Ballsy Price Increases

Maybe there was a recent sales for a similar apt at that price, or the owners are only motivated to sell if they get top dollar, or... People are hard to figure out without more knowledge. Call the agent, ask and report back, please.

Winter is coming - woodburning fires - and they figured that the built in wood storage is definitely worth at least $200K more than summer pricing.

Does Georgian Townhouse imply walk up? Nice photographs but I expect that since we are seeing many rollbacks to 2004/2005 prices, they will have difficulty getting this price since 5c went for 1,395000 in 2005. But while the stock market is up, they might get lucky with someone who doesn't care about comps. It seems there a few of those buyers out there -- at least until they get burned.

HL Mencken said, "Never overestimate the intelligence of the American people".

The s. side of 74th is probably the most beautiful row of townhouses on UWS. "Neo-Georgian" refers to the low-stoop, wide, red-brick styling of the houses. They were originally built with elevators, so they were mansions even for their time. Price is overly ambitious, but the apts in this block do go for high prices.

One of my personal favorites...."you can't legislate intelligence"

spin, some of the price increases are for very small amounts, just to get them within the search parameters for price changes.

looks very pretty.

I've never quite understood pricing on this side of the block. Even in '04, you could get a Classic 6 for less than what 2br co-ops on this stretch of 74th. But the location is superb, as is the architecture. It would almost be worth it to buy a floor-through and wait for neighbors' apts to come on the market.

ar: but this case is more than 12% raise. that is not a small price increase.

09: great quote. a bank may not be able to legislate intelligence but they can certainly inject some by rejecting a loan. and cash buyers usually didn't get to all cash by being foolhardy. i have a feeling if any one was interested in this apt, they would just ignore the increase. standard option in buyers market. the worm has certainly turned.

apt23, i know. i was responding to the 132 price increases in the last 30 days.

AR - understand the strategy wrt moving price to hit new search parameters, and there are quite a few that fit that MO. Many more seem to provide evidence of sellers renewed hope on the heels of a fairly brisk summer. It will be interesting to track any of these into contract, sale, or further price movement.

i wonder what percentage of buyers do zero searching on-line. i have seen some interesting repricing also, wonder what their brokers think about it.

Can't you tell what this is?

He's going to keep increasing it so nobody ever buys it. Then it will have been true.

He is pricing you out forever.

I posit that we here on SE are a small percentage of people in the RE market so many, perhaps most, are not privy to the info that we bandy about. Add that to the fact that people are stupid & maybe these price increases will net more monies when/if these places sell.

Nice place. Will move at $1.6M

2nd bedroom is awfully small for this price range.

drdrd - bingo.

How about somewhere during the summer they grew a pair.
It's like saying, this is what I want but, I already told you what I would take.
Want this place...hunt down my original ask.

ar: i have found that re brokers are for the most part shocked that i know comp prices in the neighborhood or details about the building, etc. So i would say that most buyers are clueless. If you go into the overpriced buildings around the highline, you see that many if not most buyers are young professionals. i think that many of those younguns are buying lifestyles. they seem to care little about price and resale -- just as many young people feel invulnerable and rebel against many conventions (like speed limits). They will only find out their mistake when they go to sell. Then we will have a whole new generation of renters or people who will consider valuation next time around.

apt23, i wonder if that's true at this price range, though. i agree regarding the first time buyers. i did some searching for true one bedrooms and was stunned to find that the spread between moderate quality one bedrooms and two bedrooms had become so small in some neighborhoods.

weird, the younguns spend so much time online. it's bizarre that they wouldn't utilize such a resource.

yes, i am in this price range, plus. maybe it is an ageist thing. do i look too old to use the internet? no, i think brokers are genuinely surprised. their attitude changes the minute you argue neighborhood comps. i think the younguns -- and most people-- go into a new development and because the prices are not negotiable (over the last years), they just accept the valuation as gospel. 50% sold says they must be priced right -- even though the brokers could be lying. I have a friend, a remarkably smart lawyer who bought at the Harrison. She was just too busy to do the research and she liked the location and just thought well, that is the price. of course she bailed on her down payment and got very smart very quickly. she bought another apt at a good price but still she just didn't do much research and never even found the re blogs.

