What Glut?
Williamsburg, once plagued with too many condos for too few buyers, appears to be a hot sell again.
Three years ago,
The Edge
This waterfront development sold 100 of its 565 units from spring 2008 to fall 2008. Then Lehman Brothers toppled. In the two years after that, only about 50 sold, says developer Jeff Levine. “There was very little velocity,” he says. Since last year, however, there’s been one transaction after another here—252 apartments. Now, The Edge is 70 percent sold, and “on any given weekend, we have about 150 visitors in our salesroom,” he says.
Two Northside Piers
“We opened the sales office for tower two just when Lehman was tanking,” says Toll Brothers City Living president David Von Spreckelsen. Of 270 apartments, less than a dozen sold that first year. Now, just 60 are left. Von Spreckelsen says he’s done the lion’s share of the deals since January, closing on about twenty units a month, and just signed a contract to sell a $4 million combination apartment—the building’s highest price yet.
80 Metropolitan
“It’s virtually sold out,” reports Doug Steiner of his project, 80 Metropolitan. Only 5 of 123 units are available after a “slow but steady” period of selling—and some highly publicized back-outs by buyers who, when prices fell as much as 15 percent, possibly decided they were overpaying. Deals here finally picked up momentum in the past year, and more than 60 buyers have closed on their properties since September 2010.
Sales began at this condo in the winter of 2009 with the recession in full swing. Corcoran’s Tom Le took over sales a few months later and persuaded the developer to cut the average per-square-foot price from $750 to $650. The move worked: By June 2010, the building was completely sold out (it didn’t hurt that there were only 23 units). “We had to really respond to the market,” Le says, “and fortunately the developer was reasonable.”