Where Are They Now? A Look Back at the Current State of Some of Our Favorite Apartments

Since starting Downtowny just 3 months ago, we've written about more than 40 apartments (and seen countless more) and were inspired by yesterday's "In Contract!" declaration by Josh, the seller of the PH unit at 55 Liberty Street (one of our favorite listings), to take a walk down recent memory lane and check out where these apartments are today.

Not so surprisingly, it turns out that of the apartments that we've written about, zero have sold. Seven are currently in contract, including an eye-popping three units at 111 Fourth Avenue, the Franken-loft building in the East Village which apparently, everyone loves but us. Of the remaining 35 or so apartments, most are still sitting on the market and approximately half have declined in price since we've seen them.

We sometimes wonder if some of the units that we love to hate, such as the $849,000 6th floor walkup on Avenue B, the William Beaver House (thanks for all of the good times), and the oh-so-consistently overpriced mess at 295 311 303 oh who cares, they're all the same Greenwich Street will ever sell.

Heck even beautiful units that we thought were offered at very decent prices, such as those at One Rector Park and the quite pretty unit at #6F on 15 Jones St. have failed to move.

Meanwhile, some of our most favorite units (like #2F at 99 Avenue B, which has outdoor space that you probably last saw in the horror movie "The Ring"), have been pulled from the market.

What has all of this taught us, you might ask? As we look back at 3 months of apartment searching, we've learned about BPC ground rents (too high), the complexities of 20 Pine (too dark), the nooks and crannies of Streeteasy (too awesome) and the many wonders of ACRIS (too much like a DMV form). But our biggest takeaway is to be patient. In this market, you can afford to wait, and we think we will...

CILF of the Week - 333 Rector Place (One Rector Park)

Although we haven't even reached Open House Sunday yet, we're pretty sure that this week's CILF (Condo we'd like to...woo woo) is the magnificent 333 Rector Place . We saw mostly 1BR, 1BA units priced between $630,000 - $810,000 (most were around $730,000 or so) - all in the 760 sq ft - 870 sq ft range. There are two "finishes" available for these units - the "Park" and the "River". The Park finish has darker floors, a kind of retrolicious white marble in the bathroom and a lighter wood on the cabinets/doors. The River is almost an exact mirror image, with lighter floors, dark marble in the bathroom, and a darker wood on the cabinets/doors.

All of the units that we saw had balconies and the southern facing units have direct water views. The fixtures look great and we loved the large, open layouts of the apartments. The amenities seemed fine although only the bar/library was finished enough to show.

The units here get significantly more expensive on the higher floors (there are 14 floors in the building) with only apartments higher than the 8th floor having any water views. Similar to 20 Pine and The Riverhouse, we now lust after One Rector Park (which we think of as The Riverhouse of the South) but we are of course concerned with the building's financials. Particularly given that Rector Square, which is located literally across the street, has filed for bankruptcy in a public shitstorm that might not go away for awhile.

One Rector Park tells us that the sales office has been open for about three weeks and that the building is 10% sold. They have "relationships" with some major lenders but those lenders require the building to be 50% in contract prior to allowing anyone to close (all cash buyers, whoever you are, you can close any damn time you want). Sooooo....that means that of the 174 or so units in this building, 17 are sold leaving an additional 70 units or so that have to go into contract before anyone can live there. Hmmmm....no transactions right now means fat chance you're moving into here anytime soon.

Oh and ummm...if you're a little light on your brunch budget these days, pop by their weekend open houses from 1-4PM. They have mimosas (yep), croissants, scones and you can even pocket some granola bars to go. PLUS they give you a cute tote. We love you 333 Rector.