In addition to AR's point on small movements, I think some of these price increases are because the agent was telling the seller to price low to create a bidding war. When the bidding war doesn't materialize, the seller is raising their price because the bidding war strategy is no longer operational.

The point is that you can't infer market power or direction of closing prices from listing prices -- there is too much disconnect. Low listing prices could raise closing prices or the opposite because, in this market, the listing price isn't clearing.

i've run through a bunch of the price increased listings. most (maybe a bit more than half) of them seem to be 5-6%, and to have occurred shortly after listing. very few are more than 10%.

apt23, not trying to be ageist. i'm in the second half of my fifth decade, and clearly i spend a lot of time on the internet. it's just odd that the younger set that finds out everything via internet hasn't tapped into this. i've been looking in the $1.75-2.5 range downtown, but i haven't been seriously looking so i'm not conversing with the brokers, other than to let them know i've been around the block a few times, which in and of itself tends to make them a bit nervous.

i too know a very bright lawyer who spent $4mm+ for what i consider to be very mediocre product, in his 50s. i guess this just goes back to my beliefs that this market is not efficient, but rather anchored to expectations. but what did dawn say in that podcast regarding SE site visit volume? hasn't it skyrocketed recently? maybe we're witnessing a bit of a revolution as we type.

shaved ballsy move IMHO... i.e. it may look bigger but in actuality a shaved penis is no longer nor shorter than bf the shave... trust me

be careful with those razors.

it's the growing back in thatz the pain in the (fill in blank) :)

"ar: i have found that re brokers are for the most part shocked that i know comp prices in the neighborhood or details about the building, etc. So i would say that most buyers are clueless." (and further posts)

At the last SE meet-up, I had a disagreement with ?10023? about this, but I absolutely agree with apt23 on almost all of this. I think people on SE (especially those of us in the discussions) have an extremely skewed view of the RE knowledge of the vast majority of buyers. This was especially true during the frenzy of the past few years. For the most part, people looked at a small number of apartments, found a few which they sort of liked, and when they wanted to go back for a second look, the broker told them that it was gone. they then found the next group of similar units were asking more, and those were going too. they had no clue of historical pricing, etc. All they knew was that everything was flying off the market and if they saw something they liked, they'd better buy it, buy it now, and pay full price (or more). And these weren't idiots: they were successful professionals in their own fields making fairly large $ doing it.

Or as drdrd more succinctly put it "I posit that we here on SE are a small percentage of people in the RE market so many, perhaps most, are not privy to the info that we bandy about."

And while it's probably true that "but what did dawn say in that podcast regarding SE site visit volume? hasn't it skyrocketed recently? maybe we're witnessing a bit of a revolution as we type." It's like a White Castle double burger: twice nothing is still nothing. And while in general Alexa sucks at being a true indicator of internet traffic, it does give you an idea of "order of magnitude"; so looking at http://traffic.alexa.com/graph?&w=400&h=220&o=f&c=1&y=t&b=ffffff&r=6m&u=streeteasy.com&&u=elliman.com&u=corcoran.com&u=urbandiggs.com& I think you'll see Streeteasy still isn't getting more hits than the brokerage firms own websites. And from this: http://traffic.alexa.com/graph?&w=400&h=220&o=f&c=1&y=t&b=ffffff&r=2y&u=streeteasy.com&&u=theeroticreview.com& you'll see a lot more guys use the internet to get information on which prostitute to see rather than which NYC apartmrnt to buy.

30yrs, sorry sweets. but i think in the future for 40% of buyers real estate won't be so mystical. and that 40% will create a huge change.

the 60% will still be there, but i'd bet the 40% wind up setting the price.

