Buyers and sellers get on the same page

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By CANDACE TAYLOR

NEW YORK -- Zhann Jochinke, an associate broker at Argo Residential, put an alcove studio on the market last year for $525,000. But the offers that came in were as low as $390,000.

"People were putting bids out there just to see if the person had to sell," he recalled.

More recently, however, he convinced the seller to drop the price to around $490,000.

Offers began coming in at "5 percent or less off the asking price," he said. Now, the listing is in contract, and expected to close in the next month.

After months of uncertainty, Manhattan buyers and sellers are finally making a market. In the terrifying period after the Lehman Brothers crisis, so few properties were sold that pricing an apartment became a game of roulette. Buyers, too, were unsure what a property would trade for, and their offers were all over the map.

Plummeting prices made matters worse.

"Earlier in the year, recent comps were being considered, and then 10, 15, 20 percent was being subtracted to set a reasonable asking price," Jochinke said. "It wasn't uncommon, even at these prices, that offers would still come in well under ask."

But thanks to the uptick in activity that started in the spring and has carried over into fall, a new batch of closed sales is providing much more accurate information, allowing both buyers and sellers to get a clearer understanding of how much their properties are worth.

"We are able to list a property today at a number very similar to one that closed in the past couple of months," Jochinke said.

As a result, Antonio del Rosario, the president and co-owner of A.C. Lawrence, said he's now seeing accepted offers come in within 2 percent of the asking price, or "many times, at the asking price," he said, adding, "I'm seeing a lot of sellers align with the market."

A nearby example is Bernie Madoff's five-bedroom mansion in Montauk, N.Y., which reportedly sold last month for more than its $8.75 million asking price. ...CONTINUED

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