Morgan Evans-New York City Real Estate Expert

For the last 5 years buying a new development condominium in New York City was a sure fire way of seeing a great return on your initial investment. If you bought in at the early stages of the initial offering, you waited and as the building went up, so did the prices of the available units. So by the time you actually closed on your apartment your exact same unit would probably sell for 10-20% than what you bought it for. This was one of the big reasons why there are so many new development condominiums in Manhattan.

Now that the piping hot real estate market in New York City has cooled off many of the new developments are struggling to find willing buyers to purchase the new product.

A recent buyer said, "I'm worried about the market falling more, why should I buy now when I could wait and get a better price later?" That's a great question and this is what some of the developers are doing to handle that objection.

They are adding a price protection guarantee. So if a buyer signs today and if the developer drops prices while you are still waiting to close, you will be guaranteed the lowest price other buyers were able to negotiate.

This "me too clause" is not a universal offer for all developments, but for the developers that are employing this guarantee they are hoping to entice some of these nervous new development buyers who are concerned about the direction of the real estate market in New York City.

I think this incentive will help some of these new development condominiums. If I had a first time buyer purchasing one of these new development condominiums with this "me too clause" I would be very interested to see how the attorney's write into the contracts how this clause will actually work.

If you are a first time buyer looking at a new development and want to know which buildings are participating in this new incentive, CLICK HERE and we will email you the new developments that are offering this incentive.

To Look at properties in Manhattan go to www.nycaptinfo.com

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Unlike the rest of the country New York City has just turned into a full scale buyer's market. We were riding a meteoric rise in prices and now we are in the eye of the storm of the financial market crisis. The New York City real estate market and Wall Street have such strong ties that when Wall Street succeeds a lot of that wealth flows into the real estate market. Now that Wall Street is restructuring itself, a lot of prospective buyers are sitting on the sidelines waiting to see what happens.

I just took a new listing with a very motivated seller and am asking for your advice on what you did to sell your listings in this type of market. The apartment is in fantastic condition, it's in a brand new building and has barely been lived in. There are 6 other units available in the same building with the exact same layout, but on different floors. We are priced very competitively, and are trying to set our listing apart other than price with different incentives.

Our seller will pay for your moving costs, they will pay for a year's worth of your groceries, or help buy down your interest rate. We are trying to think outside the box, inside the box, around the box, destroying the box, throwing the box, anything we can do to expose this property and to secure a highly qualified buyer.

What worked best for you to get people in the door?

What incentives work better than others?

We are all ears to get this property sold. Thank you for your feedback.

To look at our listing click here!

A basement storage room sold for $801,000.00 in the renowned Dakota apartment building. The Dakota, located on Central Park West in the Upper West Side, is most well known as the home of John Lennon and still is the current residence of Yoko Ono. The apartments sell for upwards of 10-20 million dollars.

Now this was no ordinary damp tiny storage room. The room was about 800 square feet had 20-foot-high ceilings and two windows. There is a bathroom and electricity wired already into the unit. Despite The Dakota being one of New York City's most expensive and desired buildings there is no common exercise room for the building residents. The new owner of the storage unit was planning on converting the room into a small gymnasium and opening it up to the buildings residents. How altruistic of him!!

Space is at such a premium in New York City that I not really that surprised by this sale. First is the fact that if you can afford a $20 million dollar apartment, an $800,000 storage unit is probably not too much of a stretch in your budget. If you look at the price per square foot it really is not that much in New York City standards. It's just at $1,000 a sq/ft, some condominium buildings have been selling at $3,000+ sq/ft recently.

I live in the Upper West Side and I walk by the Dakota to go to Central Park. It is an extraordinary building. The location is perfect right at 72^nd and Central Park West. The architecture is absolutely eye-catching. You can't help but check out the building. I've never been in any of the apartments in The Dakota, but when I do I will make sure to ask if a basement storage room comes with the unit knowing what one could sell for.

www.nycaptinfo.blogspot.com

About two weeks ago I was reading an article about Donut Plant. Donut Plant is the promise land for the doughnut lover in all of us. Donut Plant has been featured on the Throwdown with Bobby Flay which Donut Plant won, and has gone global opening stores in Tokyo, Seoul and has plans for shops in New Orleans, Toronto, and Washington D.C. The biggest problem with Donut Plant is its proximity to where I live in Manhattan. I live on the Upper West Side and it's located in the Lower East Side. So I can't exactly just stop by and check it out, I have to make a decent size effort to go down there and what happens if I make it down there and the donuts are disappointing. This could make for a disastrous Saturday afternoon.

After a few hours I convinced my girlfriend to make the hike down to the Donut Plant which was exactly easier than I thought it would be. We took the subway and had to walk about 8 blocks, and about 30 minutes later we were there. I had a coconut glazed/coconut filled square shaped donut and she had some sort of chocolate cake donut with chocolate cream injected inside the donut and five dollars ready we were ready to see if the donuts were as all they were cracked up to be from this article. I would say that I was impressed with the donut. It wasn't as much of a life changing experience as some of the people made it out to be in the article I read, but I was very satisfied. The donut had a unique taste and was very fresh and warm. About ten minutes after we started it was all over and we left the small donut shop.

The 8 block walk back to the subway station took us through Chinatown. What's amazing about New York City is that just in the matter of a few blocks you can enter a different world. Walking through the neighborhood you see the food vendors, the ethnic grocery stores, all the signs, billboards, newspapers are in Chinese. I went from eating a donut to watching people buy fresh tofu from a street vendor and walking past restaurants with the upside down ducks hanging in the windows. It's a lively part of town with so much energy running through it.

And then all of a sudden I'm in Little Italy. The neighborhood completely changes 180 degrees and I have a whole new set of cuisines to stare out and set of community to watch. This type of diversity in such close quarters is what makes New York City amazing. My day started out looking to eat a donut, but it turned into a tour of Chinatown and Little Italy.

According to the New York Times, a crack in New York City Real Estate's mighty armor has finally showed its ugly face. On the front page of the New York Times real estate section states, " Even though the average price for a Manhattan apartment, at $1.5 million, is higher than it was a year ago, some New York neighborhoods have already started to feel the downward tug that has wrenched the housing market elsewhere in the nation."

Though this is the first major article stating that a downturn has begun, we have been seeing this for awhile now. Since the credit crisis began about a year ago a lack of buyer confidence has started to grab hold and the once piping hot market began to cool off.

These outer neighborhoods or fringe neighborhoods have showed the first signs of the downturn. Harlem, East Harlem, Midtown West, and Hell's Kitchen, have showed the biggest year over year decreases.

While the rest of the country has been facing a continued real estate downturn New York City has been the shining beacon of hope seeing appreciation that seemed like it would never end. This run up occurred because of a perfect combination of forces, a few including an easy source of credit from banks, a weak US dollar brought in oversea investors buying condominiums at significant discounts, Wall Streeters were buying properties with their huge bonuses, and the psychological impact that prices were never going to stop going up.

A credit crunch has made mortgages harder to obtain, the Wall Street meltdown is in full effect, and buyers are now watching from the sidelines to see what happens in the short term.

As always, buying Real Estate should be a long term investment, so unless you are selling, you will not know the true value of your apartment. For those people who have a strong need for a New York City apartment, you have entered a buyer's market. The tables are turned and now you are in the drivers seat. The opportunity to buy fantastic apartments that were once financially out of reach or sold during the first open house will be ripe for the picking.