St Petersburg has many "new" downtown condos that haven't been sold by the developers. What's the right price? It's easy to tell what is the wrong price, because they languish on the market unsold.
Signature Place, which by the end of 2009 had sold about 100 of its 244 units since opening in June, came up with an interesting idea to create buzz as well as establish prices. 35 Signature Place condos will be auctioned on March 7th - an absolute auction with a minumum bid on each unit. It certainly created a buzz. Thousands of people have walked through Signature Place in the last couple of weeks, looking at the units. We expect that the auction will help determine prices that the rest of the units will be offered at after the auction.
400 Beach was selling well, but the developer cross collateralized and subsequently filed for bankruptcy, affecting the last 18 units out of 100. Just last week, several months after the foreclosure sale, the lender put a price on each of the units, with price reductions of 25% to 60% of the original asking prices. Over last weekend, available only to those with letters of intent from last fall, 8 of the units had cash contracts. This week, with sales opened to others, an additional four went to contract. Today, with only 8 units remaining, the lender raised the prices by 10%.
Interesting times call for interesting measures. At least this shows that there are buyers ready to buy - if the price is right.
