It's a great looking apartment and I wanted to make an offer, but felt it was substantially overpriced based on other research in the building. I was under time pressure (lease ending in August) and I actually spent $600 and had it appraised (by a well qualified firm) so I didn't have to guess. It appraised at approx. $1.1 million -- $95,000 less -- based on 5 comparables. This included data from... [more]
It's a great looking apartment and I wanted to make an offer, but felt it was substantially overpriced based on other research in the building. I was under time pressure (lease ending in August) and I actually spent $600 and had it appraised (by a well qualified firm) so I didn't have to guess.
It appraised at approx. $1.1 million -- $95,000 less -- based on 5 comparables. This included data from the same building, 12D and 10JK (which you can find yourself on StreetEasy). And even though I ended up offering above $1.1 (lease pressure and buyer's fatigue) it turns out the seller couldn't actually do a deal because he didn't know about the 7/1/12 flip tax increase in his building until the brokers told him (this could bite any buyer like me in the butt later -- 2.25% of gross price is what you will be looking at!) or how much Transfer Tax he'd have to pay (1.825%). Surprising.
Anyway, the "discovery" of these charges, likely coupled with the huge amount of renovatiosn he just did, caused Seller's family to reconsider whether to sell and the brokers told me they are pulling it off market. Who knows. If they do, he will probably be able to get $1,195 IMHO in 3 years or so if we continue climbing. If not, I'm just sharing my experience that the guy is priced about $100k above what I had it appraised for.
PS - the appraisal company, Vanderbilt, did this for me in one day. They are fantastic. If as a buyer you need to do what I did as a sanity check, they are great. The more data a buyer has, the better.
Happy hunting!
[less]
