Misery Loves Real Estate

Last night I submitted a great offer on behalf of my very eager buyers for a one bedroom co-op off Park Ave. It’s now coming up on 24 hours and we have yet to hear a peep from the listing agent. This is because he is at the mercy of an elusive seller. The seller, by all accounts, is a woman of a certain age who’s lived in this apartment for 20 plus years.

I did not have the pleasure of meeting her but people’s homes speak volumes and I can tell with absolute certainty the following “things” about her just from being in the apartment for 30 minutes:

•  She’s single, undoubtedly divorced (at least twice)
• Crazy as a March Hare
• Loves the heck out of patterned wall paper
• Has a great love of animals (alive or dead). For example paintings, jars and statues of roosters adorn the walls and shelves of her kitchen; life size statues of jungle cats sit vigil at the foot of her sleigh bed, and perhaps most telling of all, the very real zebra pelt spread across her bedroom floor (It felt weird and wrong to walk on).
• She LOVES this apartment.

The last point is extremely problematic because the fact is, she’ll never sell.  Ever.  This apartment is her equivalent of the perfect husband – only better!  It can’t die, it can’t cheat, it can’t tell her she’s spending too much money, and it can never leave. It’s her safe haven. Her Old Faithful.

If this weren’t the case, surely our offer would have been accepted by now. Aside from her wild decorative tastes, the giant red flag is that she’s had the apartment listed for three years with four different brokerages!  It was initially listed for rent, asking an exorbitant amount. Then she changed her mind and decided to sell it, in what was a down market, for far over what it was worth. From then until now, the asking price and real estate brokerages have fluctuated as irregularly as a heart rate monitor hooked up to a patient waiting for a quadruple bypass.

My guess is that she’s simply testing the market to see what kind of offers she’ll get. Ironically, no number will ever be good enough because the larger it is, the more it validates her staying.

In the meantime our offer still stands but our search continues tomorrow…