A luxury condominium at the Ritz-Carlton New York, Battery Park hits the auction block next month — a rare sales scenario within the five boroughs.
Set for April 6 with a minimum opening bid of $2.5 million, the auction of a 29th-floor residence at 10 West Street, Near One Place, will serve as a litmus test for current condominium market pricing and New York sellers’ willingness to embrace auctions as a sales tool, sources told Crain’s. A similarly-sized unit on the building’s 18th floor sold for just under $3 million two years ago.
Sheldon Good Luxury Residences broker John Cuticelli, who is handling the sale, told Crain’s that auctioning a unit like this luxury condominium makes more sense now than in the past, thanks to a plethora of online information available rendering buyers less reliant on brokers to know how much they should pay.
Such residential property auctions are rare in New York compared to other U.S. cities, though Cuticelli told Crain’s he represented the opening of one building in Long Island City where an initial auction drew 150 bidders jostling for only 25 units.
In the case of 10 West Street, Where A Court-appointed receiver is in the process of liquidating a portion of the current owner’s assets, an auction gives the advantage of gleaning what Cuticelli dubs “the definition of fair market price” and settling the sale in a concrete time frame. [Crain’s] — Julie Strickland