The Locale: Greenpoint Condo Auction

I already feel bad for anyone who would end up buying there as they’ll need to get ready to make a truckload of lemonade!

The news from “deeabi” come as no surprise. Since the darned real estate bubble reached its inflated highest, several developers started an ungodly trend. Buyers seemed to flock endlessly no matter the rising prices, more were putting themselves in debt to buy condos all over Brooklyn, as prices in Manhattan became outright prohibitive. So the trend became: “build it fast and cheap, so that it can be sold in a flash to take advantage of the overinflated prices!”
Well, since those buildings didn’t need to stand the test of time, nor had to last more than 2-3 years before the crappy construction quality of a new development would start showing its ugly face, the result now is that those developers who were cutting corners when building a new condo and are still stuck with it, are now willing to try anything to offload the lemon they could not manage to scam people with!
How’s that for well deserved karma!?

I am staying away from liabilities, I have to earn my money and is not my habit to flush them down the drain. So if anyone is still considering properties such as this, please do your homework before sinking your assets in what may end up being a nightmare and an endless source of problems…

I really hate to see anyone become the recipient of a lemon, but even more I’d hate to see crooks fulfilling their plans.

PS: In no way should this post be considered an attempt to attack directly anyone, it’s just a loud call for people to wake up. The prices are definitely not worth what you would be buying today, nor they are in tune with our currently sad economic state. The skyrocketed prices have not come down a bit (mind you, a 20K cut on a property overpriced by over a quarter Million or more, is really a joke!) and are in no way realistic in today’s market. There is no dot-com booming, the financial top guns are borrowing money from us, the taxpayers, leading industries who once were thought to be too big to fail or die, did just that!

The amount of people qualifying for loans precipitated; loans themselves are harder to get and interest rates rose since “bubble-times”, as banks and financial institution alike now face harder times due to the recent event that managed to knock US economy flat on the floor; the amount of lay-offs and companies that are going out of business gets larger at an alarming pace; we keep borrowing from foreign countries while large businesses are outsourcing even more jobs to cut costs (and there is still no law to put a cap on this unhealthy practice); as a consequence the national unemployment percentage is constantly increasing, the cost of life is climbing faster than people’s paychecks and revenues can accommodate for (this applies to those who still have a revenue, that is); the US is quickly becoming a weaker and loosing its “super power” status to fast growing global powers such as China, Russia and Europe…

So where will all these US buyers that can afford a half Million-plus 900 sqft. condo, or a multimillion townhouse be? There will not be nearly enough to satisfy the enormous amount of sub-par real-estate properties that have been developed in the past few years and are still being offered today at “falsely discounted” prices.

Looks to me that real estate greed is still stronger than reality! So in all fairness nobody should consider buying unless developers selling new or renovated buildings, will finally start offering properties at more realistic and reasonable prices, as well as including proper insurance over building defects for at least 10 years!

May you all find the deal you were looking for, but please do yourself and everyone else a favor… that’s right, also “everyone else”, because if you buy a lemon those who sold it to you will believe they can get away with it (since they actually did at your expenses) and will continue scamming the next buyer who’s lined up right after you!

So please, keep your eyes and ears wide open and always shop with your head, not with your heart.

The retaining wall outside is starting to warp due to water damage from inadequate construction and drainage. A new building should not have that type of wear so quickly. The roof terrace has large cracks in the concrete tiles. The building is sold as is, and there will need major immediate repairs needed and that is just going to significantly raise the common charges. Also, the duplexes are not really usable space. It is a NYC Department of Buildings violation to use the cellar in the “duplexed” units as living space so there is really only have a small sleeping and living area by the kitchen. I personally would not want my sleeping space to be in the kitchen.

Environmental Factors to consider

http://susty.com/image/greenpoint-oil-spill-map-illustraion-newtown-creek-toxic-water-pollution-polluted-greenpoint-brooklyn-new-york-riverkeeper-image.jpg

http://assets.nydailynews.com/img/2008/12/10/graphic_acmearchitectual.jpg

Be forewarned: this is a long post with a couple of digressions. If you don’t feel like reading it nobody is forcing you to 😉

@joe the bummer’s 1st post: […]This is a big deal!! The first actual condo fire sale in Brooklyn, and without minimum bids[…]
The starting bids for apartments will be $150,000 which is advertised to be a 75% off the original (over-inflated I may add) price. Clearly the developers must refer to the max price of 600K which is the amount needed to get a barely 1000 sqft space.

