Chelsea Enclave Thoughts?

First off it's a land lease. Way too overpriced to never truly own your apartment. And they have less than 10 units in contract. It will either be chopped like crazy or go to auction.

great building, great developer (Brodsky), great contractor (Bovis). Setting is unique. Developer is one of the deepest pockets in NYC and it wont auction or price chop "like crazy." Yes, it's on land lease, but lease is 90+ years and there is no ground rent as developer has paid all up front. Can't really opine on whther it's over-priced. Beware of knee-jerk responses like jasonkyles that contain wildly inaccurate information or predictions.

Overpriced....way overpriced esp cause its a land lease...

It's multi-layered. The Seminary turned the 9th Avenue end of its land into a condo with four units: (1) the Seminary unit, (2) the Retail unit, (3) the Garage unit, and (4) the Residential Condop unit. The Seminary owns all four units. The Seminary has leased the three non-Seminary units to Brodsky until 2107. The leasehold estate in the Residential Condop unit will be sold by Brodsky to the co-op corporation.

So, just the usual condop structure. The details of the lease payment(s) aren't specified in the Memorandums of Leases filed with the city, but will appear in the co-op's Offering Plan.

Sorry, should've said "So, just the usual condop structure, except that the co-op leases rather owns the condo unit."

i think that if this had broken ground two years earlier it would have done quite well. now there just seems to be so much of this stuff available, why bother with the risk? many of these apartments are family sized, and it doesn't seem like that kind of a location to me.

in terms of price, it only takes one person to buy one highly priced unit. here you need quite a few. can it do OK? maybe, but even if it were an easy reach in terms of price i'd choose something else.

i don't see the condop issue being that important, unless the lease payment provisions are worse than i'd suspect.

I think it is way overpriced for the neighborhood. As a buyer I won't even consider landlease and I think there are others that feel the same. Consider when you sale to people who want to live in that neighborhood, you will be competing with many options. Compare the 1880 sq ft PHE - wth terrace with having a full 4550 sq ft townhouse in the neighborhood for approx same price and less taxes.

http://www.streeteasy.com/nyc/sale/443889-townhouse-438-west-20th-street-chelsea-new-york

Thanks everyone for the insight.

yeah i hardly feel my opinion is knee jerk. i've been following this building since before the office opened. the units have already had a decent price chop and are certainly going to have another round. the building is supposed to start closings in december. no matter how deep their pockets are they need to sell. this isn't like one of the rentals this developer usually does where money is guaranteed. and as i said they have less than 10 units in contract. that is direct from the sales office. give them a call.
i actually kind of like the building even though it looks like a dorm from the outside but the pricing was off from day one. and it still is. there is no denying that or they would have more units in contract. they certainly advertise everywhere including here.
i don't feel badly for developers who refuse to correctly price in this market. i apologize if my post didn't use the word great over and over again describing this building.

Thank you for all of the opinions!! So the land of this building will have to be bought from the seminary on 2107? 100 years form now like in london? and then the homeowners ned to pay for that? They did not even mention when I went to see the units that are in the market at the moment. what about the taxes how will this affect?

Has anyone looked at the lease terms in detail? Does the co-op have an option to renew? If the building reverts to the seminary 97 years from now, an apartment at Chelsea Enclave is a depreciating asset. And what kind of financial shape is the Episcopalian church in?

From the NY Times: "Stuart M. Saft, a Manhattan co-op and condominium lawyer, says a few co-op buildings are built on land that the co-op leases rather than owns... The purchaser might be at great risk in buying the apartment unless the co-op corporation has an option to extend the ground lease or to purchase the land. If the corporation has no such option, the shareholders will revert to being rental tenants and will no longer have any equity in their apartments."

http://www.perryroth.com/blog/2009/02/avoid-land-lease-co-ops.htm