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/streeteasy.com

A streeteasy for prosties???? I'm paying $10 for se, $100 easy for that new se.

is mimi the 5.1% other?

i'm the 10th dentist.

"30yrs, sorry sweets. but i think in the future for 40% of buyers real estate won't be so mystical. and that 40% will create a huge change.

the 60% will still be there, but i'd bet the 40% wind up setting the price."

a) You may very well be correct, but based on the current numbers, that day is a long way off. And from what I know about the financials of "pay for information" sites, there's a REALLY good chance that SE will be gone long before that day arrives.

b) TOTALLY disagree with the 40% of educated buyers will make the market: face it, the prices are set by the buyers who are willing to pay the most (flat fact in all markets in a capitalist system). The only time this gets mitigated is when that group is so small as to not be able to absorb enough of the inventory so that there is enough left over that the 40% become a substantial force in the market.

have you read the tipping point?

I loved the White Castle simile, 30 years!

sorry, 30yrs, i disagree.

it's those outlying low prices that get people's attention. really. of course not all markets are the same, but i'd put money on my long-term prediction.

"And from what I know about the financials of "pay for information" sites, there's a REALLY good chance that SE will be gone long before that day arrives."

hilarious. SE is going belly up? now, you're dreaming.

Not so fast, it's incredibly hard to turn a profit with a website. Most OL forums I know haven't found a way to make themselves pay and I don't think SE is an exception.

30yrs, I don't entirely disagree with you. Here's another perspective - it's useless to know what properties have sold for historically. It's only relevant at any one point in time, what the current rents & sale prices are. You then make the calculation as to whether you can afford and whether you want to jump from rent to buy and vice-versa. Thinking and obsessing about it is a waste of time. Most people in most markets just want a roof over their heads - Manhattan is no different except for the much larger dollar #s.

10023, it seems fairly safe to say that this has had a fair amount of success. and a huge amount, recently, of banner ads. a year ago i was a bit worried. now not so much.

Yeah, but there are a surprising number of Internet sites that don't make money, despite revenue and traffic.

you don't think that someone would put up money to keep this going? gotta believe the burn rate is very, very low. if facebook is worth $5 billion (?) and twitter is worth ?--SE not worth $5-$10 million? which I would imagine is enough to keep it going for 5 years.

difference is, it wouldn't take a lot of effort to duplicate streeteasy. Its not like there is this mega database of stuff, listings get old and stale. You could copy streetasy and start from scratch, and have a similar product (its not like anyone cares about our threads from 2 years ago except us).

There is no "network effect" that needs to be rebuilt.

Not to mention, facebook and twitter aren't even worth the levels they were originally priced out. Both have maaaaajor problems monetizing their inventory, and always will.

so...what do you think twitter is currently worth?

http://money.cnn.com/2009/09/24/technology/twitter_valuation/index.htm

As a standalone business, $100 million. Maybe $25 million. Hell, maybe $10 mil. Very little to monetize.

As a PR move (big company buys them for the press the story generates), they could sell for several times that though. Just need a bigger sucker.

huh....i asked about twitter. last round valued the company at $250 million.

Just out of curiosity, how many of us here have owned commercial (as opposed to vanity) websites for over a decade? or even half that?

And a show of hands here as to who pays SE and for how long have you?

"30yrs, I don't entirely disagree with you. Here's another perspective - it's useless to know what properties have sold for historically. It's only relevant at any one point in time, what the current rents & sale prices are."

So streateasy's model for getting paid subscriptions totally blows it?

http://thehousinghelix.com/2009/08/28/interview-dawn-doherty-vice-president-of-strategic-development-streeteasy/

they send their actual traffic info to:

http://www.quantcast.com/streeteasy.com

looks like pretty much zero traffic growth in the last 6 months (after a big spurt.... then total plateau). Sounds like they're burning through about $125K a month. That's about 12,000 paid subscriptions. But they have about 15k uniques a day (never pay attention to websites talking about how many visitors they are getting a month, because it's not uniques, so it's BS). I'd also venture to guess that the majority of people who are going to pay are going to be the daily users.

