Manhattan Financial District Apartments Get Deepest Price Cuts

Manhattan Financial District Apartments Get Deepest Price Cuts2009-05-07 04:01:00.17 GMT By Oshrat CarmielMay 7 (Bloomberg) -- Real-estate broker Ronnie Diamondeexpected the three-bedroom apartment in New York’s FinancialDistrict, listed in August for $1.64 million and seen by 145potential buyers, to sell in eight weeks.The condominium in the triangular-shaped Cocoa Exchangebuilding was reduced... [more]

Manhattan Financial District Apartments Get Deepest Price Cuts2009-05-07 04:01:00.17 GMT By Oshrat CarmielMay 7 (Bloomberg) -- Real-estate broker Ronnie Diamondeexpected the three-bedroom apartment in New York’s FinancialDistrict, listed in August for $1.64 million and seen by 145potential buyers, to sell in eight weeks.The condominium in the triangular-shaped Cocoa Exchangebuilding was reduced twice by a total 21 percent over fourmonths to $1.3 million, according to Streeteasy.com, a servicethat tracks New York real estate prices. A buyer will probablysign a contract this week for even less, said Diamonde, of theCorcoran Group, who has three other listings in the building.The Financial District suffered the deepest price cuts inManhattan in the first quarter as securities firms shed morethan 180,000 jobs in the Americas. Manhattan apartment salesfell 48 percent from a year earlier, real-estate appraiserMiller Samuel Inc. said. Sellers lowered prices on almost athird of condo or co-op listings by an average of 11 percent inthe Financial District, according to Streeteasy.Downtown has been “disproportionately impacted by thelayoffs and contraction of the financial-services sector,” saidJonathan Miller, president of New York-based Miller Samuel.In TriBeCa, the site of converted warehouses and theTriBeCa Film Festival, 24 percent of advertised apartments werediscounted by an average of 11 percent, Streeteasy said. Thedeepest cut in the area is at 39 Worth St., which is listed at$5.99 million, a 40 percent discount, Streeteasy said. SoLow Sellers in SoHo, home to shops including Prada and MorganeLe Fay, lowered 27 percent of listings by an average of almost11 percent in the first quarter.Spurred by tax breaks, developers moved into the FinancialDistrict after the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center.Prices climbed as they bought office buildings and convertedthem into upscale condominiums.“The Financial District was definitely an emergingneighborhood,” said Sofia Kim, vice president of research atStreeteasy. “People were being priced out of TriBeCa, butwanted to stay in the school district.”Then the recession hit and investment banking profitsvanished amid more than $1.3 trillion in global writedowns andcredit market losses tied to the collapse of the U.S. mortgagemarket. Wall Street bonuses dropped 44 percent last year,according to New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. Cipriani Club Cut “In any sort of a downturn, the neighborhoods that sufferfirst and fastest are the emerging areas,” Kim said.Five of the area’s 10 biggest price reductions are at theCipriani Club Residences at 55 Wall St., where markdowns rangedfrom 21 percent to 27 percent as of this week, according toStreeteasy. Prices were whittled at 18 of the building’sapartments in the first quarter. That number now stands at 27.The dwellings are attached to a restaurant, party andconcert space. Amenities include a wine vault, a movie screeningroom with velvet recliners, a barber shop and free muffins andcroissants delivered daily to residents’ doors.A 1,500-square-foot, two-bedroom condo, listed in June 2006at $2.55 million, is now advertised for $1.85 million.Steven Witkoff, co-developer of the project, didn’t returncalls for comment. No Magician “That area was less about infrastructure and was morelike, ‘Don’t you want to live in this cool building because ithas a cool name?’” said Kathy Braddock, a partner at real-estate consultant Braddock & Purcell.At 15 Broad St., in a building known as Downtown byPhilippe Starck, Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate brokerand managing director Jacky Teplitzky gave up a listing afterdeciding she couldn’t sell the apartment.“I’m good at what I do, but I’m not a magician,”Teplitzky said in an interview. “There were no showings, nonothing. Inventory was mounting and mounting and mounting.”There are 45 apartments for sale in the building, accordingto Streeteasy.Kelly MacDonell, 34, an executive at Aeropostale Inc., andTodd Watkins, 40, considered moving from the Upper West Side tothe Financial District. They abandoned plans to buy in a newbuilding on the Upper East Side when the builder failed tofinish it on time. ‘Dead’ Area? On a Sunday tour of open houses in early April, thecouple’s concerns about a “dead at night” neighborhoodvanished as they passed tourists snapping photos of the New YorkStock Exchange and sipping beer at the outdoor cafes of StoneStreet.They toured a two-room, 15th-floor condo at the CocoaExchange, on the market since October and discounted 10 percentto $439,000. They liked that the building was finished andoccupied. They didn’t like the apartment’s size -- 370 squarefeet -- and decided not to buy.“I’m pretty brutal in my offers, anyway,” Watkins said.The owner took the unit off the market five days later evenafter accepting a bid in the “low fours,” Diamonde said.“He was tired of people low-balling,” Diamonde said. [less]