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Top outer borough condos: Riverdale commands nearly all spots

Six of the top condo sales in the Bronx were at the Solaria, Riverdale's tallest building at 20 stories.

Go to chart: The top 10 most expensive Bronx condos

All but one of the Bronx's top 10 most expensive condominiums are in the lush, hilly neighborhood of Riverdale, seemingly cordoned off from the rest of the city by the Hudson and Harlem Rivers, Van Cortlandt Park and the Major Deegan Expressway.

They range from a $1.545 million apartment lined by floor-to-ceiling windows at the sleek new Solaria tower, to a $1 million apartment that practically hangs over the Hudson River, facing the New Jersey Palisades at an older building on Palisade Avenue. The one exception to Riverdale is the borough's seventh most expensive condo, on City Island, a far-flung, 230-acre fishing-and-bedroom community of 5,000 in the Long Island Sound mainly accessible by a single bridge.

Access to mass transportation, elite public and private schools, a smattering of tidy shopping and dining options, and attractive scenery have long made Riverdale a desirable option for New Yorkers more interested in peace and quiet than a flashy urban lifestyle — at condo prices significantly lower than in Manhattan.

Susan Goldy, who owns a prominent real estate firm in the area by the same name, said condo buyers "tend to be people downsizing from larger homes in Westchester, who want to be closer to Manhattan but don't require Manhattan."

Inversely, she said, families from Manhattan, or families transferring from out-of-town to work in Manhattan, are attracted to Riverdale's abundance of nature and top schools. "Sometimes the city is just a little too much for them; they need that blend of suburbia."

Picturesque single-family homes comprise a large part of Riverdale's market. Storybook mansions can run up to $4.5 million in the estate area west of the Henry Hudson Parkway, to as low as $625,000 in North Riverdale near the College of Mount St. Vincent, according to Trebach Realty.

Luxury condominiums are a relatively new phenomenon (most of the older multi-family buildings are co-ops). Prices range from around $300,000 to $1.5 million, up from $150,000 to $1.1 million three years ago, according to brokers.

Two of the Bronx's priciest condos are actually townhouses, part of the Hayden on the Hudson development, which has a large, crescent-shaped tower as its centerpiece. It was finished in the 1980s and is nestled on a private hillside road across from Riverdale Park. Each of the townhouses has a private yard and access to the development's pool, gym, tennis courts and nature trails. Such townhouse-style condominiums are scattered throughout Riverdale.

Bradford Trebach, a broker for 25 years and also vice president of Bronx Community Board 8, said 15 new buildings have either been recently completed or are slated for construction in Riverdale.

"This has been the biggest building push in Riverdale since the building boom in the 1950s," said Trebach.

It's also one that has met with fierce resistance. Community Board 8 led an effort to "prevent overdevelopment by the contextual downzoning of large parts of Riverdale and Kingsbridge," he said. "And we advocated to create the Fieldston Historic District, which is a large area of high-end homes in Central Riverdale."

He said Solaria, Riverdale's tallest building at 20 stories, "made it by the skin of its teeth … if Solaria had been just a few days late in completing its foundation, they would not have been able to build."

Solaria developer Joseph Korff, principal of Arc Development, pointed out that as a result, many of the views from his tower are protected.

Solaria claims six of the top 10 slots, but it hasn't sold too many more of its 66 units even after two years on the market. Korff said 30 percent of the building's apartments are sold. But, according to Property Shark, a real estate data Web site, sales for only nine units have been recorded, just enough for a condo offering plan to take effect.
Note: Correction appended.

Korff noted that he recently revised his sales strategy, and is considering revising it again, to include more events and direct marketing. "I think people don't know about Riverdale, they don't really appreciate the neighborhood," he said.

In response to tightened lending practices, Korff has also engaged in "more creative solutions without giving up value," in effect allowing a buyer to move in early even if he or she is having trouble selling their home.

A prominent broker in the area, who asked not to be named, said buyers are deterred by the high price points at the Solaria, coupled with a lack of deeded parking and a defined dining area. Instead, most of Solaria's floor plans adhere to the more modern trend commonly found in new Manhattan developments, in which the kitchen is separated from the living and dining area by an open breakfast bar.

While that creates a bright, airy effect, particularly with the Solaria's floor-to-ceiling windows, the broker said it's a deal-breaker for many Jewish families who, as part of their faith, hold large family dinners every Friday in observance of the Sabbath.

The broker estimated that roughly 10,000 of Riverdale's 45,000 residents are Jewish.

"Solaria is across the street from a major Orthodox synagogue, one of the largest in the city, the Riverdale Jewish Center, and it could have had tremendous appeal for that reason," said the broker, adding that many Jews do not drive in observance of the Sabbath. "This was a major miscalculation on his part. This is about knowing your market."

Goldy concurred. "For that market that really wants a traditional dining area, they'll just go to another building. But there are enough people coming into Riverdale who are not requiring that."

A 1,750-square-foot waterfront apartment in the Boatyard, the first condominium community built on City Island in the 1980s, is the Bronx's seventh most expensive condo at $1.14 million. The gated community, built on an old boatyard, includes private boat mooring and a pool.

Martin Nash, a pediatric kidney doctor who works in Manhattan, bought the condo last year as a second home only 15 minutes from his primary residence in Pelham.

"The place on City Island was so different from the Pelham location, with all the views and the smells of the waterfront, that I just decided to buy that place and use it as a summer home," he said.

His windows face Long Island Sound and Hart Island, where city inmates are ferried from a nearby port on City Island every day to bury the city's unclaimed or unidentified dead, which Nash said doesn't bother him.

Local broker Jacqueline Kyle Kall of Port of Kall Realty said developers are routinely eyeing the sleepy community for new projects, "but we stamp them out as fast as we can."