Run the numbers folks. Most of the "growth" of the site is on the expense side, not the revenue side. Take renters: how many renters (people in the process of a rental search) do you think are paid subscribers?

what do you think the new york times would do if offered the opportunity to buy SE for $10 million?

if twitter is valued at anything close to the $1 billion suggested above by private equity investors, you don't think that someone from that arena would take a shot at SE?

how much PE money have you raised in the last decade?

nyc10022 says: difference is, it wouldn't take a lot of effort to duplicate streeteasy. Its not like there is this mega database of stuff, listings get old and stale. You could copy streetasy and start from scratch, and have a similar product (its not like anyone cares about our threads from 2 years ago except us).

There is no "network effect" that needs to be rebuilt.
--
Network effect isn't the only deterrent to entry. I'd say there's a huge database being created by the collective here. As each new closing and listing comes up, if there is an error, the community points that out to SE, and the database gets corrected as we go along in bite sized chunks. If you tried to just go through an read acris in one big dump along with all the historical listings in one big dump to replicate SE, you'd have a real mess of data on your hands that the collective would take years to sort through. You probably can't just read the data from SE (terms of use).

Also, one of the primary deterrents to market entry is a market size less than 2X minimum efficient scale (which, I believe we have here based on 30yrs' comments). That is, why would a second firm enter the market if there isn't enough business to support more than one firm? It doesn't always work -- because you have poorly informed competitors -- but it works often enough.

SE has an indemic advertising base (developers, realty companies) that will support the site so it should be making respectable (although not internet bubble) money. Seems like they have not agressively marketered to other advertisers who might want to reach the "buyer, seller, about to be either or just obsessed with it" market, nor have they aligned with ad networks (those pesky programs who insert ads wherever you are online that are weridly relevant to your life such as cat food when I'm on ESPN.com), meaning they are prioritizing the user (and indemic adverister) experience over maximum short term revenue.

Interesting paralell with "Erotic Review" 30 years, like that site (which for the record I have never visited but think I have the general idea), SE gets a lot of "fantasy viewers" who have no intention of acting on the information contained her but are addicted to the site (guilty as charged). Although in the case of SE I would guess a good many, like me, became addicted while actively in the RE market.

"should be making respectable (although not internet bubble) money."

obviously you realize that companies did not make money during the bubble they just raised capital. the question is what would PE or a strategic investor value SE at relative to its current burn rate?

Where is the damn show of hand functin on se?

"SE has an indemic advertising base (developers, realty companies) that will support the site so it should be making respectable (although not internet bubble) money. Seems like they have not aggressively marketed to other advertisers who might want to reach the "buyer, seller, about to be either or just obsessed with it" market, nor have they aligned with ad networks (those pesky programs who insert ads wherever you are online that are weridly relevant to your life such as cat food when I'm on ESPN.com), meaning they are prioritizing the user (and indemic adverister) experience over maximum short term revenue."

It has not only been historically difficult to get companies to pay for advertising on "informational" sites, the direction ad revenues are headed are in the other direction. This is mostly due to the experience companies have had when they did this kind of advertising. there are many reasons for this, but an interesting one is psychological. Once someone who visits a site often sees a banner ad more than 3 times, their mind starts to filter it out as "noise" and they don't even register it anymore. You have to remember it is very different than print advertising, where people sort of have to go thru the "book" linearly, and seeing full page ads 9especially one's that change every issue, has a much greater effect. What you have probably seen to counter act this is the "forced view" advertising model, where when you try to pull up a web page, rather than the page showing up, and advertisement shows up and they try to hide the "skip this ad" as much as they can, but still know they have to have it or they will lose too many viewers. But even with this, you really can't have that many of them. Can you imagine what would happened if each time you entered a discussion on this forum a forced ad page popped up that you had to go thru in order to get to the thread?

