Manhattan Financial District apartments get deepest price cuts

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Financial District’s property prices are down; a 1,500 sq ft, two-bedroom condo, listed in June ’06 at $2.55m, is now being offered at $1.85m.

Prices were whittled at 18 of the building’s apartments in the first quarter. That number now stands at 27.

The dwellings are attached to a restaurant, party and concert space. Amenities include a wine vault, a movie screening room with velvet recliners, a barber shop and free muffins and croissants delivered daily to residents’ doors.

A 1,500 sq ft, two-bedroom condo, listed in June 2006 at $2.55m, is now being advertised for $1.85m.

Steven Witkoff, co-developer of the project, didn’t return calls for comment.

“That area was less about infrastructure and was more like, ‘Don’t you want to live in this cool building because it has a cool name?’” said Kathy Braddock, a partner at real estate consultant Braddock & Purcell.

At 15 Broad Street, in a building known as Downtown by Philippe Starck, Jacky Teplitzky, broker and managing director at Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate, gave up a listing after deciding that she couldn’t sell the apartment.

“I’m good at what I do, but I’m not a magician,” Teplitzky said in an interview. “There were no showings, no nothing. Inventory was mounting and mounting and mounting.”

There are 45 apartments for sale in the building, according to Streeteasy.

Kelly MacDonell, 34, an executive at Aeropostale Inc, and Todd Watkins, 40, considered moving from the Upper West Side to the Financial District.

They abandoned plans to buy in a new building on the Upper East Side when the builder failed to finish it on time.

On a Sunday tour of open houses in early April, the couple’s concerns about a “dead at night” neighbourhood vanished as they passed tourists snapping photos of the New York Stock Exchange and sipping beer at the outdoor cafes of Stone Street.

They toured a two-room, 15th-floor condo at the Cocoa Exchange, on the market since October and discounted 10 percent to $439,000. They liked that the building was finished and occupied. They didn’t like the apartment’s size — 370 square feet — and decided not to buy.

“I’m pretty brutal in my offers, anyway,” Watkins said.

The owner took the unit off the market five days later even after accepting a bid in the “low fours”, Diamonde said, adding: “He was tired of people low-balling.”

This article is courtesy of Bloomberg.

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