School is out! New tools are in!

School is officially out. (Cue Alice Cooper.)

It’s time to kick back, relax, put ChatGPT on autopilot, and collectively shut our brains off for the next eight weeks.

If only.

Summer’s a wonderful season to recharge, travel, enjoy the outdoors, and appreciate how the city changes. It’s quieter. Calmer. There are fewer horns honking, fewer meetings to attend, and fewer people dumping trash onto the sidewalk and stealing Knicks-colored rubbish bins. (Too soon?)

At More For LES, it’s anything but a time to pause. The same is true for anyone thinking about — or actively making — real estate decisions.

For buyers, it’s an opportune time to see properties, mainly for all of the reasons already mentioned. There are simply fewer people here. That generally means less competition and a more relaxed pace. The trade-off, of course, is that there’s less inventory. But that doesn’t necessarily mean fewer opportunities. Some sellers simply wait until the fall to list.

If you’re looking to sell, it’s not the ideal time to list. It is, however, an excellent time to get your unit ready. Are there minor repairs to the bathroom sink that you’ve been planning? Perhaps there are some dents in the wall from when you were playing catch in the apartment with your 7-year-old, and you were more Derek Dropped-It than Derek Jeter? Summer’s a great time to tackle those projects...and maybe work on diving for ground balls somewhere outdoors. (Ahem!)

The same holds true on the commercial side. If you’re opening a business, summer is an ideal time to build out your space, refine your operations, work through the inevitable kinks, and prepare for a busy fall. It will be here before you know it.

Which brings us to today’s launch.

Today, we are launching the More For LES Budgetizer.

The Budgetizer was built to help New Yorkers better plan for home renovations. It supports two common scenarios:

• Purchasing a home and renovating it.

• Renovating a home you already own.

Home renovation is a cash- and time-intensive process. It requires significant foresight and can be incredibly stressful and complex. Talk to almost anyone who has renovated a home and you’ll usually hear one—or both—of these statements:

• “It cost way more than we expected.”

• “It took far longer than we anticipated.”

The Budgetizer is designed with this in mind. Using a sophisticated — but easy-to-use — tool, users can factor in financial and timing assumptions to better prepare for costly and lengthy renovations.

Here’s how it works.

Users begin by entering a financial snapshot — including assets, income, liabilities, and other assumptions. None of this information is saved or stored. From there, the tool creates a liquidity snapshot before modeling either the purchase and renovation of a prospective property or the renovation of an existing home. The Budgetizer then helps users evaluate whether they’ll have sufficient liquidity to comfortably complete the project.

Along the way, users can explore different assumptions. These include financing a purchase with a mortgage or paying entirely in cash, estimating renovation costs at low, medium, and high levels, and adjusting timelines and other planning variables. The result is a customized, downloadable report — no strings attached.

In addition, Budgetizer pairs naturally with NYC Service Pro, our by-recommendation-only service provider directory. Once you have your custom report, you can browse our trusted list of architects, general contractors, and other professionals who may be a good fit for your project.

Then, when you’re ready to move, you can also take advantage of our recently launched Get Movin’ Guide for perspectives, tools, checklists, and useful resources to help you prepare before moving day, navigate moving day itself, and settle into your new home afterward.

We hope you’ll give the Budgetizer a try. As always, we’d love your feedback, questions, and suggestions. Every tool we build is designed to make navigating New York City real estate, and the Lower East Side, a little easier. Your input helps make the next one even better.