Over the past decade plus, I've been involved with many attempts at trying to get revenue out of informational (and specifically forum oriented/discussion and/or "review" sites), and the numbers seem to get worse every year. For example, the latest "category killer" in the Adult online biz has been the "tube sites". Well, their advertising revenues have been headed South big time as the advertisers experience ratings sucked (i.e. the companies paying big bucks based on the traffic they were getting or supposed to be getting didn't turn into revenue streams), ad rates have dropped precipitously, and now some of the most "successful" tune sites are in trouble because their bandwidth bills are enormous and climbing at the same time as their advertising base is shrinking as well as their per ad revenues.

Taking my prior example - TheEroticReview.com - they are the number one site in their category, have been so for quite same time, but still are obviously having problems deriving revenue from paid subscriptions since they recently made the move of dramatically decreasing the amount of information available to non-paid subscribers (obviously in an effort to get more non-paying subscribers to become paying subscribers. unfortunately for them, the result instead has been diminished traffic:

http://www.quantcast.com/theeroticreview.com

_______________________________________________

But look at it another way: I saw the statement earlier from aboutready: "10023, it seems fairly safe to say that this has had a fair amount of success. and a huge amount, recently, of banner ads. a year ago I was a bit worried. now not so much."

The first thing that ran thru my head was "There are banner ads on hear?". now, as a website owner which gets most of it's revenue thru banner ads, you'd think I would be fairly attuned to seeing banner ads. Well, if I am on this site as much as i am and I haven't been seeing the banner ads, how much revenue do you think they are going to provide long term based on the advertiser's returns on these ads?.

I will also ad that typically for a website, the clickthru rate on banner ads is not only small (clickthru being the number of clicks vs the amount of times displayed), but almost always, on a per user basis, the amount of times a user clicks on any banner ad is less than 1 because you almost never have a user click on a banner ad more than once: if they are interested, they go to the site. If they like the site, they go back directly, so there's no need for more clicks on an banner ad.

stick to real estate comments.

CC: you and 30yrs are not that far apart. You are also not saying that SE will sustain itself through revenue gen, but rather that the highest and best outcome would be to sell itself. Worked pre-2000, has worked since on a smaller scale. I haven't noticed too many banner ads but didn't comment because I tend to filter them out.

actually the ads are quite clever. if you are looking in a certain area, certain price, the appropriate ad generally shows up (depending of course on the hottness of the hood).

30 yrs: I am a recent SE subscriber because I am serious about buying an apt. So $10 a month -- even if it is one to two years (please God not more than another 6 months) is nothing compared to info on the $2 million apt I hope to buy. It is literally a small towel bar in my new dream bathroom. SE should be trolling for people like me except, the market is down, so there are not many of me and........ SE is a liability in buying an apt.

Today I went with a buyers broker to an apt. I have never, ever used a buyers broker but I found one on SE that knew a whole lot more than me -- West 81. I went to an apt that West 81 knew I would love and in fact, it was my dream apt. But I thought it was slightly overpriced considering the mkt. But i knew that uninformed buyers -- those that don't use SE-- would jump in and pay full asking because it is a rare apt. And as I said before, most buyers are clueless. I was pleased that 30 yrs agreed with me on this point in this thread.

My biggest mistake was that I corrected the broker on a date concerning the seller's purchase. Her immediate response which was perhaps because I was with W81 or maybe because she knew I could have no other source was: " I HATE Streeteasy" It makes my job so hard. --And now paraphrasing-- she said that a principal of SE introduced herself at a luncheon (Dawn?) and she wanted to strangle her!!! It was actually hilarious and would have made a great ad for SE. I guess it was because she knew that I knew what the apt. was really worth. That, of course, does not determine what the clueless buyer will pay. But in effect, I was dismissed as a buyer immediately because I knew the real value. It is now up to me to determine whether I want to trump the uninformed buyer and overpay. We'll see. But I think SE should direct their ad dollars to the few buyers out there. I would be very happy to bid against other SE subscribers. With transparency, we would all be much closer to a fair value market.

