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When the four-story brownstone at 279 Clermont Avenue in Fort Greene hit the Corcoran website in early July at the surprisingly-low price of $1,382,000, it seemed like a classic, and probably quite smart, strategy for bringing out the bidders. (It had failed to sell earlier in the summer at a much higher price with a broker called Prospective Properties; we included it as an Open House Pick for $1,748,000 back in June.) In fact, there was enough interest that the seller held a “best and final” closed bidding process two weeks ago. One reader who took place in the process and bid over the asking price was more than a little miffed to find out ten days later that the seller had decided not to accept any of the bids. Instead, the listing re-appeared with a new asking price of $1,610,325. Illegal, immoral or just uncool?
279 Clermont Avenue [Corcoran] GMAP P*Shark


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  1. “…more pushed by the buyer than the broker…”

    Gotta be. Psychology is weird. I’m sure the seller was swayed back and forth between the alternating bullish and bearish news in the media.

    Greed is risky in this slowing market. It may backfire. It seems they should be grateful for One and a Half. But who knows? It’s a nice fixer-upper in a nice location. I think it’ll be worth a lot less in the future but it should move today near ask.

  2. I think this is more pushed by the buyer than the broker. If I were the broker, I would rather have a done deal at 1.5 than starting the whole process over again to get more money. I think at most this would net the broker an extra 3-5k (and likely less in his pocket). If there is a buyers broker, its even less 2-4k.

  3. Definitely not cool, but that’s about it.

    I am guessing that the highest offer was close to or equal to the new asking price (maybe that’s what triggered the odd pricing). In any event, I think this could certainly backfire. Are there really that many new prospective buyers that may have cropped up since they last accepted offers a month ago? It seems that the people that were legitimately interested in this made their offers already.

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