ON THE AVENUE Gramatan Avenue is part of a shopping enclave, along with Broad and Grand Streets, that has a grocery store along with a variety of shops, small businesses and restaurants.

IN many ways, the Fleetwood area of Mount Vernon, in southern Westchester County, is a home buyer’s dream, with its rich stock of Tudor, Mediterranean and colonial-style houses and Tudor and Art Deco apartment complexes.

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Many of the streets in Fleetwood are lined with carefully tended lawns and lush gardens. And perhaps most appealing is the 30-minute rail commute on Metro-North from Fleetwood Station to Grand Central Terminal.

Shawn and Sharyn Kaufman bought a 1930s three-bedroom Arts-and-Crafts-style house in Fleetwood last year for $550,000, drawn by its proximity to the city. “We would have paid far more in Tuckahoe or Bronxville, even for just an ordinary 1960s ranch,” said Mr. Kaufman, a lighting designer. Mrs. Kaufman runs a children’s theater group and was attracted to the growing arts community in Fleetwood.

But living there entails more than just enjoying the shopping on bustling Gramatan Avenue.

Fleetwood is the northern part of Mount Vernon, a city of some 68,000 people that shoulders the burdens of a 14 percent poverty rate, according to the most recent census. The crime rate is high, with 2,446 serious crimes — murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny and motor vehicle theft — committed in 2007. And the public school system is troubled. The proposed school budget was defeated twice this year, forcing administrators to adopt austerity measures.

Not only have the city’s problems caused many potential home buyers to look elsewhere, but they have also prompted some longtime residents to flee. “Once my children finished elementary school, we were out of here,” said John D. Royce, the plumbing superintendent for the Buildings Department, and a father of three, who has since moved to nearby Eastchester.

W. L. Sawyer, the school district superintendent who was hired last fall, said he had recently found outdated social studies books listing Jimmy Carter as president that were still being used by students in Grades 7 through 12 at Mount Vernon High School, which is in the northeast part of the city, and serves students from throughout the district.

“In many Westchester schools, they worry about new scoreboards for their football fields,” Dr. Sawyer said. “In our school district, we have to focus on more basic needs.”

After the second budget was defeated in the spring, the district cut its entire interscholastic sports program.

The city’s “image problem,” as Clinton I. Young Jr., the new mayor, describes it, is not confined to the schools. Mr. Young was elected last fall on promises to reduce crime, end patronage in city government and increase the tax base, in addition to working with the school board to improve the public education system.

“We have problems not unlike any other urban community in America,” the mayor said. “Poverty has weighed us down.”

WHAT YOU’LL FIND

Unlike some of the other areas in Mount Vernon, Fleetwood has retained a small-town feeling. Many of its vintage homes are large and luxurious, competing in style and class — but not price — with those in the far more upscale communities of Pelham and Bronxville, which border Mount Vernon. Others homes are more modest, built on lots tucked between the larger homes.

The area blossomed into a bedroom community in the 1920s, as New York City residents began streaming north. Over the years Fleetwood grew, eventually encompassing all of the 10552 ZIP code.

Woven through Fleetwood are smaller neighborhoods with names like Hunts Wood, Aubyn Manor and Pasadena Park “that have been unofficially rolled into the entity of Fleetwood over the years,” said Robert J. Granata, former president of the Fleetwood Neighborhood Association and a sales agent for Houlihan Lawrence in Mount Vernon.

The area is also home to several prewar apartment complexes that have been converted to co-ops.

The centerpiece of Fleetwood is the shopping enclave along Gramatan Avenue and Grand and Broad Streets, close to the Cross County Parkway. In addition to an A.&P. grocery store, there are a variety of smaller shops — dry cleaners, a bagel shop, florists, a couple of bakeries and several restaurants.

There has been an influx of Brazilians in Mount Vernon in recent years; the most recent census data tracks the population as 60 percent black, 24 percent white and 10 percent Hispanic.

WHAT YOU’LL PAY

Fleetwood — which has some of the most expensive real estate in the 4.4-square-mile city of Mount Vernon — offers an array of prices for home buyers, from low-priced co-ops for first-time homeowners to more expensive houses.

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A two-bedroom co-op in a 1929 vintage three-story complex in Fleetwood has an asking price of $249,900. At the Park Lane, which was built in 1927, a co-op apartment on the top floor with three bedrooms and three baths, four exposures and 1,800 square feet of living space, is on the market for $475,000.

Typical of the 1920s architecture of Fleetwood, a three-story four-bedroom Tudor with stained-glass windows, gargoyles and copper roof finials is on the market for $549,900.

By contrast, a three-bedroom colonial in Fleetwood but with a Bronxville post office address and annual taxes of $26,848, is on the market for $1,385 million. Without the Bronxville address, the asking price on the house would be about $700,000, said Mr. Granata at Houlihan Lawrence. If it were in Bronxville, within that village’s school district, the asking price would be closer to $2.5 million, he said.

WHAT TO DO

Mount Vernon is so close to New York City that Samuel Spear Jr. and his wife, Kenya, both business consultants who live in the Park Lane Cooperative Apartments, sometimes drive south to the city for a night out on the town.

But many weekends Mr. and Mrs. Spear wife opt for more local spots, like the Bayou, a restaurant on Gramatan Avenue that features Louisiana crab cakes, crawfish pies and live music. For a movie, they often drive to Pelham, two miles away, to the Pelham Picture House, a 1920s theater.

For many Mount Vernon residents, the church is a major focus of social as well as religious life, said Mr. Spear, a deacon at Grace Baptist Church in the central part of Mount Vernon. The church was started by five black Baptist women in 1888 and runs many after-school programs for youth.

For youngsters during the summer months, Mount Vernon offers a variety of choices, including the 23-acre Wilson’s Woods in the southeastern section of the city. One of Westchester’s oldest county parks, it has an English Tudor-style bathhouse, a wave pool, water slides and a water playground.

THE SCHOOLS

The loss of the sports program has served as a call to action. “A battle is under way to reshape and reform the schools,” said Charles Stern, president of the school board.

