Open houses March 1

very light traffic at the places i went to in chelsea and the village

I went to 2, in the West Village and only 2 other people at both of them.
The prices were still at levels that are not excitable or even realistic. I guess it will take a while for some people to realize that their properties are not that special to demand top dollar.

If the property is unique (in a good way) and rarely available, I could see paying top dollar, but for a cookie cutter apartment, come on.

We had decided to take the Sunday from looking downtown, but then couldn't control ourselves when we were meeting friends for brunch uptown and decided to take a look on the upper west/upper east as we haven't really looked there in a long time. We looked at a few places uptown (pretty prime locations - not too far east on the Upper East and not above 86th street) and were surprised at how much better the prices are in the west/east 70's and 80's. We could actually afford the kind of places we would want to live at even the asking prices, and I assume that pricing remains flexible below asking price levels. Prices just aren't reducing the same way downtown by comparison. So we will continue to wait...or decide it is time to live uptown. It is certainly cleaner and greener than where I currently live downtown.

decent traffic at my starter open house coop sale in the West Village (three unique visitors, one a warm lead and one a hot one) and nobody at all at my cheapie rental in FiDi -- a No-Fee doorman studio for $1,650, but no one seems to want it.

I guess renters don't want to be bothered to move.

ali r.
{downtown broker}

I went to several in the Village/WV area. There were people at all of them. However, I have come to believe that open house attendance is no longer an indicator of anything. My feeling is that everyone is just looking in the event that they see a drastic price drop later that might lead them to swoop in. Given the pile-up of bad economic news over the past couple of weeks combined with the deflating rental market, I can't see anybody putting money down right now unless they feel they absolutely need to (and I'm not sure why anyone would feel that way).

Some traffic upper east, almost none in mid-town east, kips bay, murray hill (looking at pre-wars). I totally agree with spqsydney. We plan on waiting awhile anyway, but I was seeing things in these neighborhoods for $1-1.3M that would have been $1.4-1.8M in our preferred downtown neighborhoods.