But I can assure you, I will never reveal myself as a SE subscriber again to a broker. It is a very dirty little secret.

OK - let's just hope that an "uniformed buyer" doesn't jump in and buy your "dream" apartment out from under you. And it was just "slightly" overpriced?

Also, why wouldn't you consider making an offer at what you consider the "right" price?

And it is the "rare" apartments which do seem to sell fairly quickly - why would you think that only "uniformed" buyers would jump - there may be many buyers who have been in the market for a long time and act when they finally see something they like and think is worth the money, especially if it is, as you say, a "rare" apartment.

Use SE and then use your own mind.

Yes it is a rare apt. and I am sure it will sell. Perhaps at more than I am willing to pay. But I have made some pretty significant money in the past 25 years by being a pretty savvy buyer. I may miss out on this apt. but there will be others.

Right now I am watching Extell's service on their debt more than I am watching the bond or stock market. In Miami, when Extell got in trouble on the Brickell buildings, they immediately cut the apt prices by 50% and screwed the original buyers. I know they will do the same if they get in trouble in NY. Look, how are they selling apts in the Rushmore? It doesn't take much research from the most naive buyer to realize those apts are overpriced and not selling due to virtually every buyer trying to get out of current contracts. If the AG rules against them, Extell will have to lower prices -- and remember they have been trained in the 50% bailout mode. Plus they have another building under construction next door and the another in trouble uptown. If the Rushmore goes down -- and that is a highly speculative proposition-- then the huge amount of apts for sale down the block at the Trump buildings are f**ked. We will see W 67ths $500 psf in a literal NYminute. And it will affect all of the westside.

If that happens, my dream apt will plummet in value by 300 - 400 overnight. Am I willing to take that risk? Or should I rent for a year or two and see what happens? If Extell pulls the rabbit out of the hat, and survies, well, there are still some great deals in Spain and San Diego where you can live a pretty nice life style and make some big re bucks for half the price of NY Re.

Why don't I make an offer at the "right" price? Cause there are plenty of buyers out there --like the ones who overpaid at the Harrison, or Superior Ink, or One Jackson, or The Caledonia, or ,or , or, who will make a fool out of me..... right up until me, and AR, and W67,and, and, and are proven to be right. Right now, if I took the comp apt in the same building that sold at the top of the mkt in 2007, and offered 20% less based on every professional calculation..... the broker would laugh out loud. Really LOL... LOL. Read my previous post. She got hysterical when she knew I was an SE buyer.

If the apt doesn't sell in 2 or 3 weeks, I will make a bid. If it goes, it goes. If and when the market falls after the big collapse of big commercial developers, like Extell, I will have LOL tattooed on my ass.

"30 yrs: I am a recent SE subscriber because I am serious about buying an apt. So $10 a month -- even if it is one to two years (please God not more than another 6 months) is nothing compared to info on the $2 million apt I hope to buy."