Mr. Stern and his wife, Debra, who is president of the Mount Vernon Parent Teachers Association, live in Fleetwood and send their children to the public schools. They are among those spearheading an effort to ultimately raise $950,000 from private sources to reinstate sports.

The Mount Vernon City School District has 11 elementary schools, 2 middle schools and 3 high schools: Mount Vernon; the Nellie A. Thornton High School, which opened last year and is gradually adding grades; and an alternative high school, Nelson R. Mandela Community High School. Total enrollment in the school district is 10,046.

Dr. Sawyer attributed the defeat of the school budget to a number of factors, including “leftover feelings of mistrust” among the public about the inability of previous boards of education to address the needs of students.

But also, he said, because of the high rate of poverty in the city, many Mount Vernon residents — especially in the current economy — could not afford to shoulder a heavier tax burden. He also pointed to voters who send their children to private schools and, he said, are not vested in the public school system.

At Mount Vernon High School, of 424 students in last year’s senior class, 375 graduated. Of those, 45 percent went on to four-year colleges, 31 percent enrolled in two-year institutions, and the others chose either the military or employment, said Desiree Grand, a spokeswoman for the school district.

SAT scores for Mount Vernon seniors in 2007 were significantly below the averages for the state, according to the New York State Education Department. The Mount Vernon average test scores were 417 for critical reading, 410 for math and 415 for writing, compared with state averages of 491, 505 and 482 respectively, said Nellie Perez, a spokeswoman for the state.

THE COMMUTE

Metro-North’s Harlem Line stops at the Mount Vernon West and Fleetwood stations. The New Haven Line has a stop at Mount Vernon East. The 8:01 a.m. from Fleetwood arrives in Grand Central Terminal at 8:30 a.m. A round-trip ticket purchased at the station costs $15.50. A monthly ticket purchased on the Web costs $165.62.

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Archpartners

A TWOFER A rendering of the new condo on Irving Place that is offering buyers a way to get keys to Gramercy Park.

Two keys go to each of the 39 buildings that surround the park. Residents of those buildings can also buy keys, for $350 a year, but only about 400 are in circulation, and they can’t easily be duplicated, according to park officials.

Buyers at 57 Irving Place, a new condominium, are being promised access to the fiercely protected space, too. But what is unusual is that this address is near East 17th Street, a full two and a half blocks south of the park, which starts at East 20th Street.

And, yes, there’s a catch, says Robert Gladstone, the owner of Madison Equities, the Manhattan-based developer: To get inside the park, buyers must first become members of the Players Club.

Co-founded in 1888 by the actor Edwin Booth, the club faces the park and controls a pair of keys.

Acceptance into the club requires a letter of reference from a member, according to John Martello, the Players’ executive director. And if 57 Irving’s residents are accepted, which he fully expects, Mr. Gladstone, a new member, will cover their $1,500 annual dues for five years, he said.

“They’re not going to go back five generations to make sure you’re in the right family,” said Mr. Gladstone, who was married at the club in September.

The 11-story condo, meanwhile, will have nine floor-through units, from three- to five-bedrooms, as well as a three-level 6,800-square-foot maisonette with a garage and saltwater pool.

In every apartment, bathroom floors will be lined with bluestone, and each kitchen will have two wall ovens and two dishwashers.

Although 57 Irving, a $40 million development, awaits state approval, units are expected to be priced from $6.75 million to $18 million, said Mr. Gladstone, who will take a penthouse.

What do the park’s protectors think of the plan to slyly add more people to its gravel paths? They aren’t really fazed, they say, as not everybody who has keys uses them regularly.

For instance, no more than a handful of the Players Club’s 850 members visit the park during a summer week, Mr. Martello said.

Even residents new to the neighborhood, like those at 50 Gramercy Park North, a former hotel site that in 2006 was developed by the Ian Schrager Company into a 16-story 23-unit condo, haven’t measurably increased park use, says Arlene Harrison, president of the Gramercy Park Block Association.

“A lot of people who buy these expensive apartments are foreigners that aren’t necessarily always here,” said Ms. Harrison, who lives at 34 Gramercy Park East, an 1883 co-op.

In fact, the actual number of residents, and by extension park users, may be slightly dwindling, as developers continue to convert multiunit rentals into one- and two-family homes, Ms. Harrison said.

The 1865 red-brick Italianate at 22 Gramercy Park South, for example, once contained eight apartments but is being divided into two condos.

One of them, a triplex penthouse with three bedrooms and five baths, is listed for $11.5 million, says John Burger, a managing director at Brown Harris Stevens, who added that keys to the park may be a draw, but views of it are what really counts.

“It’s really just this little jewel in the heart of Manhattan,” Mr. Burger said. “You’re just not getting views like this anywhere else downtown.”

Mr. Mager, 27, had spent five years living in less-than-ideal conditions. When he rented the sunny two-bedroom apartment on West 153rd Street in Hamilton Heights, in Upper Manhattan, he concentrated on the great light and the $1,100 rent, which, split with a roommate, was truly affordable.

“I didn’t notice a lot of problems, but there were things that were totally obvious once I moved in,” he said.

The kitchen island was a few inches too tall. “I would have had to have stools specifically made to be at the right height,” Mr. Mager said.

And the island “was terribly made, like pieces of plywood nailed together.”

For three years in a row, when the heat came on, the radiator in the apartment upstairs leaked. A corner of his ceiling collapsed onto his couch. He used a bucket to catch the drips. He wasn’t bothered by the roaches and mice, which seemed to emerge from a fissure behind the sink, but “they signified other issues — a grossness lurking behind the walls,” he said.

Miserable at home, he spent as little time as possible there. By last spring, the rent had risen to $1,250.

Mr. Mager (pronounced “major”), who is from Fredonia in western New York, was also becoming disillusioned with acting. He worked mostly in musical theater, feeling that he sometimes landed roles because he fit the costume. He grew weary of endless auditions.

