Auction at Solaria, Riverdale

i own an apartment there. what would you like to know?

What % of units has been sold at original or disconed prices? Is the condo board still controlled by the developer? Are common areas well maintained? Is it owner occupied or rentals? When was it initially occupied? Any other information is greatly appreciated.

common areas are well maintained, look up the prices at streeteasy.

From what I know, only 10 of 64 units have sold.

the 10 that show up as sold sold at list. there haven't been any sales in a year, according to SE, but i didn't look at ACRIS.

What's Bronx for "bankrupt"?

I drive by regularly and it looks like a beautiful apartment...at the right price. Good luck!

Thank you for your input. The units that sold appear to have sold for an average of about $700/sft. The opennig bid listed in the web site is about 1/2 that price. is $500/sft a fair bid?

Certainly not an opening bid.

Don't be in a rush.

Obviously, impossible to say what's a fair bid. But I'm inclined to a $400 figure. This is the Bronx - even if Riverdale. It's not Manhattan.

Whatever you do, don't get into a bidding war!

Remember there will always be another subway coming down the tube - even if not in this building.

bystander, if the opening bids are at 350/psf why don't you offer that and see where that takes you? An auction is a process by which you and everybody else can discover what the market value of the auctioned assets really is. Even the developer said that. This is a market, it doesn't make any sense to wonder what is fair. $700/psf wasn't fair or unfair 2 yrs. ago at the height of the bubble, it was merely a price some people were willing to pay to live at the Solaria. They weren't enough of them and the project failed. End of story. Fair, my god!

If only 10-20 out 64 sold, bid at 350 :-)

700 for a place that takes an hour to get to mid-town. Its a 20 mins walk to the red station at 237 then good 30 mins to 96th. Ouch.

if I paid 350 psft here I would still not feel good about it. Good luck

I got the message about the price. I believe one of the units is rented for $4000. What should the selling price be for that unit?

Tromp...do you have any info on riverwalk on ri

Hi Nina, I've already posted everything I know about Riverwalk on several threads. I don't have insider info, 'cause I've never lived there, or in RI for that matter. I know there were about 8 building in the original plan and only 5 got built, but that's not unusual. One of them was converted to rentals after everything soured. The other one, 415 Main St., has been visited by the Price Chopper and now seems to be starting to close on a few units. All the rest are already sold out, and since they were sold mainly to institutions (NYU, Memorial Sloan-Kettering, Weil-Cornell, etc.) there haven't been many resales. The ones that have occurred have been between 18% to 25% below the 2006/07 sale prices.

Thank you for your info I dont know why I thought u lived there based n your prior posts...Im looking into 415 main but not sure if they are going to mark it down some more now its about 23% offf peak pricing but thankx for you posts they were helpful

The "red station"??? Eek. That's Iowa talk. You mean the one train.

Agree on "red station". But the one train? You mean the Seventh Avenue IRT local.

Touche, modern. Funny.

At $350/sft Riverdale is compatitive with Brookly or NJ, CT and still a bit shorter commute to midtown. With a growing family (2 kids) loking for a 3 bed apartment it appears an attractive alternative. Is the IRT the only way to get into manhattan?

i don't know where this physically is. but there is also at least one metro north stop in Riverdale, i believe, which would get you to the east side.

i know families who love the area. i looked in 1996. back then the services just weren't abundant enough for my tastes.

be careful, good luck.

Any predictions as to other significant new developments that will go to auction within the next 12 months?

Looking at auctions of luxury apartments in other cities, the sale prices at auctions are at 35-45% of initial asking prices. Typically not all available apartments sell and are re-listed for sale at the reduced prices. Since Manhattan prices have not fallen 35% yet, I would not expect any auctions for another year.

I meant the red line 1 station at 237th street.

Well done, Modern. I know when I've been bested. ;-)

darkbird, maybe you haven't been in the city for that long and if so it's ok, you can get a pass.

But referring to the trains by their color coding is verboten for a New Yorker. It is a dead giveaway that you come from somewhere else, and are an outsider.

As Modern points out, the most native cachet comes from referring to the various lines by their original names, ie the IRT, the BMT, the "Canarsie line," etc.

But I find that fewer and fewer people know these names, alas.

I don't see how they get even $350/sf. From Google Maps, it looks like a 15-minute walk just to the Subway station, 20 minutes to the Metro North station. This is a terrible location for commuters, even if it's a nice livable neighborhood.

You can take a bus from NJ if you work in Midtown, but the roads and bridges are hell during morning rush hour from Northern Manhattan on down. It's at least an hour to Manhattan and longer to the Financial District, depending where, specifically, you work. That means they lose pretty much all commuters, and I don't see how you can sell at $350/sf with no commute less than an hour.

Sorry to go offtopic. To return to the subject, I think you may be too swayed, bystander, by the "original listing prices" the developer is giving for Solaria. These prices are total unmitigated BS. Nobody ever bought a one bed in Riverdale for three quarters of a million.

