Monday, October 1, 2007
Buying a luxury condo: the Vertical Living interview
The Robb Report is publishing a new magazine, that has its premiere issue on newsstands, called Vertical Living. It covers super-luxury, high rise, developments in global destinations like London, Mexico, Singapore, Australia, and of course, New York City. Contributing editor Kim Fredricks interviewed me about buying into a new development. That interview follows here in its entirety and has some good advice in it; as does the very nicely crafted piece she wrote for the first issue called Small Promises (tear sheet pdf 320 kb) in which I'm quoted. Buying new construction is a place where even the most savvy buyers will benefit from their brokers' depth and breadth of knowledge. I'm pleased indeed to have been asked to comment on a subject that I've written about before. In fact, I learned a couple of weeks ago that my post about closing costs in new developments, is being excerpted and included in the next edition of New York Real Estate for Salespersons
, one of the textbooks for the NY State Real Estate licensing exam; it was also a selection in the Carnival of Real Estate which is a sort of traveling show of the best real estate blog posts that Zillow blog's Drew Meyers started up. These are a few nice and unexpected validations, of the connection with the audience and the growth of my blog, which has been public for just shy of a year now.
the Robb Report Vertical Living interview
Vertical Living: Buyers are lured by the benefits of getting a good deal on pricing when buying pre-construction, but what are some red-flags that the buyer should look for before placing a down payment?
Comitini: I don't think that buyers in our market in Manhattan think they are getting a break on price. They are willing to pay well for a premium product. Sometimes with a year or two lead time to delivery, the market accelerates past the contract price and seems a bit better. New construction is generally higher priced than are re-sales, on a price per square foot basis, with higher out of pocket closing costs. Have your broker identify a couple of previous projects of the developer so you can understand if they have performed as expected.