“Unless you play one part for your entire life, you are unlikely to get into a position where you are not going to have to audition all the time,” he said.

So, last spring, he took a job in the field of Internet advertising technology that increased his income fourfold. His first priority was to move.

This time, older and wiser, he planned to pay more and get more. Hamilton Heights was still affordable, and he had watched a positive transformation over the years.

“It has gone from having a certain dodginess to being pretty decent,” he said.

Luxury condominiums have risen on parcels that formerly held crack houses and burned-out tenements.

Mr. Mager also planned to avoid paying a broker’s fee. “I am totally capable of looking at an apartment and don’t need to pay someone extra for that,” he said. “I don’t feel I should pay a middleman.”

He knew he would be annoyed if he spent a few thousand dollars on a fee, especially because it didn’t guarantee a good housing situation.

“If I hate the place six months later, I can’t get my money back,” he said.

A friend did a computer search for “no-fee apartments,” and Rent Direct New York (rdny.com) popped up. The Web site lets people sign up at no cost and receive information about the approximate location, price and size of available apartments.

“The teaser worked,” said Mr. Mager, who then paid the $209 fee, allowing him to hunt for rentals costing up to $1,800 a month.

Mr. Mager’s price range was between $1,200 and $1,600, which would be split with a new roommate. (His most recent roommate, a friend from high school, was about to leave for a place of his own.)

Mr. Mager took a day off from work, rising early to call the superintendents and management companies of the buildings that he was interested in.

Several two-bedrooms, for around $1,600, were available at a West 148th Street building. He liked the superintendent, who “was on top of everything, and you could tell he cared,” said Mr. Mager, who was now alert to signs of bad maintenance and shoddy construction.

One apartment there was spacious and bright, but a big, ugly radiator pipe in the living room meant there was no place for a couch. Another had a similarly unworkable layout, where there was no place for a refrigerator in the joint kitchen-living room except in front of a window.

In most cases, the apartments in the buildings that he looked at were simply too small.

“If it wasn’t bigger than my old apartment, I was going to feel cramped,” Mr. Mager said. “I am trying to simplify. I am kind of a hoarder, especially when it comes to clothes. The more space I have, the more likely I am to be neat.”

A two-bedroom for only $1,350 was available on West 143rd Street, but “I didn’t get a good vibe” from the many people hanging out on the block, he said.

At day’s end, he saw a place on St. Nicholas Avenue between 141st and 145th Streets — a long, quiet block that includes a row of apartment buildings across from a City College parking garage. He was glad that the closest subway station was an express stop.

The only thing he didn’t like was the building’s old, slow elevator, but it was slated for replacement.

In the two-bedroom, “the first thing I saw was a huge closet,” he said. “My joke to my friends is, if I had a kid, I could put them in there and it wouldn’t be considered neglect.”

The kitchen had plenty of counter space, and “the countertops are this gorgeous black marble flecked stuff,” he said. “There are tons of cabinets and as a person who cooks, I was basically sold when I saw the kitchen.”

The neighbors whom he spoke to while he was entering and leaving all said they “really dug this building.”

Mr. Mager moved in early in the summer. The rent is $1,500. His share is $850 for the big bedroom off the living room. He is about to get a new roommate — a friend who is attending law school — who will pay $700 for the smaller bedroom off the kitchen.

He has identified only two shortcomings so far. The walls seem to accumulate scuff marks easily, and the bathroom is short on towel racks. But “the management company has been really on point,” he said.

If he is home during the day, he sees the super in the building. A plumbing problem was resolved within the hour. The elevator is currently closed for replacement, so he gladly walks up four flights.

Mr. Mager is currently adding art to his walls and buying furniture.

“I know people my age who move every year,” he said. “I don’t like to move a lot. I tend to settle, so I’m hoping not to have to do this again. In this building, they are constantly upgrading things, and that’s what I want to see. My friends all think it is a vast improvement.”

But her quiet, homey apartment, a duplex in a four-story town house, seems like a world apart from the madness. She bought the house in 1988 for $700,000 and has been tending the garden there ever since.

“It’s a real neighborhood where people care about people,” she said recently, while sitting in her ground-floor living room, which is filled with antiques and still has the original wide-plank pine floor. Two thumbnail-size pieces of concrete from the World Trade Center sit on one windowsill.

“My son was a tugboat captain hauling debris right after 9/11, and he gave me those,” she said. “Now he’s a pleasure boat captain in Dubai.”

Ms. Harvey recalled that when she bought the 1860s building, a group of neighbors gathered outside to critique the Colonial Williamsburg green she had chosen to replace the blue paint on her Philadelphia brick facade. In the end, she got their nod.

She proudly lives in Hell’s Kitchen, and resists the efforts of real estate brokers and others to call the area Clinton, or even the more recent moniker, Midtown West. (Some people shorten the name to Midwest, which has implications of cornfields as opposed to the turf of the Sharks and Jets.)

When Ms. Harvey arrived, she said, 10th Avenue was lined with prostitutes most nights, with one block reserved for blondes, one for transvestites, and other blocks for other specific desires. Crack was rampant, and AIDS loomed large in the neighborhood.

Ms. Harvey was unfazed. “I liked it here,” she said. “I thought, ‘This is so interesting.’ ”

She and her husband and their two children had long lived between two homes: a rental apartment on West 86th Street and a 65-foot Pacemaker motor yacht they kept at the 79th Street Boat Basin on the Hudson River.

But then her husband died, and the children grew up and moved away. Ms. Harvey, who has worked as a ballet dancer and in theater, in the antiques business and as an international development consultant who sometimes works with the United Nations, decided to buy a house.

The town house on West 44th had recently been renovated, with hand-carved entry doors and new crown molding on the parlor floor. She moved into the apartment on that floor and rented out the other three.

Since the ground-floor tenant never opened her back door or raised her shades, Ms. Harvey built a deck with a staircase descending to the garden, where a huge grapevine still grows. High-rises now fill the western sky, but the low view down the backyards is of old-time Hell’s Kitchen, with decks and fences, vines and flowers, and backyard detritus.

