Premier Boutique Condo Property on Park Avenue Secures TCO
The upscale Manhattan boutique condominium property known as 949 Park Avenue has just received a Temporary Certificate of Occupancy.
By Barbra Murray, Contributing Writer
New York–The über upscale Manhattan boutique condominium property known as 949 Park Avenue has just received a Temporary Certificate of Occupancy. The achievement paves the way for the buyers who have already staked a claim to five of the Upper East Side building’s six units to take up residency without delay.
VE Equities developed the new property, designed by C3D Architecture, and brought in Prudential Douglas Elliman to serve as the exclusive sales and marketing firm for the 12-story limestone and glass tower. The luxury development, one of only a handful on the Upper East Side to offer full-floor living, features a duplex, triplexes and a quadruple penthouse. The last available home is a three-bedroom triplex with a price tag of roughly $6.8 million.
Despite the hefty asking price, VE Equities and Prudential are confident about securing a buyer for the remaining unit. “With TCO and construction being finalized, the last residence will be ready for immediate occupancy which will be a key selling point,” Zach Vella, principal with VE Equities, notes in a prepared statement.
The Manhattan condominium market is certainly on the upswing, however, units are not exactly selling overnight. The number of potential local buyers is hardly staggering, but options remain. “It’s a bad year on Wall Street as a whole, but in every bad year there are a few people who dramatically outperform the market as a whole, as far as their job performance and the amount that they’re able to get paid,” Quinn Eddins, director of research with real estate data and analytics firm Radar Logic Inc., tells MHN.
And there are other sources of possible purchasers to target. The profile of those who have acquired at 949 Park has not been made readily available, but foreign investors have been showing a great deal of interest in the Manhattan real estate market in general. “The global economy is being hurt, but you have countries like Russia, Brazil and China that are experiencing growth and the affluent people in those countries are looking around for investment in real estate, particularly luxury real estate in New York,” Eddins says. “Luxury condos are a desired item, and when home prices are relatively soft compared to how they had been for a number of years in the past, it’s not surprising that they’re looking in New York to buy.”
In some respects, it is the perfect storm for selling out an upper upscale condominium development.
“There is demand from foreigners from economies that are better than the world economy as a whole and you’ll invariably have a few individuals in the New York finance industry who are doing better than the industry as a whole,” Eddins says. “So I think between those two sets, although they’re a tiny percentage of the total pool of potential buyers, they’re enough to fill up a six-unit building.”
