REchirp.com works with a similar concept: Interested buyers or renters go to the website, browse the listings and make a bid or a “chirp.” If your chirp is accepted by the owner, you get to start negotiations.

REchirp creators Marc Blum and Andrew Green came up with the idea after years of living in New York and moving from apartment to apartment.

Upper East Sider Marc Blum came up with the website REchirp with partner Andrew Green. Photo by Andrew Schwartz

“It was always a tedious process to find an apartment—dealing with brokers, Craigslist, the New York Times. And we thought there should be an easier process of finding real estate in the city,” said Blum, who has a background in both online and traditional advertising.

The childhood buddies were raised on the Upper East Side and currently live at Normandie Court, on East 95th Street, with their families. Figuring that people bid to get the best rates on insurance, hotel and car prices, the duo guessed that people would probably also be willing to bid to buy or rent an apartment. Combining Blum’s background in advertising with Green’s previous work in technology and consulting, they came up with the idea for the real estate website. After working on the start-up for almost two years, REchirp went live a few months ago. The site, now Green and Blum’s primary endeavor, has four full-time employees and is run out of an Eighth Avenue office.

“The biggest differentiator of www.rechirp.com is that when a user searches for a property, they do not search by price,” Blum said. “The idea behind the site is that when a user sees a property they are interested in, they submit a ‘chirp,’ which is a dollar amount they would be willing to pay for that apartment.”

The creators hope that users can submit chirps anywhere from 10 percent to 40 percent below the listed price. This would give the broker an incentive to work with the bidder and start negotiations at the chirp amount.

Unlike Bid on the City, the bids at REchirp are non-binding, and people can make as many bids as they want on different apartments. Thirty days after the property is listed, the site holds an auction—the first of which took place this month—in which buyers have to make a winning bid in half an hour. The bidding increments increase from $50,000 to $250,000 and the site gives the winning bidder 48 hours to make a down payment in escrow. Bid on the City also positions itself more as a high-end marketing firm for properties, rather than an auction house, and it is geared toward foreign buyers.

REchirp, meanwhile, hopes to cater exclusively to New Yorkers.

“I think the true distinction between us and them is that our chirps are not binding,” Blum said. “Moreover, we have thousands of listings that a home seeker can submit a chirp on, while there are never more than just a handful at a time with Bid on the City.”

So far, REchirp has almost 4,000 listings, mostly from Manhattan, and Green and Blum hope to add properties from across the city as the business grows. They are already working with nine brokerage firms.

Real estate brokers, meanwhile, are eyeing the new service with some skepticism.

“If people are putting bids without any financial commitment,” said real estate broker Joel Maskovitz, “they are not locked in. If thousands of people bid for fun, I am not going to pay to download false leads,” he said.

Brokers, he argued, already work to negotiate the best prices for owners.

“It would be bad for me to talk to anyone who is bidding low,” he said.

Michelle Araujo, a broker who works with NYC Vertical, pointed out that for the minimal fee of listing one property on Craigslist, she often gets hundreds of queries, many of which turn into customers or good leads. Without an in-depth knowledge of the city real estate market, she added, most bidders would be shooting in the dark on a site like REchirp.

Blum and Green, meanwhile, agree that their users have to have a certain sophistication to use the website. They say the service has been designed by New Yorkers for New Yorkers, and caters to savvier renters. They declined to specify exactly how many deals have been made through the site so far, but said that REchirp has helped a few home-seekers find an apartment of their liking.

“Our goal is not to replace Craigslist, New York Times or anyone,” Blum said. “Anyone who is online will go to a bunch of sites [while apartment hunting]. We are hoping REchirp is one of them.”

To bankroll the new nursing home, a project that has long been in the works and was originally planned for the south side of West 106th Street between Columbus and Amsterdam avenues, Jewish Home was going to sell part of its property to a developer. But with the economy faltering and developers reluctant to buy, the only offer came from Joe Chetrit, who has taken community heat for his Columbus Square project, consisting of five luxury rentals and retail space at Park West Village.

Building 1 is a rendering of the 22-story nursing home Jewish Home plans to build on West 100th Street.

In the deal, Chetrit will own Jewish Home’s current property, at 120 W. 106th St. Jewish Home will then build its proposed 22-story nursing home on top of land that was to be used for 180 parking spaces, on West 100th Street between Amsterdam and Columbus avenues. Those spots will be moved to an indoor parking area without an increase in rates for owners. Newly built park space, gardens, outdoor seating and an indoor auditorium for the nursing home residents will also be open to Park West Village residents.

“Relocating to West 100th Street will have a net positive impact on Jewish Home’s Upper West Side clients, family members, employees and neighbors,” said Bruce Nathanson, senior vice president of marketing and communications for Jewish Home Lifecare.

By building a new facility elsewhere, Jewish Home can continue to operate at full capacity without staff layoffs and construction disruptions for its residents.

However, community groups fear that Chetrit will build a massive luxury tower on Jewish Home’s West 106th Street property because of the 2007 Upper West Side rezoning plan.

That year, Jewish Home collaborated with community groups in a deal with the City Council that carved the nonprofit’s parcel out of the 51-block Upper West Side rezoning plan, which drastically reduced neighborhood building heights. The concession was meant to allow the nursing home to rebuild a larger, state-of-the-art facility that could update the service provided to clients.

