After sloshing around with the children on Halloween night, it was a mild and sunny day for the Condo Crawl on Sunday, and from the looks of the handful of apartments I dropped by (family in tow en route to other activities), it appeared a brisk event, with visitors arriving and leaving at a steady pace. An encouraging sight, surely, for the agents from Coldwell-Banker, Weichert, RE/MAX, Prudential, Stanton, Rhodes, Van Note & Co and Zingali Realty, who are showing the 35 units on the market.
The Crawl, from 1 to 4 pm, was sponsored by Baristanet , and organized by Roberta Baldwin, a Realtor® at RE/MAX Village Square in Upper Montclair.
First stop was 119 Walnut St (see picture at top) - a three-bedroom apartment with lofty ceilings, freshly renovated, with lots of natural light playing through the large floor-to-ceiling windows.
Seven other groups, "mostly couples," had already visited by then and I found myself in the company of a few other apartment hunters, namely the sibling pair of Marylou Hall and Laura Boniello, who live in Montclair and Cedar Grove respectively. They said they were "just looking" to see what was available on the market and were impressed with what they found at Walnut St.
Howard and Vivi Greenspan, who have lived on Warfield St. in Upper Montclair since 1961 said they have been considering a downsize from their current 6-bedroom, but felt the apartment on Walnut St. would be more a "lateral" move, considering the relatively high tax tag it comes with - $15,877, not a big discount compared with the $18,000 on their current landed property. Other factors to consider were the $400 monthly maintenance fee, and Mrs Greenspan wondered, as I did, if the spacious apartment might be costly to heat. The unit's listed at $699,000.
Over at 415 Claremont's apartment 5H (the original listing incorrectly says 3H) at the Dorchester, Roberta Baldwin said she had already greeted 25 people from "all over," including Princeton and Westchester, and that most were young couples. The one-bedroom, one-bath apartment was done out in an elaborate Victorian manner (see photo) - and comes with taxes of $5,386, maintenance of $370 a month, plus a $116 surcharge (for upgrading work) for the next three years. Laundry and storage are in the basement, and the unit has been recently reduced to $239,900. At the Dorchester, too, were several other one-bedroom apartments done more neutrally, less eclectically - "there's something for everyone" - as Baldwin described.
Baldwin thought the Condo Crawl was a success, and said another dozen people visited the Claremont apartments after I left.
"Our other open unit, at 39 Harrison Ave, #4, was very well attended and produced a possible buyer," said Baldwin. "The bigger picture and most promising outcome is that many units got ten times the flow of clients that they were getting, and they kept on arriving."
Baldwin provided some statistics on the condo market, to put things in perspective. And indeed, this year's numbers are considerably less rosy than in previous years due to the recession.
Said Baldwin, "If the people who own condos here can't sell them, that slows up the market for buying homes; many condo owners are first-time buyers who eventually do move up to single-family homes, so it's important that we shed light on this market and illuminate it where we can."
Katie Severance of RE/MAX, who hosted a 3-bedroom unit at the Bellaire House in Upper Montclair, suggested that people were comfortable with the concept of the Condo Crawl. She had 17 groups visit her listing.
"I think they seemed less intimidated being on a crawl,'" she told us. "Everyone signed in and actually wrote their phone numbers down. Most were not ready to buy, which is always the case with any public open house, but they were respectful and thankful for the opportunity to see the unit."
For a list of all the units listed on the Condo Crawl, click here and download the full attachment.
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