Day flippers doing the Harlem shuffle.

The land rush is on in Harlem, as entrepreneurs, developers, brokers and rehabbers seek out willing sellers. It is not just that these buildings are finally able to be Sold, but that they are being spit and polished, if not by the first buyer, then by the second.

First one building and then a second, and then an entire block is being taken back from blight, and each of those brightened windows glows onto another one nearby, spreading the energy to the next.

Just as Police Commissioner Howard Safir has taken the streets back one by one from the drug dealers, the pride in Harlem is now taking back the buildings.

The retailing explosion is threading its way across 125th Street: a possible hotel and jazz museum is are planned in the area of the West Harlem Waterfront and the Cotton Club; Fairway; Harlem USA; Disney; Magic Johnson movies; Pathmark, a United Artists movie house being developed by Blumenfeld Development; and, a bit south to the river at 116th and 117th streets, the Washburn Wire a/k/a East River Street Plaza, is proposed by David Blumenfeld, with Costco, Home Depot and perhaps Old Navy saluting the FDR Drive.

"On the same block you can have a half million dollar investment from a retailer, and across the street its burned out," observed Franklin Zuckerbrot, a partner with Sholom & Zuckerbrot, of the Harlem climate that is now burning with construction.

The groundwork has been laid, and now the housing boom is taking its own path.

Some entrepreneurs and local ministries are grabbing onto big projects. For instance, West 116th Street is a commercial corridor bursting with redevelopment. The $60 million Renaissance Plaza project broke ground in July through the ANCHOR program, so called "because each new owner-occupied home, new business or new job acts as an anchor to stabilize and improve the city's neighborhoods," explained Richard T. Roberts, Commissioner of Housing Preservation and Development.

The 11-story building is being developed by Suna/Levine, a venture between Stuart Match Suna and Jeffrey E. Levine, president of Levine Builders, with the Masjid Malcom Shabazz Mosque as its community sponsor. The limited equity cooperative will have 241 apartments and 60,000 square feet of retail space that will house a Rite Aid, Met Foods, Petland, Ashley Stewart women's clothing and a 200-car parking lot managed by Imperial Parking - all expected to create 117 jobs.

Nearby, on West 116th Street east of Malcolm X Boulevard, the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone-supported new 25,000 square-foot Malcolm Shabazz Vendors Market has opened, with space for 115 vendors.

That will help kick off the 41 three-family homes being constructed on West 117th Street, west of Malcolm X Boulevard, as the first phase of the Shabazz Gardens Partnership New Homes.

Eventually, the second phase will include the development of two six-story condominium buildings on the west corner of 117th Street and Malcolm X Boulevard, which are being developed and constructed by the Bluestone Organization. These will contain 55 two- and three-bedroom apartments and up to 11,000 square feet of retail.

They are located in the Mt. Morris Homeownership Zone, where a total of 537 new units will be constructed in rowhouse style to mesh with the historical character of the neighborhood.

A bit uptown, the Rev. Calvin Butts' Abyssinian Development Corp. will rehab the 53,000 square-foot, three-story commercial building at 200-14 West 135th Street at Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard. which used to house Smalls Paradise Jazz Club, said Karen Philips of the Development Corp. Elizabeth Martin was the broker on that deal.

Another Anchor program, with an expected 262 housing units and 40,000 square feet of commercial space, is planned along Frederick Douglass Boulevard, the north-of-the-park name for Central Park West.

But many others are concentrating on the much smaller buildings - those that housing advocates agree are the ones most at risk of failure: the ones that get behind the fastest on their water bills, real estate taxes, oil bills, and repair work that could allow tenants to legally not pay rent.

Sometimes these small brownstones are vacant or loosely populated, and owned by families or successors or squatters that long ago gave up on getting out - holding on 'til the city takes the keys.

But the city stopped taking the keys years ago, the water continues to spurt forth, and whatever rent has been paid by remaining tenants or family has helped keep the building warm. Yet because they are smaller, the going in costs are also smaller.

And with lenders finder orders from the Feds to spread money into former red-lined areas, there are even reports of 100 percent financing being available for those can walk and talk.

There is a lot of spiffing up occurring on many of the blocks, says Ira Kellman, a Harlem investor and apartment operator, who recently took a ride to view some properties he is now purchasing.

"Every single block had either 'For Sale' signs or activity, either by being really renovated or being upgraded by the occupants," he said, Kellman has owned property in Harlem since 1988, and also has his office there, but hasn't seen activity like this in the recent past.

"This is phenomenal. It's a tremendous volume," he noted. Buildings that were $10,000 or $15,000, he estimated, are now selling from $150,000 to $400,000. "You have an awful lot of low-end, unusual properties; small brownstones, boarded up, and the city owns a lot of it," Kellman said. "A lot of people picked it up for nothing or always owned it, and all of a sudden there's a market. Especially for empty brownstones and on certain blocks."

