How much is the smell of Starbucks in appraising apartments?

The Real Estate Board of NY held a day-long seminar on the hot Residential Real Estate market in New York City on Monday February 28th. The featured presenters were Drew Fautley of Vanderbilt Appraisal, Betsey Dean of Stribling, Kay Grover who is a real estate consultant and someone from Elliman whose name escapes me now.

Drew was the most charismatic of the bunch. He gave a very interesting and thorough seminar on the appraisal process. He told the class how he has appraised everything, from a drug
den to multimillion dollar condos to interestingly, the smell of Starbucks Coffee - yes, he was asked buy a judge to appraise the smell of coffee for a buyer of an apartment on West 13th street. Apparently the buyer hated the smell of Starbucks coffee, but happened to live above one of its' ubiquitous retail outlets. Apparently it was worth a 23% discount
in the apartment!!

Other tidbits include the fact that the square footage for coops is measured from the inside wall, while for condos, it is measured from the halfway point of the exterior windows and interior walls. Apparently the Donald is infamous for measuring it from the exterior
windows. Taking into consideration the wide berth in the construction of condos, this could add a couple of hundred square feet to his behemoth apartments.