Lawyerly Lairs, Real Estate, Weddings

Lawyerly Lairs: Young Legal Eagles Feather Their Nest(Or: At least some Americans still live within their means.)

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Remember Kathleen DeLaney and Courtney Thomas? Almost a year ago, this comely couple was named an ATL couple of the week. In the words of Laurie Lin, “Team DeLaney-Thomas, you’ve shaken LEWW out of our winter doldrums with your sterling credentials and sizzling good looks. Congratulations!”

Now ATL would like to congratulate the DeLaney-Thomases on something else: a fabulous new home. Once again, they make their appearance in the New York Times:

For three years, Kathleen DeLaney Thomas and her husband, Courtney Thomas, lived in a Chelsea rental of 900 square feet. “That apartment felt big when we moved in and small when we moved out,” Mrs. Thomas said….

The place had scarce closet space and an unnecessarily large second bedroom, carved from the living room, that made for a claustrophobic feel. Wedding gifts were stacked in the hall or stored at Mr. Thomas’s mother’s house in New Jersey.

ATL readers from Texas, this is your cue: “In Texas, you could live in a 5,000 square foot mansion for the same amount!”

The sluggish elevator drove the couple mad. If they were paying so much in rent — around $3,300 a month — they would rather get a return on their outlay. Once they saved enough for a down payment on a condominium, Mrs. Thomas said, “we were totally ready to go.”

And go they did — to Brooklyn, where all the cool kids live nowadays.

Read more about their fabulous new pad, after the jump.

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Kathleen and Courtney’s search for a new home is chronicled in loving detail in The Hunt column, by Joyce Cohen — one of the Sunday Times’s great guilty pleasures, right up there with the wedding announcements.

Initially K. and C. tried to stay in the neighborhood:

The two, now working as lawyers, were glad to remain in Chelsea until they saw the small sizes of condos in their price range, up to $1.2 million. “We thought, ‘This is crazy,’ ” Mr. Thomas said. “If we are going to spend seven figures on an apartment, it has got to be a really nice apartment.”

Come now, Courtney — you can swing it! You’re a sixth-year associate at the well-regarded firm of Richards Kibbe & Orbe (which, while smaller than the Skaddens and Simpsons of the world, takes in many of their refugees). Meanwhile, your wife is a fourth-year associate at Cooley Godward. Between the two of you, you’re easily earning over $400,000 a year.

But maybe a free-spending mentality is what caused our nation to tumble into near (or future) depression. The DeLaney-Thomases opted for fiscal conservatism. They looked to the more economical option of Brooklyn:

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An ad for the 27-story BellTel lofts, the 1930 Art Deco building once housing the New York Telephone Company, seemed “like just another listing” amid the condominiums in downtown Brooklyn, Mrs. Thomas said. The agent showed them some model apartments and “kept asking us what we thought,” she added. “I was like a broken record at this point — ‘It’s O.K. but not big enough; it seems expensive.'”

Kathleen, you’re not the only one who has issues with the BellTel building. It was originally picked to host the Real World: Brooklyn, but the deal later fell through.

Ah, but wait. Our story has a twist:

So the agent showed them to a unit on the second floor. Her keys didn’t work, so she summoned the super to drill open the lock. “She is asking us not to leave, and we are looking at our watches,” Mrs. Thomas said. After such an ordeal, “I would feel really bad if we hated this apartment.”

Once inside, they were awestruck. It was by far the biggest place they had seen — more than 1,700 square feet. The price, they were told, had just dropped to $799,000 from $899,000. Monthly common charges were in the mid-$400s.

That works out to about $470 a square foot, a bargain here in NYC (even if Charlotte tipsters will cry “rip off”). In Manhattan, it’s not uncommon for condos to sell for over $1,000 a square foot.

As for financing, it’s not mentioned in the Times article, but city property records show that the DeLaney-Thomases took out a mortgage for $719,100 (90 percent of the purchase price). Putting down 20 percent might have been safer. But if you have the dizzyingly high credit score required for 90 percent financing in this ridiculously tight credit market — the mortgage was executed on October 16, 2008, after the fall of Lehman — then you might as well take advantage of historically low interest rates. Borrow as much as you can, baby.

It looks like the DeLaney-Thomases are sitting pretty. We’re guessing they’ve paid off any law school loans from their NYU days (assuming they had any student debt — not everyone does), thanks to their years of working at Simpson Thacher and then their current firms. Servicing a $720K mortgage on over $400K of gross income is not difficult, especially given how low interest rates are.

So congratulations once again to Kathleen and Courtney. When the Great Recession makes us all homeless, we’re moving in with you!

Finding Value, Despite a Droopy Market [New York Times]

Earlier: Legal Eagle Wedding Watch 2.24 and 3.2: Cancún Honeymoon

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