So don't tell yourself, Bystander, that you are getting one of these babies at "half off." At $350k you'll be buying close to peak-market pricing.

As I understand it, one of the problems with the building is that it doesn't have a garage in it. I think they may, however, have made some arrangements with a nearby building. I'm guessing, though, that this is something you'll want to know about - assuming you'll have a car.

bystander, the cmbs market is much closer to a tipping point now. nyc entered the decline later, but much closer to a possible major stress point. so i wouldn't be so quick to say that we won't necessarily see manhattan auctions for a year.

I visited the building and found that storage bin is seperate buy. parking is 275 a month and have to pay 5% of bidding price to auction. The maintenance itself is high and none knows what the tax would be after 13 yrs so the price is not as low as it seems.

Riverdale has express bus service to east and west midtown (and possibly downtown as well I just don't know) as well as metro north (2 stops) and the IRT ("down the hill" as they say, in other words in the real Bronx but otherwise convenient). It is very convenient for people who want a semi-suburban to outright burby feel without too long of a daily schlepp (most people have cars and go to Westchester for services). The elementary school is supposed to be really good but there are more challenges at the middle and high school levels. Ssome of the most elite private schools are located in Riverdale as well if you can afford paying for 4 to 12 extra years of private college and there are also some good Catholic alternatives that are cheaper for those who are comfortable with Catholic education.
Historically, aside from the very wealthy areas that were predictably WASP or near-WASP (the Kennedy's lived there for a time), Riverdale was an amenable mixture of not very religous Jews and not very religious Irish Catholics. Big on bars and bagels but very much in everyone getting along mode.
More recently, there has been more of an orthodox Jewish population moving in...not sure what direct impact if any that has had on the social fabric aside from providing another educational option.

I was raised with the original subway line names and continue to use them sometimes, often the people I'm speaking to think I'm talking about the Paris Metro or something. But I've noted the MTA is attempting to bring some of them back into usage...there are actual signs on trains designating the line as Sea Beach (N), West End (B), Brighton (D) and other vintage designations.

graffiti - we call our lines by color in Boston. The red line is my favorite.
The commute sounds cumbersome, but with prices tripple on the UWS or UES as an outsider I am considering all options. NJ may be a better choice with about the same commute time to midtown. Having a bit of grass is also apealing.

But then you would be living in New Jersey! By the way, Riverdale has many single family homes in addition to apartments as well as several large parks. I'm hardly shilling for this 'hood (although I did consider living at the southern tip) but I think its a great value for a lot of people that doesn't make it into the conversation often enough.

“But then you would be living in New Jersey!”. Why are New Yorkers so snobby? They even talk funny.

Isn't more practical to refer to the color of the subway? I am sure most people from the UWS are not able to tell all numbers of the green line or the yellow line. However they have a general sense where they go, based on their colors. Sorry, off-topic.

It might be more practical, Pyxis, but it's not allowed. I moved to the city 20 years ago from a land far away (Texas), and I was told that one day, after I had lived here for 5 or 10 years, I would be able to call myself a New Yorker, and I would know that such things are not done.

And now I have been here for 20 years, and I have an official copy of the rule book, and sure enough, it's in there -- you can't refer to the subway lines by color. ;-)

As for New Jersey, bystander, I unfortunately work in Hoboken. Live in New York; work in NJ, it's a reverse commute. And I can tell you that people in New Jersey really are different. It's like Kansas only they dress a little better. (not much but a little)

There are many differences but I will just tell you a few. One: they don't know how to use public facilities like trains or sidewalks. When they come off the PATH train they all rush out onto the sidewalk in a crowd and they won't leave any room for anyone to walk in the opposite direction. It's like they're cattle or something, it's really awful.

Here's another thing: they're bad drivers. They have a reputation for being bad drivers but it's not just a myth, it's true. They absolutely won't stop for pedestrians or god forbid actually yield to one in a crosswalk -- they have never heard of the concept. They don't stay in their lanes and they don't signal when they turn -- they're very sloppy.

People say oh, Hoboken is quaint and just like Brooklyn used to be -- it's not true. It's a car town. Every place in NJ is a car town. Everybody has a car and everybody has a car mentality, even though some of the waterfront towns have attached houses and narrow streets.

The bottom line is, there's not enough population density or enough of an urban history to create any kind of sophistication there. Brooklyn is like Paris compared to New Jersey. There are grown-ups in Brooklyn, who have a sense of the world and their place in it, who can participate in the culture and have an economic life and a personal life -- all at the same time! Imagine that.

There are not people like that in New Jersey. They have some nice decent people there, but they watch a lot of TV and they live in their cars and they don't know what's going on in the theater or in books, and they rarely travel.

Like I said, it's like Kansas, only the people dress a little better (but not much).

