Archive for May 21st, 2009
Continue Reading May 21st, 2009
If these walls could talk …
A new high-end condo building on Eleventh Avenue in Manhattan’s West Chelsea section has a history that says a lot about the changes in New York City over the decades. It was once the headquarters of “the Mint Products Company, manufacturer of mint confections,” employing “125 hands,” according to an article in The New York Times that appeared in 1916. That year was the year the company moved out to Long Island City. Mint Products Company made Life Savers candy, which had been invented in 1912. (**See below for more fun trivia.)
The next time the building appeared on the pop-culture radar screen was around the 1980s, when it became the home of a notorious gay leather bar called The Spike. A gay-oriented tourist guide enthused about The Spike: “Whip out those uniforms, don your cop cap and get to where the action is, baby! Looking to score? Well, look no further.”
A pair of p.r. specialists, Gianfranco Chicco and Robert Chandler, bought the building at 120 Eleventh Avenue in 2000 with the intent of turning it into the headquarters of their healthcare public relations firm, Chandler Chicco Agency. But fate had other plans for the structure. West Chelsea was starting to become more family-friendly, with the Chelsea Piers sports complext nearby and restaurants sprouting up. Chicco and Chandler took the hint and formed a company, Puisssance Enterprises, to develop the building into luxury condos: three lofts ($4 million to $6 million each) and a pair of triplex penthouses ($17 million apiece). They’re on sale now.
**Life Savers trivia. According to Wikipedia, the candy was invented in 1912 by the father of the poet Hart Crane. The Life Saver name was chosen because the ring shape resembled that of life preservers, which were much on people’s minds because of the sinking of the Titanic that year.
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Continue Reading May 21st, 2009
Buyers looking to purchase foreclosures should still have plenty of opportunities. Only 30% of bank-owned properties are listed on the multiple listing services, says Rick Sharga, senior vice president at foreclosure listing firm RealtyTrac. He figures banks still own as many as 500,000 properties that they want to sell but haven’t put on the market.
A home many not be listed because the bank is wrestling with title, repair or owner right of redemption issues. (Several states such as Michigan and Wisconsin give the previous owners the chance to buy back a home that’s been foreclosed on). Banks may also be holding houses off the market because selling them now would lower prices even further. Foreclosures typically sell at a 31% discount to similar homes whose owners aren’t in distress. Listing all those homes now, Sharga says, “would have a devastating impact on inventory and pricing.”
RealtyTrac and Trulia.com came out with a survey this week that looked at consumer willingness to buy foreclosed properties. Some 55 percent of U.S. adults indicated that they are at least somewhat likely to consider purchasing a foreclosed home in the future, compared to the 47 percent who indicated the same in November 2008.
“Foreclosures are the heart of the real estate crisis and the key to the recovery,” says Pete Flint, co-founder and CEO of Trulia. All home sellers have to compete with the bank-owned properties on the market. As a result, “homeowners are absolutely pricing to sell,” Flint says. “Nationally, one quarter of all homes have cut their listing price at lease once in the past year.”
While interest in buying foreclosed homes has increased, the study also found growing concerns about purchasing bank-owned properties. Of those surveyed, 85 percent said there were negative aspects to buying foreclosures, up from 80% who said that in November. Among the top concerns, 71 percent cite hidden costs, 46 percent believe the process is risky and 31 percent are concerned that the home will lose value.
RealtyTrac’s Sharga says the two most common mistakes foreclosure buyers make is that they over value the property or underestimate the cost of repairs. He said fear of prices falling further shouldn’t be as big a concern if you’re buying a place to live for the next ten years or so. “An 8% decline won’t make a difference over the course of the cycle,” he said.
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Continue Reading May 21st, 2009
No market has gone unscathed in this severely crippled economic environment, but some areas are feeling less pain than others are, as evidenced by a recent transaction that just closed in Southern California’s Inland Empire region. A 263,700-square-foot segment of the 539,270-square-foot Crossroads Marketplace in Chino Hills, Calif., was just snapped up at a 5.87 percent cap rate by SKT Investments for $79 million, including the assumption of an existing $63 million CMBS loan on the power center.
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