1BR/2BR: How Much to Ask Off the Current Price Offered?

Sorry, I should have also specified it being a CONDO, not co-op.....

if you're constantly being outbid, you have 3 choices:

1 - make your bids closer to asking
2 - present yourself as the most qualified buyer so that they sellers will negotiate with you on price, eventhough they have higher offers. this will mean you coming up close to other bids (matching or higher)
3 - wait and see how the market will be in the fall. could be quieter, but not a guarantee.

there was a lot of deals made in May/June timeframe that will close in Aug/Sept/Oct. Once the figures are available on the sale price, you can revisit your PPSF and see if it matches. using PPSF now with the sales that went into contract in the first quarter could be incorrect as at that time there was a lot of gloom and doom.

Do a recorded-sales search here on SE, setting the criteria to the kind of place you want. Dump to a spreadsheet, and calculate the % difference from final ask. That'll give you a sense of what was happening when those units went to contract.

I don't know about condos, but the 63 co-ops that closed in the last few weeks sold from a few % above asking, to 23% below, with most falling around 6% below.

Not that any of that means anything for any given apartment....

Here're the most recent recorded condo closings:

-12.90% 2700000 3100000 22-Jul-09 #A1801 Manhattan House at 200 East 66th Street in Lenox Hill
-10.62% 2587500 2895000 15-Jul-09 #2504 The Veneto at 250 East 53rd Street in Sutton Place
-10.14% 3590000 3995000 15-Jul-09 #10A 255 East 74th Street in Upper East Side
-09.90% 810000 899000 17-Jul-09 #17J 100 West at 100 West 93rd Street in Upper West Side
-08.24% 780000 850000 15-Jul-09 #30C The Mondrian at 250 East 54th Street in Sutton Place
-07.91% 920000 999000 22-Jul-09 #31M Manhattan Place at 630 First Avenue in Midtown East
-05.05% 470000 495000 16-Jul-09 #11E 186 West 80th Street in Upper West Side
-05.03% 850000 895000 20-Jul-09 #1401 32 East 76th Street in Upper East Side
-04.15% 900000 939000 21-Jul-09 #2D The Hermitage at 41 West 72nd Street in Upper West Side
-04.11% 1050000 1095000 21-Jul-09 #19C Bridge Tower Place at 401 East 60th in Lenox Hill
-02.55% 648075 665000 20-Jul-09 #11K The Saratoga at 330 East 75th Street in Upper East Side
-02.50% 780000 800000 20-Jul-09 #7D 177 East 77th Street in Upper East Side
-02.50% 975000 999999 16-Jul-09 #9A 59 West 12th Street in Greenwich Village
-02.36% 620000 635000 16-Jul-09 #7B 445 West 19th Street in Chelsea
-02.00% 406700 415000 16-Jul-09 #17A 301 Cathedral Parkway in Central Harlem
-00.19% 1292500 1295000 15-Jul-09 #4B 121 West 20th Street in Chelsea
-00.00% 2593000 2593000 16-Jul-09 #6 52 East 4th Street in East Village

The thing is, it depends on how close the seller is to the market value. If the seller asks well below market value, and you still want to chop 5% off because you think every seller should knock 5% off their asking price...you're going to lose the apartment to someone who knows that the ask was already a deal. On the other hand, if someone asks 20% over market, knocking 5% off will give you a rotten deal. So there's no one percentage off asking that works for every apartment. Instead, I'd say to look at the market value, and see whether the seller is at, above, or below it -- and make an offer accordingly.

This is EXACTLY the type of thinking which gets suckers to buy overpriced crap apartments thinking they are vultures. (the OP, not TOB, who has it exactly right).

Maybe a better question that should be raised is what is the approximate price per sq ft for 1 bedroom or 2 bedrooms -
upper east...east of 3rd
upper east...west of 3rd
upper west
etc.
And you would have to break out co-op vs condo
Any thoughts