Some insights on selling in Park Slope based on our recent experience

We recently sold our co-op apartment and moved upstate  for my husband’s job. I thought forum readers might be interested in hearing about our experience selling.  Coincidentally it was a Brownstoner co-op of the day on March 10th.   Our story: We put our 1.5 bedroom co-op apartment on the market in early March of this year, over the course of the next three months we accepted three offers (2 of which fell through), had a signed contract on July 2nd, and closed the last day of August.  Even though we lowered our price once, we sold our apartment within 5% of the original ask.   The three things we learned in the process:   1)   Find a broker you like who understands this market requires diligence. Simply put, our broker was key to our success.  We chose House By We a small husband and wife team who earned every penny of the three percent they charged.  They helped us stage our apartment months before we put in on the market, took the photographs for the listings themselves and, most importantly, stuck with it.  They had 14 open houses on consecutive Sundays not stopping for Easter or Mothers Day.  These open houses continually generated offers, even if some were not viable and kept the process and listing from getting stale.   2)   Expect the process to reflect the current economic market. Our selling process was tumultuous.  Our first open house was packed.  The next day we received an offer at ask with a demand to go into contract within 48 hours.   We agreed and then without explanation three days later the buyer withdrew the offer.  This happened to us two more times.  It can be very demoralizing if you don’t know what to expect.  We learned that in boom times the selling is easy, in recession selling is hard and in our times with markets roiling, the selling process will reflect that.   3)   Buy wisely but take a risk. Even though our apartment had the challenging layout of many brownstone floor through  (small second bedroom, one bath) it had truly beautiful and unique historical details.   In the end we found the perfect buyer– a single architect who loved the detail and could use the second bedroom as an office.   Even though the sale took longer than we thought, most buyers were attracted to the apartment because of its detail.  We had friends who were selling apartments in our neighborhood with better layouts but had more generic spaces.  Their apartments did not generate much interest until they significantly lowered their price.    A few other (kind of obvious) thoughts:   ·      The work we put into staging really paid off.  ·      Flowers really add something for an open house. ·      It is very small details that make or break a sale: refrigerator brand,  quality of kitchen cabinets, whether or not you can leave a stroller in the lobby, even the brand of coffee in you cabinet.  So think about details
·      Low ball offers can be your friend—it helps to tell potential buyers there is an offer on the table. ·      Prepare to have buyers who put in offers who will not qualify for financing. ·      Park Slope seems–to a certain degree– to be recession proof (sadly we are not sure we would ever be able to buy in there again!)   I hope this helps any readers looking to buy or sell.

slopecat

in Agents and Brokers 13 years and 6 months ago

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Crownlfc | 13 years and 6 months ago

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I’m sure that your broker having an open house Easter Sunday and Mothers Day did not make much of a difference but good for them. RH – if you represent the owner, you must present all reasonable offers to an owner, it’s then up to you to advise them on the perils of accepting an offer without proof of funds/financing. If you are a buyer’s broker, then you should get that info before submitting an offer so you don’t look like an idiot.

brokelin | 13 years and 6 months ago

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I would say you had an amazingly good sale.  thanks for updating us on the resolution of this former coop of the day.

brucef | 13 years and 6 months ago

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Byebye, Thank you for your eloquent and informative post. It must have taken some time and thought, for which we thank you. Bruce

tinarina | 13 years and 6 months ago

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All sound good, but I think an important part of the broker’s role is not to entertain offers that might not get financing. In addition to an offer, the buyer should be prequalified for a mortgage and have a solid down payment ready to go.