In the down residential market, New York City developers are catching auction fever. The Solaria condominium in the Bronx’s Riverdale neighborhood is the latest new building in the region to use an auction to spur interest — the Saffron condo in Jersey City recently used an auction to kick off sales and Greenpoint’s the Locale sold off units at auction earlier this month for 44 percent below asking — hosting an auction yesterday afternoon. The tactic seemed to pan out well for both buyers and Arc Development, which has been struggling to move units. By the auction’s end, 54 condos sold, with the average winning bids hitting 35 to 45 percent below what the asking prices were on the units. [Crain's] and

Sales at new condo developments in Riverdale have been slowly
sputtering along since the boom in 2006. But now, after introducing a
few more options and incentives to potential buyers, two of the
neighborhood’s projects — Arc Development’s Solaria Riverdale and
Q-Real Estate Partners’ Latitude — have seen a recent increase in
interest. Since introducing two new incentives — free home assurance and a tuition credit — in April, six of Solaria’s units have
gone into contract. Also, over the past two months Solaria has rented
four other units. The project, at 640 West 237th Street, still
has a long way to go, however, because it only has 10 closed deals, 10
in contract (including the six since April), and the four being rented,
out of the 64 units in the building, since sales began in 2006. [more]