Condo in luxe high-rise heads to city’s auction, other properties have much lower minimums

This unit at 401 E. 60th St. is a floor below one to be auctioned and may be slightly smaller.

A condo in the Lenox Hill neighborhood will be offered with a minimum bid of $1.2 million at the first city auction of Manhattan properties since June.

Public Administrator Ethel J. Griffin scheduled the sale of 13 properties from the Lower East Side to Inwood for March 21.  Minimum bids range from $45,000 for an income-limited studio in Harlem to the East Side condo’s $1.2 million.

The estate of one Ronald Cohen, the four-room unit 24C in Bridge Tower Place, a full-service 1999 building at 401 E. 60th St., is advertised as having 1,130 square feet with common charges of $1,400 monthly and annual taxes of $21,000.  Active listings in the building average

Tribeca loft goes for $3.15 million in city auction

The Ice House, 27 N. Moore St. in Tribeca.

With only a single competitor, a Long Island man won a two-bedroom, two-bath condo at 27 N. Moore St. for the favorable price of $3.15 million at the city’s auction of nine apartments in Manhattan today.

Public Administrator Ethel J. Griffin had set the minimum price at $3 million for the more than 2,000-sf loft, which had been owned by one Veronica Lee in a building called the Ice House.  According to Curbed.com, Lee paid $774,000 for the unit in 1999 and died owing JP Morgan Chase $1.9 million left on her mortgage.

“I feel good,” successful bidder Mario Montoya told me after the auction, adding that he had been prepared to offer “a little more.”

City to auction off $3 million condo, 8 other units

Condominium called the Ice House at 27 North Moore St. in Tribeca

The sale of a condo with a minimum bid of $3 million is the highlight of a new estate auction scheduled for June 28 by Public Administrator Ethel J. Griffin.

Among the eight other apartments to go on the block starting at 11:30 a.m. are three income-limited units, a co-op in the Kips Bay neighborhood and one on the Upper West Side in the Lincoln Towers complex.

The $3 million unit is in the Ice House, at 27 North Moore St., in Tribeca.  It was owned by one Veronica Lee, but I have been unable to find verifiable information about her.

What I know is that

Co-ops in Manhattan auction draw limp bidding

The impossibly ornate Surrogate's Courthouse, where the auction was held.

Public Administrator Ethel J. Griffin’s poorly attended estate auction of nine apartments Tuesday produced sales totaling only $2.374 million.

Five of the properties ranging in location from Chinatown to Washington Heights failed to attract even one bidder.  A co-op on West End Avenue in Lincoln Towers sold to a sole bidder for its minimum of $300,000.

There were just two bidders for

10 Manhattan co-ops to be auctioned Sept. 27

45 Sutton Place South

Update: The Eldridge Street property has been withdrawn from the auction.

In its first estate auction of Manhattan properties since March, the city is putting on the block 10 co-operative apartments to be sold Sept. 27.

New York Public Administrator Ethel J. Griffin is offering units ranging from Chinatown to Washington Heights.  Among them are apartments on Sutton Place South, in the Lincoln Towers complex and on Carnegie Hill.

Minimum bids range from $45,000 for one of three limited-income co-ops to $950,000 for the ones on Sutton Place South and Carnegie Hill.

Out and About: Mitchell-Lamas are spacious, cold

Now called Central Park Towers, the former Park West Village complex of more than 1,600 apartments began life as Mitchell-Lama housing on the Upper West Side.

Created in 1955, the Mitchell-Lama program provides affordable rental and cooperative housing to moderate- and middle-income families, as the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development notes.

There are 97 such rental and limited-equity cooperative developments in New York City, with more than 44,600 units. Not included are those that have been converted into condos, and they have a range of pluses and minuses.

Mitchell-Lama buildings are not to everyone taste–for example, mine–but they tend to offer excellent value as a tradeoff to their overwhelming size and what I see as their other liabilities.

Each of the four looming behemoths in the Central Park Towers complex contains