Category Archives: Commercial / Residential Real Estate

By Liz Witbeck

As Saratoga Springs expands with businesses and homes, companies are looking outside of downtown for places to build. Developments on West Avenue are among growing areas in the city.

Lookout Saratoga LLC recently purchased a strip mall at 60 West Ave. in Saratoga Springs. The plaza contains approximately 30,000 square feet of commercial space.

60 West Avenue LLC purchased the former G. Heath King furniture store within the strip mall in 2007 and renovated it into its current condition—a 30,000-square-foot shopping plaza.

The new owner, Lookout Saratoga LLC, is an independent investor with some similar properties in the Capital District .

The plaza sold for $4.3 million, according to real estate companies involved in the transaction.

By Susan E. Campbell

A Multiple Listing Service provides up-to-date databases of properties for sale that those in the real estate industry use and rely on  regularly.

Sellers get maximum exposure to a regional market of prospective buyers. Buyers get quick, and free access to listings and have an easy way to refine searches and make comparisons.

Brokers who help one another sell properties are ensured of receiving a commission for their role in a successful transaction.

Locally, it is taking on a new twist.

But Stuart Thomas of Reality Realty of Saratoga, a director of the Saratoga Schenectady Schoharie Association of Realtors Inc., said he had an issue for decades that he and some of his long-time associates have recently resolved.

Thomas has taken the lead in creating a new kind of MLS, called First Choice MLS. He said it is the first known service that monetizes an MLS. It becomes a source of income for real estate professionals, even if the properties they list don’t sell during the six-month contract period.

Ellsworth Commons is one of the many apartment complexes in Saratoga County.

©2016 Saratoga Photographer.com

By Jill Nagy

A mix of millennials and empty nesters are keeping the Saratoga rental market booming.

One area property manager said that the proportion of those renters attracted to new, higher-end, apartments is far higher than the national average of 20 percent.

With rents on new luxury apartments ranging from approximately $1,600 a month for a studio apartment to $3,700 a month for a larger apartment, a significant portion of the apartment market is under-served.

“We are not serving the young professional needing something in the $1,000-a-month range,” said Jason Thomas of Roohan Realty in Saratoga Springs. They have to go to older properties with fewer amenities or, in some cases, join others in similar circumstances to rent a house together.

Be that as it may, Thomas and his colleagues in the business are optimistic.

Peter Rosecrans of Burns Property Management, which has numerous apartments in Saratoga Springs, said “things are going well,” both locally and in the rental industry as a whole. “Members of the millennial generation are really waiting on purchasing a house.”

Scott Varley has joined Keller Williams Realty Inc. He has an office on Broadway.

©2016 Saratoga Photographer.com

By R.J. DeLuke

After 27 years with RealtyUSA, well-known real estate agent Scott Varley has parted company with the group with which he was a top seller.

Varley has joined Keller Williams Realty Inc., a company based in Texas that is said to be the largest real estate franchise, by agent count, in the world with more than 800 offices and 149,000 associates across the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia.

Varley serves customers in Saratoga, Warren, Washington, Albany, Schenectady and Rensselaer counties. He said the move enables him, potentially, to branch out even more.

With RealtyUSA he “reached the point where we had outgrown the model,” he said.

“RealtyUSA is local, not national,” he noted.

Varley said he did research Keller Williams for over a year and decided the time was right for a switch.