With that cleared out of the way I’ll add my 2 cents… and thanks to those who already posted extremely useful info, like “minmin”, “vw”, “joe the bummer”, “ennulater”…

By the way the developers must be doing pretty bad since they took down the original marketing site for the condo: http://www.localecondo.com (ironically still readable on google street view).

The units are said to range in size from 592 to nearly 1,000 sqft. On Trulia.com the highest square footage listed is 984 sqft for apt. 1B. In general the listings seem to have the largest sizes on the 1st floor, probably because they include a garden area of some sort (just speculating here), though it would make sense as the floors above have “studio” dimensions with 592sqft (although they are listed as 1 bedroom… if they managed to make it a legal 1 bedroom will such size will make people develop claustrophobia). Additionally seems that the other floors are in the 720-something or 830-something sqft. Though they made sure not to list the actual living area dimensions nor floor plans.

The developers didn’t decide to turn the property into rentals as they will never have the same return as selling the units obviously. Additionally rentals inherently carries extra insurance fees, taxes and management expenses as those who have been landlords may already know. Not to mention that the price for rentals at that address couldn’t possibly be that high for several reasons, the first being that not only this address pretty far (about 10 blocks) from the first available subway, but that subway is the G train Nassau stop! If you have been taking the G train I will probably need not to elaborate… hence rental is not a great option for the developer.

In fact the lack of a decent subway service nearby gave a weird idea to the developers who actually came up with what I find a not-so-smart publicity stunt. They chose to advertise the condo building using the slogan “There is a new stop in Green Point” and they went as far as creating a fake subway stop (although as real-looking as possible) named after the condo building.
Well, I did try curbing myself, but at this point I am clearly failing now… I really have to say it (and I am sorry if anyone will disagree) but that’s not just stupid, it’s outright megalomania.
One of the developers defined the campaign as “a fresh approach”… let’s call things by their names, shall we? It’s not a marketing campaign with a fresh approach, it’s not a mere misrepresentation or misleading information. That’s blatantly false advertising and shows that the developers must be either ignorant or careless about the FTC “Truth-in-advertising” laws, or that they just think we’re all just a bunch of drooling, gullible cretins.
One thing is to be “creative” and depict that a cellphone carrier has an amazing service by having herds of his workers show up each time a customer dials a call… but creating a fake subway stop where there is none, is not creative… is lying to every potential home-buyer. See this Brooklyn Eagle article that reports it unbiasedly (unlike myself): http://www.brooklyneagle.com/categories/category.php?id=27990

Thanks Minmin for bringing up a great point. If participating to the auction be sure to ask if there are any no-reserve apartments (although the info about the auction may seem to say otherwise)… if that’s the case make sure there is no catch behind them. We should be always careful to be wowed by the pre offering and pilot apartments, they may be as misleading as the fake subway stop. When a deal is to good to be true it usually is in my experience… sometimes doesn’t even have to be “too good”… it’s enough for it to be just “fair” and one can still get burnt. So the keyword should be: Caution and do not act on impulse.

Being mildly malicious and speculating on VW’s post… may the developers know something we don’t? If the area is contaminated as identified by the NY State Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) that found several plumes of chlorinated solvents by becoming a resident in the neighborhood, the first concern should obviously be your health, but to avoid to add insult to injury, another concern should be property values as possible decline in the value of homes or businesses in the area would also represent a financial damage. The DEC advises to pursue a thorough cleanup of the contamination to prevent any long-term impact on property values… and guess who will pick up the tab for that cleanup once you buy a property in the area.

A due side note about TCE & PCE… that’s nasty stuff:
Trichloroethylene (TCE) and Perchloroethylene (PCE) are toxic chlorinated hydrocarbons, a popular industrial solvent used in de-greasing and dry cleaning. Often a contaminant of hazardous waste sites, groundwater, and drinking water. It has been produced in large quantities since the 1920s and used even in the food and pharmaceutic industries before discovering its high toxicity in the 1970s when it was banned from those two sectors, but remained present in other products where it’s still used as a solvent.
TCE is a CNS (Central Nervous System) depressant and a suspected hepatotoxin (destructive to liver cell) in humans and reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen based on limited evidence of carcinogenicity from studies in humans and sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity from studies in experimental animals. Drinking or breathing high levels of trichloroethylene may cause nervous

This place is not a 13-15 minute walk to the L train.