Irene Kim of Dentons
If you have the brains for it, tax law can be a great Biglaw practice area. It’s cerebral and civilized. Your colleagues will be nice, non-screamer types (although they might be… quirky). The hours are often (but not always) better than those of your corporate colleagues. And there’s excellent job security; you rarely, if ever, hear of tax lawyers getting laid off.
But the brutal Manhattan real estate market is the great leveler, and when it comes to the housing hunt, tax lawyers must suffer along with the rest of us. That’s my takeaway from a recent installment of Joyce Cohen’s popular Sunday New York Times column, The Hunt:
For two years, Irene Kim shared a two-bedroom with a friend in a postwar apartment house on the Upper West Side. She paid nearly $2,400 a month, and was plagued with noise from sirens racing along Columbus Avenue.
Last summer, she began hunting online for a place of her own. She wanted a quiet one-bedroom co-op in the low- to mid-$600,000 range, and hoped to remain on the Upper West Side….
Ms. Kim, 32, quickly learned that apartments in her price range tended to be small, so she boosted her budget to the low $700,000s.
Is that a reasonable amount for a midlevel tax associate at Dentons? It’s hard to say without knowing more. How much does Irene Kim have in savings? How much does she have for a down payment? What are her other obligations (including student loans, if any)?
But taking a very “back of the envelope” approach, it seems plausible enough to me. For example, take the numbers used by Joe Patrice in his argument for why associates outside New York don’t deserve the $180K scale, and then adjust to reflect Kim’s higher salary as a midlevel. (She graduated from Boston College Law in 2013.)
Alas, even $700K won’t get you too far in New York City:
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She liked a one-bedroom on West End Avenue in the low 80s, listed for $699,000, with monthly maintenance of around $1,200. But, on a later visit, [her broker Jai] Lee turned off the lights, revealing a lack of daylight. The limited wall space would also make arranging furniture difficult. And the kitchen and bathroom were outdated.
Dark, dated, and dinky. In the Los Angeles area, less money than that could get you a two-bedroom condo. In Texas (Dallas and Houston), you could get yourself a townhouse, or even a “house house.”
But tax lawyers are tenacious; notice how they often endure more schooling even after getting their J.D. degrees (Kim has a Tax LL.M. from NYU’s prestigious program). So Irene Kim continued her search:
A 1930 co-op in the West 90s with two available one-bedrooms was appealing. Both were listed for $725,000. In both, Ms. Kim opened and closed the windows, and sat quietly to listen.
One, on a lower floor, with monthly maintenance of around $1,300, had a walk-in closet and plenty of light, but it included a garish mirrored wall and faced a noisy street.
Not good. Tax law might not involve the brute-force hours of due diligence or doc review, but it does take concentration. If Kim wants to work from home, she needs peace and quiet.
Which, luckily, she finally found:
She paid $690,000 for the apartment [in a prewar co-op in the West 90s] and arrived last winter. The one with the walk-in closet on the lower floor sold for $675,000.
“In terms of noise, this is kind of a gem,” Ms. Kim said. “I feel good about my decision — especially in the morning after a good night’s sleep.”
Good for sleeping and also for working from home, as this photo suggests:
Irene Kim at work (via New York Times)
She endured a taxing search, but it all worked out in the end. Congratulations to Irene Kim on her new home!
Something Quiet on the Upper West Side [New York Times]
Earlier:
David Lat is the founder and managing editor of Above the Law and the author of Supreme Ambitions: A Novel. He previously worked as a federal prosecutor in Newark, New Jersey; a litigation associate at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz; and a law clerk to Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. You can connect with David on Twitter (@DavidLat), LinkedIn, and Facebook, and you can reach him by email at [email protected].