When the top floor, which has a skylight and high ceilings, became empty, she took that over and put her bedroom there, keeping the parlor floor for her kitchen and living areas. Since everyone in the building knew everyone else, she didn’t worry about locking the doors. Her Saluki dogs, Nimrod ha rishona and Nimrod ha shani, and Siamese cats, Leon Trotsky and Phoenix, would even wander in and out of the neighbors’ apartments at will.

None of those pets are still alive, but Ms. Harvey still talks about them. One time Phoenix climbed out the third-floor neighbor’s window and jumped over to a ledge. A crowd gathered. Just as the neighbor was about to climb out and risk his life for the rescue, the cat casually jumped to another ledge and walked inside, indifferent to the heroics.

When the ground-floor tenant moved out, Ms. Harvey poked through a floor in her parlor-level hall closet and found the original staircase going downstairs. After that, she created a 1,600-square-foot duplex with a high-ceilinged parlor floor and a ground floor with direct access into her overgrown garden. She gave up the top floor.

She lives a neighborly life and is active in the West 44th Street Better Block Association, which she says is one of the city’s oldest such groups.

“We fought Mayor Giuliani when he wanted to bring in an aircraft carrier to Pier 84 and make it into a heliport,” she said. “And we’re tuned in to the block, so if someone is ill, we look out for them.”

In 1992, to offset rising taxes and maintenance costs, she turned the house into a two-unit condo, selling the top two floors as a duplex to longtime tenants.

“There were plenty of town house co-ops, but this was one of the very first small condos in the city,” she said.

Lately, Mrs. Harvey has given the parlor floor to a friend from out of town who uses it as a pied-à-terre, so her bed is now downstairs, directly off the garden. She sometimes thinks of selling her duplex and moving into a neighborhood high-rise for a simpler life and a little extra cash. But for now she’s too rooted to move.

Demi Plie, her toy Manchester terrier, is 17 and loves hanging out in the garden. Pas de Chat, her Devon Rex cat, an unusual-looking beast whose breed was said to have inspired the look of Steven Spielberg’s character E.T., meanders around, too. Next to the fireplace is a metal sculpture of a cat that looks like Pas de Chat’s twin. There are ceramic figurines of animals that she has collected on her travels on steps and shelves throughout the apartment. It would be impossible to replicate this setting in a high-rise.

In October 2006, Pier 84, at the end of her street, was made into a park with a fishing area that offers poles, bait and instruction, as well as a fountain, a rowing club, a dog run, a water taxi stop and a restaurant. With that, life on West 44th Street has just gotten better.

“We had a pet parade with a red carpet down there,” she said. “The tugboat races are coming up soon. Falun Gong often protests against the Chinese government at the Chinese consulate across the street.

“If you want something quiet, then you don’t want to live here,” said Ms. Harvey, who seems to find great peace amid the noise.

A This lovely light-orange building was built in 1890 by a carriage manufacturer, A. T. Demarest & Company, and designed by Renwick, Aspinwall & Russell. The Demarest concern was established in 1860, and by the 1880s its factory, in New Haven, had 300 workers.

The Renwick firm is best known for its founder, James Renwick Jr., designer of major works like Grace Church, at Broadway and 10th Street, and St. Patrick’s Cathedral. By the late 1880s, the office was producing many relatively small commissions of very high quality, often for socially connected clients.

These include the small apartment houses at 9 East 10th Street and 39 East 10th Street, the fraternity house of St. Anthony Hall at 29 East 28th Street, and the loft building of the 10th Church of Christ, Scientist, at 171 Macdougal Street, which is now being reconstructed as a condominium.

Both the Demarest building and Carnegie Hall were designed in 1889, the latter by William Burnet Tuthill, so it is not very likely that Renwick, Aspinwall & Russell borrowed from Carnegie Hall.

For the Demarest building the firm used mottled iron-spot brick for a facade made impressive by the giant four-story-high arches.

This urbane design in a light palette has much in common with other high-style buildings of the period, like the 1890 Madison Square Garden (when it was actually on Madison Square) and the 1892 Judson Memorial Church, on Washington Square South.

Despite its notable presence, the Demarest building is not a designated landmark.

In 1893, The New York Times said the Demarest company had some 200 carriages, valued at $150,000, in the building. Demarest moved up to Broadway and 57th Street in 1909, and the 33rd Street building was converted to offices.

In 1913, The Times reported that a doctor from Berlin, Freidrich Franz Friedmann, had an office there and offered free treatment for tuberculosis. A thousand patients showed up, including 15-year-old Leonard Curatolo, who walked up from Elizabeth Street with his father, a shoemaker, and mother. Census records list the family as Italian. Only the boy spoke English. But the leasing agent prohibited Dr. Friedmann from treating anyone, and the Curatolos and everyone else were turned away.

It is not clear if Dr. Friedmann had a real cure for tuberculosis, but he was back in Germany in 1934, when The Times reported that the Ministry of Agriculture had denounced the “worthless” work of “this Jewish physician.” Dr. Friedmann lived until 1953 and died in Monte Carlo.

That Beaux-Arts Building

At Lexington and 55th

Q What is the date of the building I work in, at the northeast corner of Lexington Avenue and 55th Street, and who was the architect? … William Zinsser, Manhattan

A Babies’ Hospital, established in 1887, built this intriguing Beaux-Arts-style building in 1902 and constructed a seamless addition in 1910.

The architects were Edward York and Philip Sawyer, then just beginning their careers. They would become New York’s pre-eminent specialists in bank architecture. Later, they designed the Central Savings Bank at 73rd and Broadway.

Comparing their work with that of another more prominent firm, the classicist Henry Hope Reed said in a 2003 interview, “Oh, McKim, Mead & White were good, but they were certainly no York & Sawyer!”

The babies whom the hospital treated were usually seriously ill. In 1900, it reported that it had admitted 386 patients: of these, 178 were cured and 145 died.

