Veronica X.

The cost of raising kids in the vertical village often necessitates two incomes and the outsourcing of care for said kids. But when you share the love and care of a child, open conversation can be challenging...

In the armed neutrality zone that is an open house, brokers aren’t the only ones wearing poker faces and choosing their words as carefully as their vanilla-skim no-whip triple lattes. Listen hard enough and you will discover that buyers too speak in a coded language all their own.
 

City or suburbs, you don't know it until you've lived it...and you don't know what you need until it's too late.  At which point the right housewarming gift can make all the difference.

Welcome to the city:

While the search for the right decorator is not quite as desperate as finding the right New York City apartment, it is mined with a doublespeak all its own.

Below, a custom tour for the uninitiated, excerpted from actual interviews with decorators.

You finally found it! Now you need to pass the co-op board.  You ask friends, relatives, colleagues and business associates to write letters of recommendation on your behalf. 

Here is what they say ... and what they mean.