century farmhouses. At some point, the previous owners opted for privacy over curb appeal and hid the grand front porch and expans... 07/13/2015

When I was in college, I appeared in a play called The Madwoman of Chaillot by Jean Giraudoux with the actress Linda Lavin, who would later go on to achieve fame as “Alice” on television. The most stunning thing about that production as I recall was the amazing effects achieved by its lighting di... 06/29/2015

When my family moved to the south when I was at the impressionable age of eight, I was amazed with some of the colloquialisms I heard that were so foreign to my ear transplanted from South Philadelphia, like one from my our next door neighbor Ethel who liked to say how much she loved her husband ... 06/21/2015

After a year of great upheaval in my personal and professional domains, having moved to a new residence and expanded my space in my office building, I was feeling off kilter everywhere, a little uncomfortable in my own skin, not sleeping well at home and working in a tangle of misplaced folders, ... 06/14/2015

Soon after I moved into my new residence at Trump Park in Yorktown, a neighbor named Dan Potter introduced himself to me as a retired fireman from New York City and said that he had read my column about Fireman Joe who instructed school children about fire safety in the home. Dan told me not to f... 06/06/2015

Whenever I see a model home, I marvel at how a professional designer can throw together a beautiful living space with so many creative ideas so quickly. Some peoples’ minds are just wired that way, but obviously mine is not. In fact, the one course in college I ever dropped mid-term was Interior ... 05/25/2015

Most every spring I write a piece about simplifying garden chores to achieve maximum effect in design and color with minimum effort in terms of planting, weeding and especially bending and kneeling for us folk who are “getting better” each year as they say now about active, mature adults.But, a l... 05/18/2015

My wife and I frequently comment about how barren those new multimillion-dollar condos in Manhattan look when we see those ads with only sofa, a coffee table, and maybe a sideboard in the living room and nothing else. God forbid that you would walk around in your underwear in that room, put your ... 05/12/2015

Lately I’ve been made aware that I’m probably a noisy person. Not to myself so much, but maybe to others. More and more, if I’m watching TV in one room and my wife in another, for instance, she’ll say mine is too loud. And just the other day, when I had driven into my property which houses my PR ... 05/05/2015

A few years ago, I wrote a piece about litter and how it relates to the real estate industry. I was inspired to write on that particular subject because I had just been asked to cancel a showing appointment when a couple had done an advance drive-by of the house and found that it was in a neighbo... 04/20/2015

Either the piano is about to become as extinct as the dodo bird from American homes or, much like Mark Twain, its untimely death has been greatly exaggerated. It depends on what you read and who you believe.Within the past few weeks, there’s been good news and bad news about the piano industry an... 04/17/2015

The Yorktown Chamber of Commerce covers the northern part of Westchester County. The Chamber has had a successful year with strong membership growth.  New members were introduced at the networking meeting at the Jefferson Valley Mall in Yorktown Heights.   The Chamber holds monthly networking eve... 03/24/2015

More than a dozen years ago, Ed McMahon, the famous pitch man and announcer for Johnny Carson, brought to the public’s attention the health problems that can result from living with toxic mold in the home. After a long legal battle, McMahon was awarded $7.2 million from several companies who were... 03/09/2015

When I was younger and forced by the lack of money to be a do-it-yourselfer around the house and in the garden, I dreamed of the day when I could employ others to do all that sweat labor to maintain and upgrade everything that needed to be done. That day came a long time ago, and I considered mys... 02/23/2015

With my recent move, I learned that hanging on to keys and identifying which key is for which lock is important because it was necessary for me to call my local Locksmith-on-Wheels in Yorktown Heights, owned by Eugene and Carl Camia, to open two locked file cabinets with long lost keys. And there... 02/15/2015

The bathroom. When you think about it, while it may not be the room you spend the most time in, it’s probably the room you visit most times during the course of the day and, if you’re in my age group, you probably visit it a little more frequently than when you were younger. I’ve been thinking a ... 02/05/2015

In my many years as both a homeowner and homestyles journalist, I have observed that home repair and improvement projects tend to fall into three categories: the ones you need to do, the ones you want to do, and the ones you do solely to increase the value of your home. The urgent projects you fi... 01/27/2015