The Appraisal: Standing Out Among Post-Holiday Real Estate Listings
The listing for this Gramercy Park apartment noted that it had no views. Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times
Between in-laws and layovers, big meals and fat credit card statements, few people want to go shopping for a home during the holidays. So every year, right around New Year’s, the New York City real estate market receives a little jolt as listings that stood primping on the sidelines through December burst onto the scene, shoving their best face forward.
The listings Web site StreetEasy, for example, saw a daily average of 56 new listings in December, but 125 new listings on Thursday alone. With so many properties, some fresh and some resurfacing after a holiday hiatus, pouring onto the market at once, it provides the perfect opportunity to highlight a few standouts. Not the apartments, but the advertising.
Real estate brokers have just a few sentences and a couple of pictures to grab the attention of buyers scouring the Internet for their dream home, or at least a nice enough place in which they can fit all their furniture. Some agents use verbal flourishes to distinguish themselves; others are enthusiastic about the caps-lock button. But always, the goal is to do the best with what you have.
“A listing is like an invitation to a holiday party,” said Jessica Buchman, a senior vice president at the Corcoran Group. "You're going to highlight what's going to be wonderful, and maybe skip some details.”
Most Straightforward
“Note: This apartment needs everything and has no views,” read the listing for a one-bedroom at 39 Gramercy Park North. “Feel free to bring your architect and window treatment designer along.”
The brokers, Jesse Shafer and Greg McHale of the Corcoran Group, felt that the best way to avoid a parade of buyers walking in and then scooting right back out was to start with the positive, include the negative and appeal to buyers through their pocketbooks.
“The appliances may have been updated, but they’re almost as old as I am at this point,” Mr. Shafer said.
But the apartment does have its virtues, he added. It is a 700-square-foot one-bedroom in a doorman building that comes with a key to Gramercy Park — a private, gated garden in the middle of Manhattan. And at $450,000, it is by far one of the least expensive of its profile.
Most Peculiar Detail
The listing for a $3.95 million co-op pointed out that there was an LCD TV mounted on a bathroom wall; a Sutton Place listing said all the closets were equipped with new doors; and a studio on the Upper West Side celebrated the presence of an original clothes hamper.
But the winner in this category goes to what appears to be the bud of an emerging little trend: name-dropping the brand of the toilet.
Several new listings last week made special note of this feature — a Kohler here, a Toto there — and a search of real estate listings in The New York Times last week turned up several dozen mentions of that credential. The most expensive listing available last week to point out the brand of toilet was for a West Village town house, with an asking price of $12.5 million.
“Actually, it has become the Sub-Zero of the toilet world," Leonard Steinberg, managing director of Douglas Elliman, said of the Toto brand.
According to the Web site for Toto plumbing products, the Neorest 600 model comes with a built-in air-purifying system, a lid that opens and closes automatically, and an adjustable water temperature feature. There is also a manual override function.
Most Beloved Adjective
“A rare opportunity,” cooed the listing for an Upper East Side two-bedroom.
“A rare find” was a two-bedroom on Irving Place.
And “another rare jewel” was a town house in Greenwich Village.
As of last week, there were nearly 400 real estate listings on The Times’s Web site that described some feature of the listing as “rare.”
Second Most Beloved Adjective
Zen.
Most Unfortunate Staging
A naked mattress in a bare bedroom does not exactly scream “Buy me!” Neither does the dirty Tupperware in the kitchen sink, nor the mysterious tape on the floor. But they were all featured in the listing pictures for a one-bedroom condominium in Rego Park, Queens, which appeared to have been photographed on a cellphone camera.
And is that a bottle of Head and Shoulders on the bathtub ledge?
Asking price: $229,000.
Most Tortured Uses of the Word ‘Loft’
“Exceeds Lofty Expectations,” proclaimed the write-up of a one-bedroom at the Court Street Lofts in Brooklyn, wearing the pun proudly draped in bold capital letters. That apartment is listed for $525,000.
Another listing employed creativity of a very different sort:
“LOFT-like 1BR!” it said of an apartment at 106 Suffolk Street, a co-op building that others would describe as a former tenement.
Best Caveat
Many listings come with some sort of condition. “No pets,” for example, “no guarantors” or “no pied-à-terres” are standard fare.
But last week, a studio on East Ninth Street, right in the heart of New York University stamping grounds, barred what is apparently the neighborhood’s biggest scourge.
“Sorry,” the listing said. “No undergrads.”
Copyright © 2013 The New York Times Company. Reprinted with Permission. Marilynn K Yee/The New York Times.