See, you are a "recent subscriber" who hopes "not more than another 6 months". I think that is probably a typical scenario. Those of us in the "pay site" game often use the metric of what your "average join" is worth to you. If you are typical and you get what you think (I know, 2 BIG assumptions), then the average join would be worth around ?$80?. Why is this so important to know? Because almost every successful paysite has an affiliate system: you pay your "affiliates" to send you joins. There are two ways to do this: one is called "revshare" and the other is "PPS". In revshare, you share all revenue with the affiliate, from their initial join to when they quit. The percentage you pay varies depending on a lot of things, especially if you are selling hard goods as well or just data. PPS is a Pay Per Signup, where you make one payment for every join the affiliate sends you. Typically, this yields a loss on the initial sign up for the paysite, with the hopes that you will have good enough retention to make up for what you laid out, and then for as long as you can retain the subscriber. Unfortunately for most paysite owners, the current credit card debacle is killing what made most sites the most money: people signing up and being members for YEARS, even forgetting they were members and forgetting to cancel. That has RADICALLY changed in the past year or so for several reasons. Firstly, very few people are simply paying their CC bills without really looking at them like they used to. Secondly, people's limits have been lowered and if they hit their limit before your automatic monthly charge hits, you get it kicked back. Thirdly, if you don't have your own merchant account and are using some third party biller, they are "scrubbing" a lot more than they ever used to (i.e. not accepting transactions based on some metric which might indicate the subscriber would deny the subscription charge and "chargeback" the billing). Even folks with their own merchant accounts have stiffened their own scrubbing policies due to a much higher percentage of chargebacks in this economy.

But I want to be VERY clear on something: I am NOT NOT NOT talking about whether or not SE is WORTH paying $10 a month or any other amount for. What I am talking about is the business of charging people for subscriptions to websites and how it works. It is fairly obvious that being a member of SE could save anyone who wasn't an expert THOUSANDS of percent in return for your subscription dollars. But there have been TONS of sites over the years which were great sites, but didn't make it because they couldn't sell enough subscriptions. And on red flag for me is that I don't see an affiliate system set up for SE. For the majority of sites that sell on the internet they generate the majority of their sales through affiliate traffic. In fact, there are a lot more successful affiliates than there are paysites. And that's because in general, traffic is king on the internet, not content.

I forget which one's of you are Henry Blodget fans (despite his personal debacle), but for those who are..........

www.huffingtonpost.com/henry-blodget/murdochs-myspace-is-proba_b_318919.html

or follow Mashable.com
mashable.com/2009/10/12/myspace-traffic-plummets/

or Douglas McIntyre
www.investorplace.com/experts/douglas_mcintyre/articles/twitter-investors-twitter-stock-symbol.html

or put any stock in what Wharton has to say
knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2202

you're babbling. bottom line is whether or not SE can either generate or raise enough capital to clear burn rate for foreseeable future. I say yes.

apt23: Thanks for the kind words. I'm glad you liked the apartment. As for the listing agent's disparaging remarks about SE, you're probably right that they were - at least in part - a friendly dig at me. That particular broker is one of the few industry players who know my background.

CC/30yrs: Doesn't a lot ultimately hinge on SE's ability to break out of the NYC niche and apply the model elsewhere? Not just New Jersey. I'm thinking of London, Moscow, Mumbai, Hong Kong...

Apt23: agree with you absolutely. Don't forget Linden (v. unlucky to not have started closing before drop-dead date). I can't think that the market will absorb all these units at 1000+/sqft pricing or even 800+/sqft pricing.
And it's pretty clear that the educational infrastructure CANNOT support at the current growth rate. Something will give. Anecdotally, not too many "first-time" parents around on the UWS.

Spinnaker1 seems pretty happy on the terrace in his new apt - at what I think is the Harrison

Spinnaker is not at the Harrison, I think he mentioned having to do sig. amount of work.

I'm not sure I agree with you a hundred percent on your police work there, ph41.

"Doesn't a lot ultimately hinge on SE's ability to break out of the NYC niche and apply the model elsewhere? Not just New Jersey. I'm thinking of London, Moscow, Mumbai, Hong Kong..."

Not necessarily. It's like the old joke about the interview with the elderly shmata king who answers the question "What was the secret of your success?" who answers "Sell everything below cost" and the incredulous follow up of "Then how do you make any money?" answered with "VOLUME!!!!"

To break into those markets, SE would incur lots of extra costs, and especially when you talk about different countries there would be not only a HUGE learning curve, but a resistance of locals to cooperate and probably have personnel making trips there or setting up and office, or, or, or....... and also the extra bandwidth costs, while at the same time being much harder to get free publicity by cross promoting with "known friends" and being MUCH harder to convince locals to take out advertisements.

uh oh...i agree.

