You live in an apartment in the Financial District. Or a condo on the Lower East Side. Or are browsing East Village condo listings. Congratulations: you have good taste, both in Manhattan neighborhoods and in NYC real estate listings sites. Let's continue. You're looking for a Manhattan apartment that offers more than, you know, an apartment and a fistful of amenities. You'd like some green space in your neighborhood. Check. You like to jog. Check. You play basketball, say, soccer. Check. You enjoy lounging, or fishing, just taking in some river views. Check, check, check please. There is a park near your apartment where you can do all these things. Check... almost. Yes, work on the East River Park is almost done.

With one mega-blizzard down and a few slightly less 'zardy snowfalls in both the past and immediate future (at least as this post goes live), it's fair to say that winter has arrived in New York City. New Yorkers know what this means -- it means frequent reiterations of "snowpocalypse"-grade weather hyperbole, and it means subway delays and wet socks, and slush and wet socks and all kinds of other fun stuff. There are some considerably more appealing things about snow in NYC, of course -- a walk on the quiet streets (in waterproof boots, naturally), that sort of thing -- but for the most part, New Yorkers' have one goal in mind when it comes to snow, and that goal is avoiding it. Which brings us to 20 Pine, which is unique among condo listings in the Financial District not just for being an especially artful renovated luxury condo, but for having a luxury that many New Yorkers will wish they had on snowy mornings to come -- private subway access.

If you've waited in line at the Shake Shack in Madison Square Park, or even if you've just rambled around the greater Gramercy Park area, you are familiar with One Madison Park. One Madison Park being the striking, super-luxurious and surpassingly star-crossed high-end luxury condo standing at the south edge of Madison Square Park. We've written in the past here at the New Construction Manhattan blog about , but there hasn't been much news -- good or bad -- of late to report about this particular new construction luxury condominium. Which is a shame, because One Madison Park remains one of the most intriguing new construction apartment listings in Manhattan -- an architecturally stunning building with an elite Manhattan location, what promised to be stunning apartments for sale, and an elite suite of amenities.

As you have probably noticed, we spend most of our time here at New Construction Manhattan blog pondering the ups and downs of the Manhattan condo market. This means all kinds of chatter and gossip and so on about various NYC condominium listings and and new buildings and so on. But at some point, all of that fun stuff comes back to something decidedly less exciting -- the mortgage rate. The impact of those rates on all these condo listings isn't hard to figure out -- the lower the mortgage rate is, the more appealing an investment a Manhattan apartment comes to seem. All of which means that, when mortgage rates dipped to record lows just a few months ago, we of how much easier 4.17% fixed-rate mortgages would make it to purchase a Manhattan apartment. Today, with rates climbing at a rapid clip and most forecasters predicting that they will continue to do so throughout 2011, it would stand to reason that we'd be somewhat less bullish on the NYC real estate market for the coming months.

For potential buyers browsing Manhattan condo listings and the brokers charged with selling those apartments, Manhattan real estate isn't simple. Anything but, in fact. If you work with the right real estate agent (and take advantage of the right buyer's information resources), finding – and even purchasing – the right NYC condo doesn’t have to be a maddening experience. But it is inherently a complicated one, given the series of interlocking interests that are part of every Manhattan condominium purchase – buyer's agents and seller's agents, owners and buyers, developers and brokers and co-op boards and so on and so forth – that ensure that there's virtually no such thing as a quick, simple Manhattan real estate transaction. Your friendly neighborhood real estate broker would no doubt be happy to explain the myriad ways in which the current system is frustrating, confusing, inefficient and so on, but it is the way that real estate business has always gotten done in New York City. Or it was, at least: a new real estate disclosure law that passed just before the New Year aims to simplify and clarify the apartment-buying process, and to make sure that both brokers and agents understand each other before anyone signs any dotted lines. In recent years, it has been far easier to be skeptical about things coming out of Albany than it is to be optimistic, but in this instance we're offering a tentative thumbs-up. Anything that makes it simpler and less stressful to buy an apartment in Manhattan is good by us. And at first glance, the new disclosure law seems to do just that. So, how did assemblyman Jonathan Bing et al pull this off? In short, by keeping it simple. "The law requires a real estate agent to have clients sign a form stating that they understand whom the agent represents and to whom the agent will give 'undivided loyalty,' as soon as they enter into a relationship," Vivian Toy writes in the New York Times. "The disclosure law is designed to clarify the roles of buyers’ and sellers’ agents, in order to, as the form itself states, 'help you to make informed choices about your relationship with the real estate broker and its sales associates.'"

  We’ve not been shy, in the past, about either our crush on Chelsea’s High Line or pointing out has given apartments listings near The High Line. If you're just joining us, though, here's what you need to know: for Chelsea condo listings, proximity to The High Line has led to a spike in both value and demand. The good news, both for those browsing Chelsea condo listings in hopes of getting within hailing distance of NYC's tallest, hottest park and those of us who simply enjoy visiting the aforementioned park, is that The High Line keeps growing. Which means that the number of apartment listings near The High Line keeps growing as well. The sound you are hearing are Chelsea real estate developers and Chelsea apartment hunters high-fiving one another. With news -- and pictures -- of the ongoing High Line expansion reaching the New York Times yesterday, you may have to fight the urge to high-five yourself. It’s not easy for us, either.

We've written several times in the past about NoMad, which is the not-so-convincing but also not-so-bad name given to Murray Hill and Gramercy Park. We wrote about NoMad not because we're lovers of real estate conjuncto-neologisms -- although, of course, who isn't? -- but because it's actually a really interesting young neighborhood, and home to a couple of very promising luxury condo listings in Twenty 9th Park Madison and Sky House. More importantly, though, NoMad has a real buzz about it, thanks in large part to destination hangouts like Ace Hotel. To say that Eataly, the blockbuster new Mario Batali-helmed Italian food emporium, has become one of NoMad's signature landmarks is a huge understatement. Eataly, in just a few short months in business, has helped make NoMad one of Manhattan's hottest food neighborhoods -- and boosted this sub-neighborhood's fortunes even higher. Especially among those of us who enjoy prosciutto.

During the boom years of the last decade, a host of new construction condos (and an impressive number of pre-war condo conversions, such as the Cipriani Club Residences) sprang up in the Financial District. What these new Financial District condo listings had in common -- besides locations in what is, for your blogger's money, the most interesting-looking neighborhood in Manhattan -- was a certain youthful, high-energy vibe. During the boomingest of the boom years, this meant that FiDi condo listings such as Be@William functioned as well-amenitized dorms for high-earning twentysomethings. But as the economy has cooled, the Financial District has grown up into a very different and much cooler place to live. After a recent infusion of cash that amounted to a soft transfer of ownership, it looks like William Beaver House -- a New Construction Manhattan favorite and one of the superstar Financial District apartment listings of the previous decade -- will get a shot to mature along with the neighborhood it helped put on the map.

True or not, it has the force of conventional wisdom -- "it" being the belief that larger families are better off buying a house in the suburbs than buying a multi-bedroom Manhattan condo. There are obvious enough reasons why this might be true -- larger Manhattan apartments also tend to be higher-priced Manhattan apartments; kids love lawns; there's no such thing as a co-op board in Westchester; some people just really want to live in Connecticut for whatever reason. But sometimes this sort of received wisdom is not actually terribly wise, or terribly true. Is there any reason why larger families shouldn't be shopping for a four-bedroom Manhattan apartment instead of taking their burgeoning families to another area code?