It takes a village to raise seven children while building a thriving design and real estate business in New York City.
Just ask Bob and Cortney Novogratz.
Their latest book, “The Novogratz Chronicles,” tells their story — and that of New York City — over the past three decades.
Now, Gimme Shelter takes readers inside their latest tour de force: a colorful, 197-year-old townhouse on Waverly Place — their most ambitious project to date.
“A lot of years and experience went into building this perfect house,” Bob told Gimme Shelter.
But real estate deals in New York depend on even more than hard work and a good eye. Real estate luck is also a factor.
The couple’s first home was a Chelsea townhouse back in 1995. But the house was condemned, which meant that Bob and Cortney couldn’t get a bank loan. That was until the seller — a man known only as Joe in the book — asked if they had ever heard of “taking paper.”
It’s a way, Joe explained, “to purchase a gut job without involving a bank.”
Bob and Cortney wondered if they had fallen into a Scorsese film.
“Joe explained: We’d make a small down payment on the townhouse, and the rest would be treated as a loan from him — an interest-only loan. He would basically hold on to the mortgage until we paid him in full. It was an unbelievable deal — which, as far as we could tell, involved zero horses’ heads left on our bed.”
Things only got better. The property had been chopped up into tiny rooms, but Bob and Cortney saw its original beauty and brought it back to life. Then they secured the bank loan, and bought the house. To dress it up, and especially in a cool New York way, they shopped in flea markets and even found beautiful stained glass in a neighbor’s backyard. Cortney asked to buy it; they gave it to her for free.
Friends and family moved in with them as renters. Then Suzanne Vega, the iconic singer/songwriter, made an offer to rent the whole townhouse for far more than they ever imagined. Bob and Cortney agreed, moved out and thus began a semi-nomadic existence of buying and fixing up beautiful New York City homes — hidden gems often under decades of grime — with their ever-growing brood in tow.
They became so successful that Bob gave up his day job in finance. A big old house in the Berkshires that they purchased and fixed up became their de facto second home — and family anchor.
This latest book is a way for the design duo to share more than their aesthetic principles. In a way, it’s business, and seeks to activate and inspire anyone to build the house — or homes — of their dreams.
The Novogratzes have three guiding principles for every project.
“It’s all about how you buy the property. Financing — what you pay for it initially — is the most important thing. The second is who you get to help you build — whether you are redoing a closet or building a house, you need the right team. The third, for us, is buying in up-and-coming neighborhoods,” Bob said.
Their first house in Chelsea was on West 19th Street. They bought it before the Chelsea Market and Chelsea Piers even existed. It was also before the Meatpacking District took off, before the High Line and even before the West Chelsea arts district came into being.
“I thought Chelsea was the most affordable of the downtown areas, and I liked what was going on the West Side,” Bob said. “We were in Soho in 1997, on the fringe in West Soho and then the Village, always the Village, although we obviously didn’t discover it — and we were in Nolita pretty early.”
In Soho, they built on the site of a former gun shop, down the street from beloved neighborhood restaurant, Felix, which turned into Bob’s unofficial office. (Cortney would run over with their landline phone when someone called.)
While it’s important to buy what you can afford, your return on investment often reflects these choices.
“When we bought our first home in Chelsea 30 years ago, you could buy a Chelsea townhouse for $500,000, a Harlem townhouse for $250,000 or a West Village townhouse for $900,000,” Bob said. “In the three areas we looked at, a $300,000 investment in Harlem would now be worth $3 million, a $500,000 investment in Chelsea would be $8 million and $800,000 in the West Village would be $25 million — that’s the better buy,” he said.
The couple met in the South — Bob is from Virginia and Cortney is from Georgia — but they started dating in New York, where they’d throw parties to make money. After Cortney’s apartment caught fire, she moved in with Bob. Their friends were moving to the suburbs. They stayed. At first, Bob worked in finance by day and chipped away on renovating homes, one at a time, at night with Cortney.
But as their design/home business — and family — grew, it became their full-time business and passion. Their work can now be found across the country, and even the world.
“Building a house the right way so that it is perfect is hard, especially the first time. Gutting a house gives you the ability to do it right — and while people get excited about the aesthetics, the mechanicals are even more important,” Bob said.
Today, the Novogratzes say they’d buy on the Upper East Side and the Upper West Side because that’s where the value is, and it’s “cleaner and quieter.” But maybe, just maybe, Bob said, “maybe I’m just getting older.”
Next up: their first multiple dwelling — perhaps on the Lower East Side.
As for New York haters, get over it, he said: “I don’t know if New York still has that Disney-like feel that it had under Mayor Bloomberg, but there is such enormous wealth here and there aren’t many places where people want to live. New York has the culture and the lifestyle.
There’s more crime, but it’s still the best city in the world. I am astounded by how many wealthy people are here compared to 20 or 25 years ago — and New York real estate is at an all-time high. If you are that type of person who wants to be in Manhattan, there is no other place to be.”