Property Grunt

Thursday, September 29, 2005

Blogger Down and Open House reports

The New York Post Article has created a tremendous amount of buzz for Kelly and hopefully this will resolve Kelly's troubles.

An open house APB was recently put outCurbed. I urge everyone who is going to open houses to email curbed at tips@curbed.com with any information they come across. One of the best indicators of traffic is how many names are on the sign in sheet and feel free to ask questions to the broker. As I have stated before in previous entries I feel very uncomfortable being the sole source of data regarding open house status and I welcome as much input as possible.

Below is the entry that Curbed publicized which presents the exact opposite of what I have been stating.

Happy to report that in Forest Hills Queens, your reports of an open house cold front are completely untrue! Recent Sunday open houses at the co-op where I serve on the board had 100+ visitors and resulted in brisk sales….Of all the open houses I’ve been to across the city (besides new construction)- these by far had the most traffic. The building is a popular pre-war co-op, right in the shadow of the new Windsor Tower, where prices are actually over the $1000 per foot mark.

Forest Hills is a great area but from what I have heard bargains are now far and few. I do not doubt this person's words but do a search in the New York Times for Forest Hills and you will see that the prices have spiked up considerably. I am curious which open houses this writer has been to able to attend all the open houses across the city is a tall order in itself.

As for the Windsor, as the writer indicated prices are over $1000 a foot which is right on the money for Manhattan. But not Forest Hills is not Manhattan. I mean for god's sake, the building is on the boulevard of death not Central Park. It’s obvious that the developers are cashing in on irrational exuberance, which is completely justifiable. But it will not last for long. I wonder how this writer will feel once the foreclosures start kicking in.

One thing that I find amusing is that if you go to the architects website you will notice a similarity with his other creations. Basically he just uses the same design for the majority of his buildings. It is actually brilliant on his part since it requires no effort and people think he's a genius since they don't know any better. It reminds me of the Brady Bunch movie where Mike Brady kept presenting the model of his house to every client.