Sellers' eyes gleam when they see what they think is a sucker with a wallet. But who is the sucker, if anyone? At the end of the closing day, the ultimate sales price isn't always just what the first seller gets: some buyers are "day flipping" properties like they were Sunday pancakes, doubling and even tripling their dollars.

What they are doing isn't illegal, and there are others that will now try to do the sane after reading how, but as one final buyer snarled, "It's immoral." And that's left the taste of some soured greenbacks in the streets.

Take the Alliance-Individualized Ministries Corp., operated by Hempstead-based Larry Nelson. He contracted to purchase several properties from an entity called No Exit Place Realty Corp., whose contact was either Howard Finger or Frank Boccagna, both of Long Island, neither of whom returned numerous phone calls before deadline; nor did their attorney at Graynor & Graynor of Mineola.

Follow some of the transactions that took place this spring. Someone sold 66 West 126th Street, a three-story walk-up with 12 apartments to No Exit for $130,000, which sold it to Nelson the same day for $206,000.

Next door, 68 West 126th Street, a three-story walk-up with 11 apartments, was purchased for $130,000 and sold for $274,500; while 56 East 126th Street was bought and sold for what the records mark as $130,000. The purchases by Nelson totalled $610,500, versus what No Exit had paid: $390,000.

None of the original sellers could be reached before deadline.

According to Jeffrey S. Mitzner, a vice president with First American Title, many clients don't want the other parties to know they are flipping the property. The closings and documents do have to be coordinated, since the first deed won't be recorded before the second transaction closes.

"The big issue is the transfer tax," said Mitzner. "It's a huge exposure if you take title and the deed, and normally the seller pays the whole thing."

If a contract is merely flipped, the state taxes at $4 per $1,000 of gain, while the city tax is 1.425 percent.

If the buyer takes title and then conveys again, as the seller they would pay the city 2.625 percent per $1,000 if the transaction amount is over $500,000, and if under $500,000, then the tax rate is 1.425 percent, with a I percent tax for small residential properties.

"No matter which scenario, the new buyer is ultimately going to know about the first contract," said Mitzner. "The game is to not let him know about it until the 11th hour, and the lawyers have locked it all up. But he might still think he got a square deal. The buyers usually don't want the first seller to know because he may not like it that he got so much less."

Has rehabber Nelson stopped buying? No, but he's not going through the same Seller or the same attorney anymore.

"I don't mind paying a broker's fee," says the Long Island-based rehabber, who is currently working on properties in Harlem and Bedford Stuyvesant, and admits that at first "it seemed like a good price."

But when he figured out he was at the end of a day flip, he didn't think so any longer.

"I don't mind paying six percent or seven percent, or even if you got 14 percent, it wouldn't be as bad," he said of what he thought might be a fair turnover price for a same day sale or brokerage fee.

After he found out he was paying twice what his seller was paying, he "cleaned house."

"It didn't sit right, so I'm no longer doing business with them," he added.

Nelson, who says he got involved in rehabilitation work 35 years ago and has worked "from Connecticut to Riverhead," says he does the work for "people to get into housing." And if he can redo 10 buildings, the amount of extra money he has to pay really adds up.

Nelson says he rehabs right around the occupied units, moving the people to other apartments if they so desire.

His objective, while using government subsidy programs, is to turn over the renovated brownstones to new residents, who then assume the mortgage, and if the mortgage is too high, he worries they will have a problem keeping up what might have been less of a mortgage - if Nelson had done his own homework.

To show how Harlem values have increased, go back to January 1, 1992, when a three-story walk-up with 11 apartments on West 132nd Street sold for $15,000. In March 1996, it was sold for $35,000 to a Harlem businessman. In June, 1997, he sold the building to a local Harlem woman for $175,000. It was sold again in April, 1999 for $238,000.

Follow another property back to March 1991, when someone turned over a three-story walk-up with six apartments to a London relative for $5,000. The deed was recorded when she decided to sell it, which she did for $77,500 on September 2, 1998. As a 12-unit building, it was just sold for $185,000.

Nearby, Boccagna made another deal at 203 West 121 Street, a three-story walk-up with 11 apartments bought for $111,500 and sold for $348,000 to another rehabber, along with other properties in a portfolio purchase.

These included 209 West 121 Street, a three-story walk-up with 14 apartments bought for $111,000 and sold for $348,000; 115 West 126th Street, a three-story walk-up with 10 apartments bought for $111,000 and sold for $348,000; 24 West 127th Street, bought for $1 11,000 and sold for $350,000; 28 East 127th Street, a three-story walk-up with 10 apartments, bought for $111,000 and sold for $348,000; and 2024 Madison Avenue, a three-story walk-up with six apartments bought for $111,000 and sold for $348,000. The difference: $555,500 versus $2.09 million, nearly a $1.5 million profit for the day.

