Way Overpriced.....

I can easily see 1650 sq ft at least. Width is 30 foot (16+12+ wall allowance) including exterior wall and depth is 50 foot (22+16+12+walls). Add the top left section. Finishes seem very nice in the picture. Can not say whether the price is right. Could be low $4mm.

Agreed--way overpriced. I see no reason why this should trade $700K higher than when it sold a couple of years ago at 3.8M. I'd say possibly $4M (but no higher); more likely high 3s.

Have there been any resales in this building? From a brief look it appears that there were three or four attempted and they were all taken off the market? Or am I mistaken?

Squid, the market today is weaker than it was 2 years ago when this apt sold for $3.8. It will eventually sell for less. Once again, 300_mercer is clueless about pricing. Dude, you've never been even remotely accurate.

Ethan, Post some actual sales when you have been right about price.

If they let it sit on the market endlessly like a smelly turd then yes, it may well trade lower than previous sale. If they get their act together now and price correctly I still say somewhere in the high 3 range is achievable.

And by the way it's already been sitting around since September...

OK, so as I said 2 weeks ago, 8D was way overpriced. Today, the price was reduced $400,000 to $4.1 million and there's more to go. 1 primary reason is that when 8D was sold 2 years ago for $3.85 million, the overall market was in quite a bit better shape that it is today. For this reason alone, it is likely that 8D will end up selling for below the $3.85 million 2016 price. A 2nd reason for this is that this building is not the upper-tier, special building that some initially hoped it would be. Rather, many consider this building to be an eyesore in the neighborhood and the interiors, as mentioned earlier, are quite mediocre. A 3rd factor relates to the livable square footage in 8D. Reality is that it's closer to 1,200 sq ft vs the 1,868 sq ft listed. Livable sq ft is always less that the reported number but this building seems to take it to a new level.

I think reducing to $4.1 million is a mistake strategically. If you're going to drop your price that much you might as well drop it to $3.99 million to bring yourself into a different price category. Especially with sites like streeteasy, you have to look in predetermined price ranges. So in this price range, your choices for minimum had the maximum price are 3.5 million, 4 million and 4.5 million. Therefore, everyone who was looking from 4 million to 4.5 million saw the listing before and now all they see is a huge price drop making the seller look desperate. One of the biggest purposes of a price drop is to get new eyes on it. So in this case you still don't get the people who are looking from 3.5 million to 4 million to see your listing, which is pretty much what you want to be doing. As a result, I think you have a huge price drop Without Really gaining any advantage from it, whereas if they had dropped the price below 4 million it would not have been that much difference money-wise but would probably have made a big difference audience wise.

Price increased $300,000 today following the $400,000 reduction last week. Now we're into the phase of the seller being in denial as relates to the value of his apt. He can't believe that he won't make money on the apt he's owned for 2 years and may even lose money. The broker is also clueless and isn't properly communicating the realities of the market to the seller. Not to seller: You can increase the selling price of the apt another $300,000 or even $3 million but that will have absolutely ZERO affect on the true value of the apt, which, as I've stated in prior notes is around $3-3.5 million. Dream on. You will end up losing money on this apt. Sorry.

Ethan, I always appreciate your posts. This indeed is an interesting situation - clearly an absolutely inept selling agent and an out of touch seller. This is the sort of stupid move that makes listings 'go bad' and turn off buyers. Listings with multiple price-chops are bad enough; listings with price-chops PLUS price increases are lead balloons.

I would be careful calling the broker clueless or inept. For all we know, she may have begged and pleaded with the owner to more realistically price the apt. But, as we all know, it's the owner who is the ultimate decision maker and many owners don't care what their broker thinks. It appears that the current listing broker was the buyer broker for this owner so there exists a prior relationship, for better or worse, with both the owner and with this unit.

Part of the problem with the broker also being the buyer's broker when the unit was purchased is that they may have made "guarantees" about how good a deal the buyer was getting and how much money they would make flipping it. So now it may be hard to convince the seller that they should take a loss.
I do agree, however, that this bouncing around of pricing is almost always a bad idea.

I guess it is also possible that the broker convinced the seller to drop the price $300,000 on the concept of "it will be such a good deal that we may have a bidding war and get more than the ask." If after doing so, offers were coming in the high threes, the owner may have decided that the premise was incorrect, that no matter what the price was people would offer less, and therefore "needed" to raise the price back up if in their mind their "bottom line" was $4.2 million.

There was a study done by psychologists (Northcraft & Neale 1987) that concluded that offering a property at a higher price can make people think its worth more. However, this psychological effect fades if future contradictory evidence is revealed.

Listing was reduced $150,000 yesterday to $4.25 million. As I've been saying for months, though, the selling price will require significant further price reductions, in the many hundreds of thousands. Current denial by the owner is like slow torture. FACT is that at least some people thought this building was going to be a top building when it was being built but reality soon set in that, in many ways, it's quite mediocre inside and out and has developed a reputation as being an "eyesore". And mediocre buildings don't sell for $2,300/sq ft, especially in this market.

The street level is incredibly ugly.