Queens auction produces $3M in winning bids

This Long Island City house fetched the highest price among eight properties at auction.

With three of 11 properties withdrawn, the estate auction of ultimately one co-op and seven houses in Queens netted $2.944 million for the city today.

The total topped the collective minimum price of $1.991 million by nearly $1 million.  The gain amounted to 48 percent more than the sum of what Queens Public Administrator Lois Rosenblatt terms the “upset price.”

Properties on the block ranged in price between $120,000 and $600,000 in neighborhoods including Long Island City, Jamaica and Jackson Heights.

Below are the results: Continue reading

Auction scheduled of 10 Queens residences

This house in Long Island City requires the highest minimum bid, $600,000.

The estate auction of two co-ops and eight houses in Queens is to take place on Dec. 12.

Queens Public Administrator Lois Rosenblatt scheduled the auction of properties ranging in price between $100,000 and $600,000 in neighborhoods including Long Island City, Jamaica and Jackson Heights.

Below are the residences headed for the auction block, Continue reading

Going once and then going one more time

If you have your heart set on buying an apartment or single-family home in Riverdale or Queens, you may well get a great deal in two separate auctions announced over the weekend.

First, Riverdale in the Bronx.  The Solaria, a 20-story condominium on W. 237th Street, towers over the surrounding low-rise neighborhood with a glass-walled facade that echoes the sleek buildings now seen all over Manhattan, the New York Times observes.

It has a rooftop observatory with a telescope, a children’s playroom, an entertainment center and lounge, balconies, on-site parking, large layouts — in short, everything except buyers.  As of last week, only 10 buyers had actually closed on apartments, the last in September 2008.

Now the developer is offering the remaining 54 units at auction on Nov. 22 in what Jim Corum, the president of REDC, the California auction company that is handling the sale, called an “accelerated marketing plan.” He said it presumably with a straight face. Continue reading