Short sales have been quite common in the boroughs, such as Queens and the Bronx. They have now arrived in Manhattan. Until the financial crisis, Manhattan’s real estate market was actually extremely hot. The cooling down, however, has put New York City into the same economic malaise that the rest of the country is enduring. With that malaise has come the same combination of negative equity and distressed sale scenarios I have been dealing with in Westchester, Rockland, the Hudson Valley and Queens since 2006-7. People lose all or a portion of their income, they need to sell their condo, and they are confronted with the reality that the apartment they paid $900,000 for in 2008 is now worth $700,000.
That is not good when you owe $750,000.
Manhattan is not similar to any other real estate market in the USA. The big companies, such as the Corcoran Group and Prudential Elliman, have nothing about short sales in their marketing or web pages as of this writing. The agents who are doing big business are unfamiliar with negotiating short sales. Westchester was caught in the same pickle 2 years ago, and the growing pains for the agents were not good.
Finding a buyer is one thing; negotating a short sale is a completely different animal. You not only have to deal with the loss mitigation department at the lender, you have to orchestrate the whole process with the seller, the buyer’s agent, the buyer, and the buyer’s attorney, all of whom are in unfamiliar territory.
Right now my solution is to refer Manhattan short sales to the best brokers in my network and pair them with the best negotiators at my disposal to assist in the short sale process. I have referred a listing just this past week. In that condo’s category, there were 33 active listings that were unsold, and only 2 under contract. That tells me one thing- more short sales are coming to Manhattan.
J. Philip Faranda is Westchester & the Hudson Valleys’s Premier Short Sale REALTOR. He has listed and sold successful short sales in Westchester, Rockland, Putnam, Dutchess, and Orange County, as well as the boroughs of New York City. Find out more at www.NYShortSaleTeam.com