SE needs to make it work where it already is before expanding. my point is that i think they have an extended period to do so.

West81st - right - I figured out where I went wrong - think I have it now. Will keep it to myself.

good. should do more of that.

cc - don't know why you're alwayw trying to start a fight with me - not falling for it.

Back to ballsy...

A 550K pad for 2 years worth of carrying charges? Who can blame them for not wanting to sell it.

http://www.streeteasy.com/nyc/sale/358414-condo-27-north-moore-street-tribeca-new-york

And another smack upside the head.

http://www.streeteasy.com/nyc/sale/437519-condo-2109-broadway-upper-west-side-new-york

wow spin. you are certainly the king of ballsy. Love the Ansonia nearly 2 million bump up. You think for the extra 2, you can get hot water in your shower in less than 5 minutes? I'll be watching to see where these 2 end up - and their brokers.

Did my post get lost? I believe the potential combo on 13th is a Madie property, and he's been trying to flog it for years at a very high price. The 2m price hike may be due to a similar potential combo on 7th going into contract at under 5m. Now that there's only 1 left, maybe it's worth 2m more? Doubt it myself.

Can anyone explain this one?

220 Madison Avenue PHDE - first listed 7/08 at $3,000,000 - change of brokers came to $2,775,000 in 11/08 - Sold 6/09 for $2,636,750.

Just listed for $3,350,000. (could anyone get divorced that fast? lose jobs that fast?

bump

New vessel sink?

spinnaker - would they even have had time to put it in?

In the 2008 listing, maintenance was $2800. In the new listing it's $3200. Same plans, so not a new combo or anything.

Maybe they've been watching those flipping shows on HGTV and didn't notice they're reruns from 2005.

What's even funnier is that the agent who sold it to them is the one trying to sell it for them now. Now this is where quoting past history from SE while looking at the apartment with the broker could be fun (well, not for the broker).

Buyers were a high-up person in the UN (through 2007) along with girlfriend-from-UN-turned-wife-post-divorce. He became politically active in 2009 back in home country. Look up ACRIS if you care to find names. No other ACRIS transactions from either party (non-LLC, anyways), so probably a change-in-life event rather than RE investor. I doubt one would delude themselves into a quick investment flip on a property that had been sitting on the market for close to a year with only 12% off pre-Lehman ask. Looks like an all-cash purchase, so likely "doesn't care" whether or not it sells. Wouldn't want to bruise ego with a flat price or loss, perhaps?

This actually gives me an idea for another thread "Largest Floorplan With Smallest Kitchen"

You're right about the vessel sink ph41... no time to consult design specialist, architect and have an engineering firm devise a way to make it drain -and the plumber doesn't get back from Southampton until 2 weeks after labor day anyway. Faux paint maybe?

RE Apt23, I also told a selling broker recently that I subscribe to Streeteasy and I think it saved us a lot of time. When I told her that I couldn't get my mind around the pricing of a particular apartment due to the recent comps on Streeteasy, and asked why this particular apartment was priced so much higher than a larger, higher apartments in the building which had sold a few months ago, she really didn't have an answer. But a week later I see on Streeteasy that the price has been lowered. The broker already knew it was overpriced, but now she could tell the buyer that she lost a potential sale because it was so overpriced.

And buyer's brokers do not like to put in a bid lower than 10% below ask. So apartments tend to sit around until the seller sees the light and reduces the ask.

Without a recorded sale in over a year The Sabrina and their team of crack marketeers have upped this stale un-renovated listing by 10%. Now "priced to sell":

http://www.streeteasy.com/nyc/sale/475419-condo-241-w-97th-st-upper-west-side-new-york

The Harrison money tree.

http://www.streeteasy.com/nyc/sale/472419-condo-205-west-76th-street-upper-west-side-new-york

correction the sabrina c5 is reno'd