In 1915, The Times reported on its front page about a disagreement at the hospital over the course of treatment for the “hopelessly deformed daughter” of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph E. Roberts. The child was born with her spinal cord protruding from her back — apparently what is now known as spina bifida — and she was paralyzed below her waist.

A physician at Babies’ Hospital, Dr. L. Emmett Holt, advised Mr. Roberts that the child would die soon, and recommended that no surgery be performed that might prolong her life. The Times said the father agreed. But Dr. Maurice Rosenberg, who had been called in as a consultant, protested that “the mission of a physician is to save life” and that any and all measures should be taken to help, even knowing the child would soon die. Dr. Holt’s opinion held sway, and the baby, named Mary Margaret Roberts, lived for only nine days.

Babies’ Hospital was later absorbed into the Columbia-Presbyterian medical complex in upper Manhattan, and the building was ultimately converted to offices.

Now, a century after its construction, York & Sawyer’s building has been only moderately altered. It still has most of its heavy rusticated limestone on the lower two floors, with an intricate frieze and complicated Parisian-style brick and limestone decoration above.

Even the cornice and delicate iron balconies are intact, making it an unusually civilized gesture on a jangling stretch of traffic-choked Lexington.

OWNERS of one-bedroom apartments in Manhattan may be surprised if they put their homes up for sale anytime soon.

Price appreciation for one-bedrooms — long a bastion for singles and newly married couples who want to stay in Manhattan and live close to work — is sluggish compared with other types of apartments.

Buyers, many of whom are having difficulties getting mortgages, are unwilling or unable to pay the prices sellers still expect. And by one estimate one-bedrooms have been taking nearly three weeks longer to sell than bigger, or smaller, apartments.

Although the average sale price for a one-bedroom apartment grew by 7 percent in the last year, overall apartment prices in Manhattan jumped by 21 percent — not including condo sales at the ultra-expensive 15 Central Park West and the Plaza Hotel — according to Halstead Property.

“If you want to look at what area is experiencing the least amount of growth, it’s one-bedrooms,” said Gregory J. Heym, the chief economist who works for Halstead and for Brown Harris Stevens. “It is the lowest increase of any size category.”

That is a notable change from the situation a year earlier. From the second quarter of 2006 to the second quarter of 2007, prices for one-bedrooms rose by 10 percent, while overall apartment prices rose by only 7 percent.

Now that has changed. One-bedrooms are sitting on the market largely because the buyers most likely to purchase them can’t get mortgages. “Getting financing is very challenging,” said Diane M. Ramirez, the president of Halstead Property. “It can be difficult if the buyer of the one-bedroom is a first-time buyer. Some of the buyers who were able to get financing when the banks were throwing things at them are gone, and the requirements are stiffer.”

The number of studios available for purchase is not piling up in the same way because there are fewer of them, Ms. Ramirez said.

Brokers say that many people who bought their apartments at or near the top of the market and now must sell are often simply trying to avoid losing money on the deal.

In May 2007, John and Wendy Penn bought a one-bedroom on West 72nd Street for $650,000. The couple, whose main residence is on Long Island, wanted an office and a pied-à-terre in Manhattan to expand their insurance business.

They bought the apartment as a long-term investment and quickly completed about $30,000 in renovations, including the restoration of the apartment’s prewar details. But when Mr. Penn became an independent insurance agent, he no longer needed space in Manhattan.

So in February, the couple put the apartment up for sale, pricing it at $769,000. Three price cuts later, the apartment is listed at $725,000 and still has not sold.

Their broker, Danica Cordell-Reeh of Halstead, said that the Penns have the burden of finding a buyer who will pass the co-op board when most buyers’ assets have shrunk in value because of Wall Street declines. She has shown the apartment to about three dozen prospects and received three offers.

Looking back, the Penns wish they had negotiated more with the first prospect, because the second and third bidders’ finances were not solid. Ms. Cordell-Reeh advised them not to accept offers from buyers who might ultimately face rejection from the co-op board.

The Penns never thought they would have such a hard time. While their apartment is on a less-desirable low floor (the first), it is newly renovated and has a flexible floor plan, giving new owners the ability to change the location of the kitchen and the bathroom if they choose. “Hopefully, we’ll get close to breaking even,” Mr. Penn said.

But sellers of one-bedrooms might be even worse off, if not for changes in recent years in the Manhattan apartment mix. In the 1980s, developers built one-bedrooms for a market dominated by professionals and young couples, and investors who planned to rent out their units.

But by the time the latest construction boom started, the mix of buyers had changed. Developers found that building large apartments for wealthy families was more profitable in many neighborhoods, because more families were willing to pay a premium to stay in the city.

On the Upper East Side, the Worldwide Group built only five one-bedrooms in its 77-unit building at 255 East 74th Street, choosing to focus mainly on three- and four-bedrooms.

Even around Madison Square Park, a neighborhood that attracts many singles, the Clarett Group included a relatively low number of one-bedrooms in its new building at 11 East 29th Street. Veronica Hackett, the firm’s managing partner, said there were only 23 one-bedrooms in the 139-unit building. “I tend to believe that when people buy, they stretch to buy a two-bedroom instead of a one-bedroom,” she said.

But even though developers have not concentrated on building smaller apartments, there are more one-bedrooms on the market now than there have been in at least 20 years, according to Jonathan Miller, chief executive of Miller Samuel Inc., a real estate research company.

There are also more one-bedrooms available than apartments of other sizes. As of July 30, there were 3,390 one-bedrooms or sale in Manhattan compared with 3,229 two-bedrooms and 1,063 studios, according to data tracked by StreetEasy.com.

Mr. Miller has found that one-bedrooms sit on the market longer than any other size of apartment. He sees “a drag in demand on one-bedroom units, which is allowing inventory for one-bedrooms to be disproportionate to others.”

This is a tough time for sellers who are moving for job-related reasons. Rabbi Tom Gardner, who recently accepted a job at a synagogue in Baton Rouge, La., needs to sell his one-bedroom on Riverside Drive at 101st Street. Because he has sublet the apartment before, he cannot do so again under his co-op’s rules.

