Prospective buyers at one Upper East Side condo project are quietly being offered a 5 percent discount. At an almost-completed Midtown building, five-bedroom homes will be divided into smaller units. Brokers whose clients sign deals at a downtown tower before Labor Day are getting $5,000 gift cards.
Such tactics have become more common in Manhattan, where developers are coping with a luxury-condo glut and adjusting to a new reality after years of building to meet seemingly insatiable demand. With the market now sputtering, they’re altering sales plans and making behind-the-scenes deals in an attempt to create momentum at their projects before an onslaught of even more competition.
‘Right now, time is your enemy,’ said Jacky Teplitzky, a luxury broker with Douglas Elliman Real Estate. ‘The first question that people ask is how long has an apartment been on the market?’
Global economic turmoil, slumping oil prices and the uncertainty of this year’s presidential election are weighing on luxury-home buyers’ decision-making across the U. S. In New York, where more than 3,500 new apartments are hitting the market this year, developers have to work even harder for a sale. It’s a turnabout from the boom days just a few years ago, when investors quickly plunked down record-shattering sums for homes still in the planning stages. Wealthy buyers now are taking time to browse multiple options and negotiate before committing to a purchase – if they make one at all.
This post was published at David Stockmans Contra Corner By Oshrat Carmiel via Bloomberg Business ‘ September 2, 2016.
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