Romeo And Juliet Had One

February 26, 2025
  • Consumers Looking For Outdoor Space During The Pandemic Was More About The Suburbs
  • Decorative Balconies Enable Occupants To Get Some Fresh Air Technically “Outside” Of Their Home
  • Apartments With Outdoor Space Tend To Sell Faster

Outdoor space is one of those things that is hard to value. Balconies as an amenity have quite the range – from a place to store bicycles and BBQs to a place to throw keys down to a friend on the street below. A tremendous amount of hype was applied to outdoor spaces during the pandemic – that consumers craved outdoor space. Curbed just published a terrific piece on what I call “decorative” or “Juliet” balconies, and it also addresses the amenity in full. Just claiming an apartment had outdoor space, no matter how small, seemed to work, marketing-wise.

When we first moved to Manhattan in the mid-1980s, we lived at a new rental tower in a 32nd floor 1-bedroom without a balcony and then later moved to a 2-bedroom with a balcony on the 22nd floor in the same building overlooking Central Park South. The balcony was a typical size and I spent many evening hours looking at the city lights and skyline of Midtown, while listening to the loud hum of a city that never sleeps. It was very intoxicating and cemented my love for Manhattan.

Back in 2010, I was getting a lot of calls from the brokerage industry asking how our appraisal firm valued outdoor space. I ended up writing a blog post [Terra Logic] Understanding The Value Of Manhattan Apartment Outdoor Space that remains one of the most-read posts on our Matrix Blog. A year later I started playing around with data on outdoor space and noticed the amenity was gradually becoming more popular.

Valuing Outdoor Space

The following example is taken from my 2010 post which outlines the valuation approach we developed for outdoor space.

For example – if the interior space was worth $1,000 per square foot, without considering the terrace, the outdoor space could be worth as much as $500 per square foot (50% of interior square footage). If the terrace is 500 sqft, the terrace could be worth $250k ($500 per square foot x 500 square feet).

There are a lot of things that need to be considered in addition to size, like utility that I delve into within that 2010 post.

Juliet (Decorative) Balconies Are A Thing

A typical Manhattan balcony is about 7’ x 10’ but a Juliet balcony is more like 1.5’ x 10’. It can hold a couple of chairs that face each other but that’s about it. They’ve been around for my entire 40 year career as an appraiser but their existence seems to have surged from the pandemic era. In a listing, juliet balconies are denoted as “balcony” and they do enable the occupant to “step outside.”

Source: Curbed

My parents had a balcony in their first Manhattan apartment and it got a lot of use, especially the Weber Grill, which outdoor cooking is often not permitted in other buildings. But in my years visiting their apartment, I don’t recall ever seeing anyone out on the other balconies but I do recall seeing a lot of bikes and other items being stored on them. When I think of a typical balcony, I think of a couple of bikes locked together and an old Weber Grill with an inch of soot on everything. Here’s a nice balcony image from wikipedia.

Source: Wikipedia

Final Thoughts

In the process of writing this post, I sort of came around to the idea of “decorative balconies” specifically because they are too small to store stuff and therefore won’t collect all that soot.

The Actual Final Thought – To take advantage of that decorative balcony amenity, its critical to understand the real seasons.

Did you miss the previous Housing Notes?

February 24, 2025

Strong Dollar For Gold, Tomatoes For Vegetables, International For Domestic

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