He bought the apartment for less than $400,000 in 1998, and last year, he was told he could sell it for $750,000. But by the time he put it on the market at the end of April, he set the asking price at $695,000, based on advice from his broker, Susan Faber of Barak Realty. Since then, the number of similar one-bedrooms for sale in his neighborhood has grown sixfold, Ms. Faber’s colleague Antonio del Rosario said.

After getting few offers, Rabbi Gardner cut the price to $650,000. When a buyer offered him less than $600,000, the rabbi made a counteroffer of $630,000. The buyer said no.

Despite the time pressures he faces, Rabbi Gardner is reluctant to yield on what he believes is the inherent strength of the unit he owns. “I think there’s still a certain value to an apartment in a full-service building on the Upper West Side,” he said.

Other sellers are even more determined to wait for the price they want.

Three years ago, Kenneth Kuo, a concert cellist who owns music schools in Manhattan and in Greenwich and Westport, Conn., and his cousin bought a one-bedroom at 120 Riverside Boulevard at Trump Place, the building where Mr. Kuo lives in a one-bedroom penthouse. They paid about $675,000.

They have been trying to sell the investment apartment for the last six months, but they are determined not to accept less than $1 million.

Mr. Kuo has a list of other sales in his building through the middle of 2007 that indicate the asking price for his apartment is in line with the building’s sales history. He also says that last year, he sold another one-bedroom he owned in the building for $790,000 after buying it in 2005 for about $550,000. He thinks he was justified in waiting for a high price.

But he was willing to consider a slightly lower bid. “Even if I could get $999,999, I would be happy,” he said. “There are just so many one-bedrooms out there on the Upper West Side.”

Late last month, he cut the price to $1.015 million. He also listed it for rent at the same time, on the advice of his friend Andy Kim, a broker at Nest Seekers. He had a tenant in a week willing to pay $3,400 a month, and plans to try to sell the apartment again in a few years.

For buyers, the growing inventory of one-bedrooms is enabling them to negotiate good deals.

When April Hartstein shopped for a new one-bedroom condo in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in April, she asked brokers whether developers would negotiate. By the time Ms. Hartstein found her ideal condo at the Jacksonia at 131-145 Jackson Street, she had learned that many costs were negotiable. She persuaded the developer to pay her $7,000 transfer tax, build a second larger closet in her bedroom and cut the price by about 3 percent. (Apartments like hers are priced at $495,000 to $499,000.)

Ms. Hartstein stresses that she had to push, but that she found many developers would work with buyers. “No one just offered,” she said. “No one was like, ‘This is a slashed price.’ ”

Christine Blackburn, the Prudential Douglas Elliman broker overseeing sales at the Jacksonia, acknowledges that there are many one-bedrooms for sale right now in Williamsburg and relatively few larger apartments available. In Brooklyn, developers built more smaller units than in Manhattan to cater to younger first-time buyers.

She said that developers realized they had a lot of competition. “They built a lot of one-bedrooms, and there’s heavier competition in that market,” she said. “It’s a supply-and-demand thing.”

In this market, some buyers are finding that they can get apartments that would have been out of reach before.

Adam and Zena Rudzki had been searching for a one-bedroom near their daughter‘s home in Washington Heights for the past year. They found a one-bedroom at Cabrini Terrace, 900 West 190th Street, for $350,000. The apartment, listed by Simone Song Properties, has river views. They negotiated a $5,000 reduction in the price and closed on the apartment last week. “We had the luxury of looking and waiting for something that is reasonable in price” and attractive, Mr. Rudzki said. “We are very pleased.”

Bargain-hunting one-bedroom buyers are finding that the longer they wait, the more opportunities they are offered.

In March, Bruce and Eva Forrest started looking for a one-bedroom near Madison Square Park. The couple, who live in Rockland County, weren’t in a rush to buy. They intended to use the apartment as a pied-à-terre, and they wanted to make sure they found an apartment big enough for their 4-year-old son, Alexander, to run around in.

By June, they had a contract for a one-bedroom at the Stanford, 45 East 25th Street. The Forrests negotiated the price down to $867,500 from $875,000 with the help of Jenet Levy of Coldwell Banker Previews International.

But when the sale was delayed, Mr. Forrest looked at the market again. He noticed that prices for one-bedrooms had dropped 5 to 8 percent and that more sellers of one-bedroom co-ops were advertising that they would accept buyers interested in pieds-à-terre.

Although he is happy with the deal he had negotiated on his apartment and plans to close on Aug. 11, he notes that there are even more one-bedrooms to choose from today than when he found his apartment.

“It was amazing how much property was on the market, and it was amazing that it was sitting there,” he said.

Bob Costas Unloads Time Warner Condo For

$8.5 M.

A condominium conversion in Midtown that is embroiled in a legal fight with tenants is banking on a luxurious new amenity to help attract wealthy buyers.

The developer of Sheffield57, Kent Swig, is battling a request from the building’s rent-stabilized tenants for a city administrator to take control of the property, at 322 W. 57th St. The 47 tenants are accusing Mr. Swig of trying to force them to leave by failing to address collapsed ceilings, flooding, and asbestos contamination.

Despite the controversy, the 58-story building, which has been on the market since October 2006 and has 560 condominium units and a number rental units, is more than 50% sold, Mr. Swig said. To attract more buyers, Sheffield57 will offer potential residents, for as much as $240,000 above the selling price, the option of fully furnished apartments, down to hand towels and bottle openers, by the boutique design firm Haus Interior.

Buyers at Sheffield57 will be able to choose among pre-designed apartments based on four imagined personalities, each with a different price point. Unfurnished units start at $825,000, but for an additional $75,000, busy buyers can have their apartments decorated as “The Designer”: Haus Interior will decorate the unit in vibrant colors, with quick-ship items that can be assembled in two to three weeks from West Elm and Jonathan Adler. At $130,000, “The Gallerist” is based on a neutral color palette of chrome and glass, while the $160,000 “Modern Professional” uses dark wood and high-design furniture from B&B Italia and Poliform. At $240,000, “Traveler/Collector” features Holly Hunt furniture, cashmere pillows, and custom shelving.