“We had a whole deal and process. We spent a long time putting it together,” said Blanca Vazquez, co-coordinator of the Manhattan Valley Preservation Coalition, which worked on the 2007 zoning compromise. “And now, everything is out the window and up in the air.”

Vazquez said the group was upset by the deal because the exemption was based on Jewish Home’s goodwill with the neighborhood and the promise of a community facility.

“This is not a simple swap or trade,” Vazquez said. “They made a commitment to community use.”

Although Jewish Home’s nursing home will now be located elsewhere, Chetrit will still be allowed to build tall, market-rate residential towers without zoning restrictions, per the 2007 agreement.

Assembly Member Daniel O’Donnell, who opposed Jewish Home’s exclusion from the rezoning plan, said he was troubled by the new proposal.

“The City Council carved out an exception for that site on West 106th Street because it was to be used for health care facility,” O’Donnell said. “Now, that exception seems to be used for a for-profit housing developer. It’s changing the rules in the middle of the game.”

O’Donnell is calling on the Council to have Jewish Home’s West 106th Street property conform to surrounding zoning.

“If someone wants to build a for-profit development, they should build within the context [of the neighborhood],” O’Donnell said.

Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito, whose district covers Jewish Home’s West 106th Street property and Park West Village, said she will start to remove all zoning exemptions for the property that were enacted during the 2007 rezoning process. One option is to submit a new land-use application.

On Aug. 15, Mark-Viverito held a rally blasting the deal with O’Donnell, State Sen. Bill Perkins, Council Member Inez Dickens and two district leaders from the Three Parks Independent Democratic Club.

“No for-profit bad actor should benefit from an exemption that was made solely to allow Jewish Home and Hospital to build a state-of-the-art skilled nursing facility,” Mark-Viverito said in a statement. “This recent development defies everything we have been working towards during the past two years.”

To bankroll the new nursing home, a project that has long been in the works and was originally planned for the south side of West 106th Street between Columbus and Amsterdam avenues, Jewish Home was going to sell part of its property to a developer. But with the economy faltering and developers reluctant to buy, the only offer came from Joe Chetrit, who has taken community heat for his Columbus Square project, consisting of five luxury rentals and retail space at Park West Village.

Building 1 is a rendering of the 22-story nursing home Jewish Home plans to build on West 100th Street.

In the deal, Chetrit will own Jewish Home’s current property, at 120 W. 106th St. Jewish Home will then build its proposed 22-story nursing home on top of land that was to be used for 180 parking spaces, on West 100th Street between Amsterdam and Columbus avenues. Those spots will be moved to an indoor parking area without an increase in rates for owners. Newly built park space, gardens, outdoor seating and an indoor auditorium for the nursing home residents will also be open to Park West Village residents.

“Relocating to West 100th Street will have a net positive impact on Jewish Home’s Upper West Side clients, family members, employees and neighbors,” said Bruce Nathanson, senior vice president of marketing and communications for Jewish Home Lifecare.

By building a new facility elsewhere, Jewish Home can continue to operate at full capacity without staff layoffs and construction disruptions for its residents.

However, community groups fear that Chetrit will build a massive luxury tower on Jewish Home’s West 106th Street property because of the 2007 Upper West Side rezoning plan.

That year, Jewish Home collaborated with community groups in a deal with the City Council that carved the nonprofit’s parcel out of the 51-block Upper West Side rezoning plan, which drastically reduced neighborhood building heights. The concession was meant to allow the nursing home to rebuild a larger, state-of-the-art facility that could update the service provided to clients.

“We had a whole deal and process. We spent a long time putting it together,” said Blanca Vazquez, co-coordinator of the Manhattan Valley Preservation Coalition, which worked on the 2007 zoning compromise. “And now, everything is out the window and up in the air.”

Vazquez said the group was upset by the deal because the exemption was based on Jewish Home’s goodwill with the community and the promise of a community facility.

“This is not a simple swap or trade,” Vazquez said. “They made a commitment to community use.”

Although Jewish Home’s nursing home will now be located elsewhere, Chetrit will still be allowed to build tall, market-rate residential towers without zoning restrictions, per the 2007 agreement.

Assembly Member Daniel O’Donnell, who opposed Jewish Home’s exclusion from the rezoning plan, said he was troubled by the new proposal.

“The City Council carved out an exception for that site on West 106th Street because it was to be used for health care facility,” O’Donnell said. “Now, that exception seems to be used for a for-profit housing developer. It’s changing the rules in the middle of the game.”

O’Donnell is calling on the Council to have Jewish Home’s West 106th Street property conform to surrounding zoning.

“If someone wants to build a for-profit development, they should build within the context [of the neighborhood],” O’Donnell said.

The city removes graffiti for free with trucks that quickly blast paint over graffiti-laden security gates and walls. But graffiti-busting officers in local police precincts must first canvass the streets to get property or business owners to sign waivers.

“Police officers work toward getting them, but they take forever—it takes almost six months,” Brewer said.

On June 23, her office organized a clean-up day focused on 55 sites throughout the Upper West Side. The Mayor’s Community Affairs Unit provided 27 graffiti removal trucks.

The proposed legislation would expedite the process and give owners the option of choosing to keep any graffiti they consider artwork by notifying the city.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg expressed his support for the bill.

“We’re cleaning more graffiti faster than ever before, and working with the City Council, we are going to introduce legislation to make it easier and more efficient to continue doing that,” he said in a statement. Photo by Tina Varghese