I've been pushing for a $20 tax on all NJ cars enetering NYC. You are correct that they are horrible drivers.

http://www.gmacinsurance.com/SafeDriving/2008/PressRelease.asp

33 Million Licensed Americans May be Unfit for Roads, According to Fourth Annual GMAC Insurance National Drivers Test
Most Knowledgeable Drivers in Kansas, Least Knowledgeable in New Jersey

I wonder how does this Solaria auction compare, in terms of it maybe being a sincere, realistic effort to get price discovery and move the inventory, to the useless waste of time currently happening at "Bid On the City". Since it's inception it has listed troves of overpriced junk (not their fault, rather that of the delusional sellers) but the last 2 auctions almost everything listed failed to sell. Amazing.

An older condo in riverdale recently sold for 700/sf. At least with an auction you can figure out what you want to pay. You're not buying a widget. it's not manhattan but you'd know that by looking at the sf.

oh I like that Modern, thanks.

Graffiti: Now that NJ elected a republican governor, they%u2019ll be driving big SUVs with gun racks on the back. It will feel like being back home in Texas. I can understand needing a rule book when moving to civilization.

bystander, have you considered queens? there are some nice family neighborhoods with lots of services and options, and prices that are quite reasonable compared to new york. and the commute to midtown's not bad.

sorry, compared to manhattan. my bad, as they say in LA.

need area with good private schools. Don't think queens or brroklyn have any.

Are you serious, bystander? A few good private schools in Bk (hard to get into) and some great public schools in Queens.

brooklyn does. fieldston lower school is very different than ethical culture fieldston. not that there's anything wrong with that. the hill schools are not easy admission schools.

Fieldstone is on the UWS and in the Bronx. Don't know much about the hill schools.

the hill schools are fieldston, horace mann and riverdale country. most kids who go to fieldston upper (in the bronx) start at ECS on the UWS. fieldston lower in the Bronx has very different feel than ECS. of the three hill schools, RCS is considered the "easiest" to get into, but none of the three are easy entrance.

brooklyn has packer collegiate, brooklyn friends, polyprep, st. ann's, berkeley carroll, those are the better known schools. and the subway system out of brooklyn makes it easier to get to manhattan schools if that is what you choose.

10023 is right, queens has some great public schools. if schools are an issue, i wouldn't buy in riverdale until your children have been accepted, if you don't want them doing the reverse commute to manhattan.

I believe buying in Riverdale is a good move, the commute on the #1 line, as us Tru-Yorkers refer to them is about 45 minutes on the local from 230th Street station to Times Square.....Express busses run well and service all parts of city and that is about a 45 minute ride seasonally and 1 hour during gridlock times....As far as Metro-North (commuter trains) for the uninformed, has two of three Riverdale stations nearby...they are Spyuten Duyvil and Marble Hill (down the hill, but accessible in less than five minutes by car, ten minutes on city bus)....Solaria is a better buy than folks realize and Riverdale definitely serves the need of the surburban feel....its a good energy, positive living place...Westchester is about 15 minutes away....City Island 30 minutes....New Rochelle....40 minutes

Solariverdale makes very good points about the high maintenance, unknown future taxes, parking and paying extra for storage. The 5% auction fee is a chunk of change but to be expected.

When we visited, the building was offering a free Commuter Shuttle to to Spuyten Duyvil and various Manhattan destinations including the 2 & 3 trains at 96th & B'way at peak commute hours. It didn't help us since we work in Manhattan at off peak times but it could he good for others.

Riverdale is not even considered the Bronx by those who live in the Bronx... Whisper (even though it is) The Kennedy's lived in the Riverdale and the average Home (not apartment) goes for $600.00 . The houses closest to the Hudson are mansions. Anyway that said...

The apartments in this building are absurdly over priced and this projects failure will only drive prices down in the area even more. Mr. Korff and his lead guys on this project Luk Sun Wong as well as his main guy Christopher Zedano have been clearly delusional and arrogant as to what this building should have been. They tried to back door the neighborhood which resulted in legal action halting this project upwards of four years. They lost tens of Millions before they even got out of the gate. It's my understanding that the some of the contractors are holding their breath for payment. If a mortgage company approves another project with any of their names attached to it I would be shocked. In pictures the units look great but in person... Look close before you buy. It all looks slapped together. Over the four years in construction they have had a changeover of installers that is mind boggling. No one would take responsibility to correct anything I was told by one resident. The situation is really sad. How do you fit 60 plus appartments in a twenty story building with an 80 square foot print and it's not even square... Leaving the apartments on angles. Everything is imported and outdated so good luck finding materials to do repairs. Good luck to those still looking at this as a good investment. There isn't even a garage in the building. They keep saying there is available parking but it is next door in an already full garage in another building owned by Mr. Korff which means you will be paying him to park from now until the end of time. I looked hard at this and wouldn't touch this deal with a 50' pole. Auction or no auction... I wouldn't touch it... Of course that is my opinion only for me... You do your own research and make up your own mind. Make sure you see the actual unit you intend to buy.