Buyers also can mix and match elements from each “personality,” the principal of Haus Interior, Nina Freudenberger, said, adding that the company’s staff will unpack and set up the furniture before buyers arrive.

Earlier this year, the rent-stabilized tenants at Sheffield57 asked the New York City Housing Court to appoint a city administrator to take control of the building. The next court appearance is scheduled for August 26, a partner at the law firm Grimble & LoGuidice who is representing the tenants, Robin LoGuidice, said.

In the petition, the group says conditions in the building are “hazardous to the life, health and safety of the tenants,” complaining of ceiling collapses, rats on the premises, and asbestos being removed without the proper abatement procedure. They also say the landlord and his agent cut off water and electricity, and “used force against leaders of the tenants association, repeatedly stalking, shoving and slapping tenant leaders.”

In an interview with The New York Sun, Mr. Swig called the petition “a joke” and denied that there was asbestos on the premises. “It’s the last gasp by a couple of very desperate people to create some animosity,” he said.

Of living conditions in Sheffield57, he said: “The building is one of the most luxurious buildings around. People are living in there. They are not living there in a state that the city needs to come in and take over from the owner.”

In March 2007, a New York City Housing Court judge ruled that 23 tenants at the building who were fighting evictions were “protected tenants” under the Martin Act and were entitled to leases at market rate from the landlord. Mr. Swig has since appealed the decision.

Asked whether the new offer of fully furnished apartments could help counter some of the building’s negative publicity, Mr. Swig said, “I don’t think one has anything to do with the other. We’ve been overwhelmingly successful.”

Since the developer bought the building for $418 million in 2005, his renumbering of its stories and hiring of a marching band at the same time tenants were protesting outside the building have also come under criticism.

Never underestimate the creativity of the nation’s largest home builders in finding ways to put buyers into houses.

The latest project: “monetizing” the first time home-buyer tax credit that’s part of the recently enacted housing legislation, says Centex Corp.’s chief executive Tim Eller.

The problem with the $7,500 credit is that it can only be claimed after a home buyer files his or her taxes, which may not coincide when they are buying a house and need the cash. “We don’t have a solution yet, but we’re looking at ways to monetize that tax credit early,” Mr. Eller told analysts and investors during a conference call Wednesday.

Perhaps the builders could mimic tax preparers that offer to front people their tax return. But that puts builders in an awkward and risky position of floating buyers until they can claim their credit from the government.

There are other issues that make the tax credit seem pretty limited in its ability to provide a needed shot in the arm to the housing market. Buyers, for example, have to pay back the credit over 15 years or sooner if they sell their house and pocket a profit.

In the end, the credit “saves the buyer at most just a few hundred dollars a year,” M.I.T economics professor William Wheaton said in a recent research note. “This seems like a very small amount to influence the decision of anxious new buyers waiting on the market’s sideline.”

Sovereign wealth funds are emerging as contentious players in the financial markets, and analysts and industry leaders say that as real estate companies’ valuations fall and capital becomes more constrained, such funds will be making major investments in the real estate investment trusts.

According to a report issued by the international capital group of Jones Lang LaSalle, the second-largest sovereign wealth fund, Norway Government Pension Fund, recently allocated 5% of its assets to real estate, infusing another $20 billion of capital into the real estate markets.

“If China follows suit with 5% of their foreign allocation into real estate, we are at nearly $25 billion. If Korea puts a third of their $10 billion allocated to alternative investment in real estate, that brings the total of fresh real estate capital coming to play in the short term up to $28 billion,” the report said. “If the funds already active in real estate grow at the pace some have suggested, and maintain the same allocation to real estate, the amount of new capital entering the market could be a multiple of this.”

Sovereign wealth funds control an estimated $3.85 trillion, a figure that, according to the International Monetary Fund, could expand to between $12 trillion and $15 trillion by 2015. The financial services provider State Street says sovereign wealth funds could collectively own more than 5% of the world’s major companies by 2013.

Already, these funds have provided capital to publicly traded financial concerns including Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and UBS. A number of them also are investing in private equity funds that are also active investors in commercial real estate, such as the Carlyle Group, the Blackstone Group, and Och-Ziff Capital Management.

The world has approximately 50 sovereign wealth funds, spread among 35 countries, and approximately 10% to 15% of their assets are invested in real estate. The richest funds include Abu Dhabi Investment Authority ($875 billion), the Government of Singapore Investments Corp. ($330 billion), and Norway’s Government Pension Fund — Global ($322 billion). Some of the world’s largest funds include Singapore’s Temasek Holdings, the China Investment Fund, and Dubai International Corp.

Countries have used sovereign wealth funds as instruments through which to buy assets since the early 1950s, when Norway and Singapore, followed by Kuwait, sought new strategies to insulate themselves from exchange rate fluctuation. There are also sovereign wealth funds in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Libya, Algeria, Australia, Alaska, Brunei, Russia, and Canada.

The stated goal of these funds is the preservation of current wealth for future generations; protection and stabilization of the budget and economy from excess volatility in revenues and exports; diversification from nonrenewable commodity exports; earning of greater returns on foreign exchange reserves, and funding social and economical development and sustainable long-term capital growth for targeted companies.

The Web site Money Morning refers to sovereign wealth funds as “Global Cash Barons,” adding, “By bringing their huge hoards of cash to bear on the financial problems of the day, the sovereign Cash Barons are — in a way — the modern manifestation of the 19th Century Robber Barons.” These funds, the Web site adds, could also be called “Captains of Industry,” which the novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand described as being among the “greatest benefactors of mankind, because they had brought the greatest good and an impossible standard of living — impossible by all historical trends — to the country in which they functioned.”