The re-buyer of these properties is St. Stephen's Community Development Corp. c/o Frank Cioffi - someone the receptionist who answered the phone claimed she never heard of. But she knew the 90 Park Avenue executive offices were for a not-for-profit organization, and she told us its leader was Edward McDonald - who never returned repeated phone calls.

On March 23rd, St. Stephen's had also purchased 15 West 131st Street, a three-story walk-up with four apartments from Talk Realty, an entity Controlled by Boccagna, for $370,000, who had paid the owner $150,000 the very same day.

Earlier that month, Boccagna purchased 140 west 120th Street, a 13-unit walk-up, for $192,000. The Family Preservation Center, recently active buyers of SRO housing in Harlem and controlled by James Langhorne of Bridge Street Funding of Hauppauge, paid $325,000 the same day. Langhorne did not return calls either.

"Family Preservation is getting Federal funding to renovate SRO's, but I had to stop them from illegally evicting constituents," charged Council Member Bill Perkins, whose district encompasses parts of Harlem and who worries about senior citizens and other low income tenants having to find more expensive housing.

But those rehabbing buildings with many vacant apartments are bringing wealth and prosperity back into Harlem, because there is also a demand for good housing by Latinos and African Americans who previously moved away.

One gentleman, who said he was brought up in Harlem and moved away 25 years ago, just purchased a home on West 128th Street from the family of a deceased friend for $350,000. He recently moved into his new home. His other friends hadn't moved back, he said, but he had the luxury of being "very wealthy" and could afford to buy at market price.

The three-unit building he purchased had been first obtained by his friend for $220,000 with a mortgage of $188,100 through the City Homes program. The owner-occupier program in this case was run through the Enterprise Foundation, which obtained that building and several others from the city in 1996.

These Housing Development Finance Corp. rehabs are supposed to be restricted to owner-occupiers for 25 years, and there is a covenant that runs with the land, said attorney Alex S. Avitabile, who handles some of the transactions for the Foundation.

Although the new owner was insistent that since he had purchased the building outright, without the program, he did not have any restrictive covenant, Avitabile believes he might be surprised if he tries to sell to a non-occupying successor purchaser.

"He would be foolish if he didn't buy it with title insurance," Avitabile added, in another lesson that could be racked up to the Harlem house shuffle.

The citizen's group Civitas released a study earlier this year that, among other things, responded to worries about gentrifying East Harlem and the possibility it would become too expensive for those who live there now. Among its findings: if working people vacate inexpensive housing for newly rehabilitated digs, it will free up the lower-priced units.

They calculated that each working household moving into East Harlem would also add $10,000 to the local economy. Rents of $650 for studios to $950 or $1,000 are affordable by those with incomes of $26,000 to $38,000, the Civitas study concluded - still less than the median of approximately $40,000 for a family of four.

In its report, "A Call to Action Rebuilding Main Street in the Village of East Harlem, written by George E. Calvert, they surveyed 1,600 properties along the Harlem avenues from Fifth to Pleasant, and along the main cross streets of 96th, 106th, 110th, 116th and 125th streets.

Civitas found about a quarter of the units were vacant in buildings less than seven stories high, totalling approximately 2,531 units. More than 90 percent of the vacancies were in privately-owned buildings.

Civitas also identified 360 vacant storefronts, and observed that "the surplus of bodega/delicatessen stores hurts all storekeepers." The report suggested turning some ground floor units into apartments or home-office professional apartments.

"If the psychology changes, and the apartments are occupied by middle class people. the businesses will want to be there." Kellman agreed.

There are many city state and federal programs that help fund the rehabilitation of both privately-owned and city-owned housing, or provide ways for tenants or other entrepreneurs to purchase city-owned housing or vacant land and then rehabilitate or develop it.

Programs are described more fully at www.ci.nyc.ny.us/html/hpd/home.html, and in the looseleaf publication "Breaking New Ground," available through HPD.

Success may have caught up too quickly, however, and while some long-time owners and speculators are taking the opportunity to sell, others are holding out for another day.

Bill Hubbard, principal of Center Development, said his firm is looking for development sites, but has found that current owners want too much money.

"Everything has been overpriced and we haven't been able to make the numbers work," he said. "It's not that they are flipping, but the owners are asking for figures too far up to make us comfortable with a development."

Hubbard says for many loans, the basic acquisition allowance is $10,000 a unit, "and every time you exceed that you have 1) costs that come out of our own pocket, and 2) will have to recover the costs from your rents."

Another problem for local owners are the added costs because of the historical significance of some of the areas.

Kellman recently replaced 4,000 windows, he said, but complained the Landmarks Conservancy required them to be panels of "eight over eight" to reflect the windows as they looked in Harlem's past, since those living there at the time couldn't afford larger panes.

But the special windows added $500,000 to the costs, and were no more energy efficient. This is money Kellman says he would have rather spent in other ways on the buildings.

"There's definitely an upsurge in demand for apartments and ownership in Harlem," Kellman said.