Edwin Borelly, a software engineer, is waiting to close on a third-floor, $370,000 one-bedroom in the Astor, a new condominium near the N and W subway tracks on 31st Street. He chose a unit across the hall so that he would not live with this view.
Last year, when many Park Avenue real estate matrons were struggling to sell their co-ops, Vickie Palmos and her business partner closed on 37 condos in Astoria, Queens, as if it were 2006.
Palmos credits her success in part to the fact that she takes listings that other brokers sneer at because the properties suffer from real estate’s greatest sin: bad location.
On a recent afternoon, Ms. Palmos strode into a $270,000 third-floor studio at the Astor, a new condominium building facing the N and W subway tracks on 31st Street, and swung open the terrace door as a train approached. Like the ominous slow-motion moment that precedes an explosion in an action movie, conversation ceased, everyone in the room froze and hairstyles rose and bowed in windy deference.
“Check that out,” Ms. Palmos said while stifling a giggle as the train thundered past. “You feel like you’re in the city.” No amount of creative painting, clean-lined modernist furniture or cute phraseology like “steps from transit” can disguise an elevated train rumbling or the Long Island Expressway roaring outside the living room window. But just as every defendant deserves a lawyer, every home deserves an advocate. And these agents sometimes have to be a little more creative, a little hungrier and far more persistent, especially in a sluggish real estate market.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/nyregion/18appraisal.html?hp
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