“Foreign investors and sovereign wealth funds have had a transparent impact on the residential condominium market and the institutional quality office building market, respectively,” the chairman of Massey Knakal Realty Services, Robert Knakal, said. “The extraordinarily weak dollar has made our for-sale housing stock enticing for foreign buyers, and they have helped to keep activity in the condo market at reasonable levels. Although the origin of the funds varies from cycle to cycle, foreign capital has always been attracted to our trophy office properties. This dynamic is based upon the perception that our markets are relatively stable compared with other international destinations for the capital. The weak dollar has much less to do with this investment strategy, as rents are collected in the same weak dollar, and profits on an eventual sale will be in that same weak dollar. Unless currency arbitrage is part of the buyer’s strategy (thinking the dollar will grow stronger relative to their currency over a specific holding period), the weak dollar does not create much motivation to buy in the U.S.”

Mr. Knakal added: “Foreign capital continues to be a factor in the non-institutional segment of the building sales market. While approximately 15% of our 500 sales this year will be purchased by foreign-based investors, a significant amount of foreign capital finds its way into our market in less transparent ways, mainly equity financing of local operators who are conversant with our rent regulation process, and via investments in opportunity and hedge funds, which provide that same equity for domestic investors. While the unprecedented global economic expansion seen since 2002 has started to slow, fortunes have been made all over the globe, and much of that capital is being deployed into our building sales market. New York City has clearly been a beneficiary of the globalization of the real estate industry.”

Sovereign wealth funds and foreign investors are very interested in owning real estate in the hospitality industry. Industry leaders expect these investors to be the leading bidders for the Helmsley Park Lane Hotel on Central Park, as well as other Manhattan trophy properties.

“New York City continues to be the ideal global destination for capital investment because of the combination of extremely high barriers to entry, limited availability of assets for sale, unparalleled demand generators, and political stability,” the executive vice president, principal, and head of the U.S. Hotel Group at Cushman & Wakefield Sonnenblick Goldman, Mark Gordon, said. “While some domestic investors are concerned about short-term challenges, there is no better global market to invest in from a medium- to long-term perspective. I am meeting with more global investors, including sovereign wealth funds, each week who are aggressively seeking investment opportunities in New York than ever before.”

Sovereign wealth funds are no strangers to acquiring real estate in New York City:

Earlier this month, the Abu Dhabi Investment Council purchased a 90% stake in the landmark Chrysler Building for $800 million from German real estate investors and Tishman Speyer.

In June, a joint venture of Boston Properties (which purchased a 60% interest); a partnership managed by Goldman Sachs, U.S. Real Estate Opportunities I L.P., and a Dubai-based sovereign wealth fund, Meraas Capital LLC, purchased the General Motors Building for $2.8 billion.

In April 2005, the Dubai government’s holding company, Istithmar, bought a 99-year lease-hold interest in the 32-story office tower built over the eight-story Grand Central Post Office building at 450 Lexington Ave. for $660 million. In November 2005, Istithmar purchased 230 Park Ave. for $705 million. A few months later, in 2006, it purchased the 1.2 million-square-foot office complex at 280 Park Ave. for $1.2 billion; the former Knickerbocker Hotel, now an office building, at 1466 Broadway for $300 million, and the W Hotel Union Square for $285 million.

In 2007, Istithmar acquired a 95% interest in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel at the Time Warner Center. Later in the year, the fund decided that it was prudent to sell its Park Avenue properties, reaping a modest profit of $595 million: It sold 280 Park Ave. to Broadway Properties and Bahrain-based Investcorp for $1.35 billion in November 2007, and 230 Park Ave. to a group including a fund managed by Goldman Sachs for $1.15 billion in December 2007.

Istithmar is part of the Investment Corporation of Dubai, which, in September 2005, paid $440 million for the hotel component of the famed Essex House overlooking Central Park. The company owns 100% interest in national retailers Barneys New York and the department store Loehmann’s. The company has a $5 billion investment, or 8.7% interest, in Mirage Holdings in Las Vegas, and a 9.2% interest in the Orient Express Hotels. Earlier this month, Orient Express Hotels signed a letter of intent to establish a 50/50 strategic partnership with the Related Group to develop hotels and residences in South Beach in Miami; Cartagena, Colombia, and Panama City, Panama.

Investcorp has also been an active player in the real estate market in America. Since 1995, it has acquired around 200 properties totaling approximately $7 billion in value. It currently has more than $4 billion of property under management. In addition to its ownership in 280 Park Ave., it owns a rental apartment house, the Residences at City Place, in Edgewater, N.J., which is being converted to condominiums. The company also is jointly developing a new condominium at 125 N. 10th St. in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. In October 2006, the company sold its interest in the office building at 105-107 W. 57th St. and an office complex at One Campus Drive in Parsippany, N.J.

In December, the Related Companies, which was the co-developer of the Time Warner Center and is the designated developer of the Hudson Yards, announced that it received about $1 billion in debt financing from three Middle Eastern investors: an affiliate of Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Development Company, the Saudi Arabian royal family-owned Olayan Group, and an unidentified sovereign wealth fund. It also reported that in addition to Goldman Sachs and MSD Capital, the money management firm of Michael Dell, founder of Dell, purchased about a $400 million stake in the company.

Kingdom Holding Company, led by Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz Alsaud, is a publicly traded company that was listed on the Saudi Stock Exchange, Tadawul, in 2007. Today, the portfolio has its main interest in landmark hotel properties and hotel management companies, real estate development, financial services, technology, and press and broadcast companies. The company, along with Elad Properties, is the owner of the hotel component of the Plaza Hotel and retail collection.

Other hotels are owned though its majority-owned Dubai listed subsidiary, Kingdom Hotel Investments. Among the hotel management companies are the Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts, Fairmont Raffles Hotels (which include Fairmont, Raffles, and Swissotel), and Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts.

With a barrel of oil selling for $124, expect these sovereign wealth funds to grow and invest further in commercial real estate in America, and especially in New York City.

Mr. Stoler, a contributing editor of The New York Sun, is a television and radio broadcaster and a senior principal at a real estate investment fund.