Asking price... renovations... % increase in value

WAYYYY overpriced.

I feel that you shouldn't pay a premium because the apartment needs to be renovated. You should be paying less since you will need to put serious money into the partment to improve it.

And the aggravation of doing so (unless the aggravation of living with someone else's design choices would be worse for you, of course).

Ok, so I'm not crazy to think the pricing is too high. And this assumes that the NYC docs are correct (no reason to think they wouldn't be).
Any thoughts on how much to offer for the above apartment, or the one below?

I also have seen another apt, great boro neighborhood (again no changes in nabe) - with really, really bad renovations (not just aesthetics - incorrectly and unfinished installation of many elements). It would require significant work to make normal and functional, but is currently livable.

In 2006 it was purchased for $200K. Currently on the market for $350K.

What is that?

For a nice (but not Wolff / subzero) type renovation of a bathroom and / or kitchen what should I assume?

Kitchen - 20K?
Bathroom - 10K?

I fairly recently redid a bath in the suburbs (Nassau) for around $6K or $7K, using Home Depot materials, but labor's cheap out there, and I didn't replace the tub or tub surround tile.

In the city, I'd say more likely $35K for a kitchen and $15K for a bath, but so much is going to depend on what your labor costs are going to be, not what your materials costs are.

Things that are expensive are venting a previously unventilated bathroom, replacing kitchen cabinets wholesale, removing bathroom tile (you might have to pay for dumpster disposal) and moving appliances around.

If you can minimize those things, you'll have an easier time.

ali r.
{downtown broker}

Opinions on offer prices in situations like the ones I sited above?

For instance, would an offer of $220 for the $279 apt be too high / too low to be considered?

In my experience, you can reduce the value of an apartment with improvements. Take, for example something we did 25 years ago with a 8 room apartment on Park Avenue in the 90's where the value, clearly, is the number of bedrooms you have for children who go to private schools in the neighborhood.

After our children left home, as art collectors we wanted to live in a loft.........but we didn't want to move from our building and neighborhood...........so we gutted our apartment and made a 1 bedroom, 1 den 3,400 sq. ft. apartment out of it.

I teased my wife that we were decreasing the value of our apartment at great expense.

We lived for 20 years very happily in this apartment that was often photographed for architectural and art magazines. Everyone who visited loved the apartment.

And then, a few years ago, we put the apartment on the market for sale and it took 2 years to find a buyer because "buyers don't like contemporary apartments" and because "the buyer will have to restore the apartment". Eventually we found the right buyer and sold into a pretty frothy market.

So, the point is that sometimes you can get your money out of upgrades, sometimes you go too far for other reasons and the payoff isn't financial

dca1125 - thanks for the insight with your own experience.

The apts I listed here do not have what anyone here would call renovations or improvements, yet the owners believe that within a few short years their properties have appreciated over 100%. We're talking about kitchens that cannot be used as is, and very shoddy, strange, incomplete, unprofessional "renovations". How does a buyer appropriately come up with bids in a situation like this?

Everyone loves to hate brokers but who sees more properties than they do? If you're working with a good buyer's broker, they may well have an idea of appropriate pricing. Now when you say that kitchens cannot be used as is, it sounds like the walls are opened up & there is no electricity.

As far as ridiculous pricing, not that long ago inflated prices were the norm & people were fighting to pay them. Naturally sellers are loathe to admit those days are over. Possibly how you present your offer may be as important as what that dollar amount may be. If you show recent sales figures & a downward trend in a nonconfrontational, respectful manner, the seller may be willing to entertain your offer - or not.

drdrd -- A buyer's broker would be great, but in these neighborhoods they are unheard of, which was my experience before it was confirmed by many other local buyers and folks on this board. (See the sunnyside up thread). Likely finding comps on my own and presenting the info as you suggested is the way to go.

So in the situations I'm seeing its hard for me to guess what a reasonable offer might be - how much deduction for having to either fix and replace crazy renovations or gut the kitchen / bath? There's electricity in the kitchen, but the kit. is bad and the seller knows this.