Babs: 'Don't Ever Underestimate' New York
In her Daily News column on Friday, Barbara Corcoran busted out some major league cheerleading for the New York real estate market that was surprising even for her given the state of the economy and the downward momentum of apartment prices in the city: All the financial mess here in New York City is really…
In her Daily News column on Friday, Barbara Corcoran busted out some major league cheerleading for the New York real estate market that was surprising even for her given the state of the economy and the downward momentum of apartment prices in the city:
All the financial mess here in New York City is really just a speed bump on the way to future riches. I’ve lived through real-estate markets a lot more hopeless than this one, and every time the city turned around and bounced back, taking real-estate values up with it. In 1974, I listed a 14-room, park-view apartment in the famous Dakota on Central Park West. The price the seller set was absolutely nothing! Zero! The owner was willing to literally give it away if I could only find some sucker to take over his monthly maintenance. I couldn’t find the sucker. That same apartment was sold five years ago for $18 million. New York City is a boom-bust-boom town, especially when it comes to real estate. Don’t ever underestimate its power to bounce back with bigger and better values.
Go, go, go!
Ask Barbara [NY Daily News via Curbed]
What's Your Take? Leave a Comment
hannible, Babs sold the business but it still carries the Corcoran name.
Don’t believe her lies. Have you seen how many signs her group has posted in the same neighborhoods they gentrified and bubbled up the prices? Now she is just looking for more suckers to sell her Ikea homes to. It ain’t gonna work. I will be glad to see her file for bankrupcy. The way the housing market is going it should not take long.
dang! I would have taken that apartment off the seller’s hands for nothing in 1974….then I’d have somewhere to park my crib.
Seriously, the ongoing maintenance costs where properties are empty is going to be a serious wakeup call for the condo market.
With rising unemployment, more and more people will either share or leave the city altogether, leaving behind a glut of empty apartments. It happened before, it’s going to happen again.
“if I could only find some sucker”… enough said, Babs.
And I agree with the observation that what her 1974 example really shows us is that, even in the great NYC, prices can actually go down to ZERO before they go back up. Again, she will only talk about the people who made money. She conveniently fails to mention the guy who bought it back in the 60s or whenever and ended up desperate to unload the place for nothing at all in a shitty market. Realtors will only ever talk about people who made money in real estate. But there are also plenty of people who have lost money over the years, and a lot of those were just following the advice of people like Babs. Is she offering an apology to the 32 year old recent parents who just lost their entire life savings on some new condo development in Manhattan after they read one of her quotes about how Manhattan is special, it’s an island, gas prices will keep real estate there expensive, foreign money will save us all, etc etc etc? Nope. They are forgotten, because a disingenuous leech like this will never admit that most of what she has said in the past 5 years has been dead wrong and a lot of people have lost their life savings by following her advice.
Babs is a very savvy businesswoman and putting this quote out there is a smart business move. This won’t affect the market one bit, of course, but what it will do is give her tons of credibility when the market finally does recover (which might not be for a long time, but is bound to happen eventually). Remember, the real estate industry can spin data in almost any market to make it sound like a great time to buy. Let’s say prices go down a total of 50% from the peak and then come back up 20%. The people who bought at the very bottom will have made out very well, and Babs can start putting out press releases about how prescient she was back in 2009, how she was a strong believer all along, how “see, people are always making money in real estate,” etc etc. And of course she won’t talk about all the people who bought in 2007 on her advice and lost their life savings. She won’t talk about the lives that were derailed because she and her ilk lied through their teeth when values were completely insane and told people they had to buy right away or be priced out forever. No, those people will be forgotten and all she will talk about is what a visionary she was for supporting the market all along and how the people who finally had the guts to buy are getting rich (not the people who bought in 2009 and caught the falling knife, no, they will be forgotten too; only the people who hit the market just right). For all these reasons and so many more that I just can’t take the time to write down, her quote nauseates me. But I have to admit it’s a great business move. After all, what’s her downside? The market never recovers at all from the bottom, wherever that might be? This quote is a guaranteed winner for her.
“For the first time in decades, hope is re-emerging that ordinary people like teachers, firemen, artists, editors, and non-profit workers could own their own homes in this city without mortgaging themselves into peril.”
Huh? I’m pretty ordinary, and I bought a house in 2001. I know other “ordinary” editors (i.e., not wealthy) and artists who’ve bought homes either during that time, or since.
Just as soon as those no-doc zero down sub-prime loans begin again everything will be peachy!
This is the same insufferable greedy bitch that told us to pave over our front gardens for parking pads to increase the value of our homes. For the first time in decades, hope is re-emerging that ordinary people like teachers, firemen, artists, editors, and non-profit workers could own their own homes in this city without mortgaging themselves into peril. This whole downturn is a CORRECTION, not a catastrophe, unless you’re one of the folks unlucky enough to be attempting to unload a property at a still-more-bloated price than you paid for it. (I have as much sympathy as I do for folks who lose it all at Vegas–which is to say, a little sympathy, but no floods of tears.) “Cheerleading” for a return to greed-fueled speculation, flipping, overdevelopment and other insanity makes me want to puke. “Babs” can teach my grandmother to suck eggs; I hope house prices tumble another 20% and stay there where they belong for a good long while.