BY John Bayles
There’s a new condo conversion in Battery Park City that’s creating quite the buzz. One Rector Park, located on Rector Place, opened its doors three weeks ago and the receptionist is already telling prospective buyers they are booked when it comes to showing the units.
Things are going so well, the building signed more than 30 contracts in just their second week following a “soft opening.” According to Tricia Hayes Cole of the Corcoran Sunshine Group, the condo’s exclusive sales and marketing firm, most of the traffic has been from the neighborhood. She said the building is a “natural inquiry” for people in Battery Park City that are renting and are looking to get into the market as first-time buyers.
“Thirty contracts in one week, today is considered very strong demand,” said Hayes Cole. “That’s something you might have seen in ’06 or ’07.”
Part of that is the fact that the building has approval from the Federal Housing Administration. When the mortgage-lending agency Fannie Mae tightened its standards on condos in Manhattan last year, many buildings began applying to the FHA as another tool to entice buyers. One Rector Park has four preferred lenders.
As for the building itself, it’s a conversion of an apartment building from the mid-1980s. The entire building was gutted and renovated and now includes 174 units, of which nearly 50 percent are one-bedrooms. It contains three three-bedroom townhouse units on the bottom floor that each have designated parking spaces and patios.
When asked about her agency’s pitch to buyers, Hayes Cole replied, “It’s finished. What you see is what you get; high-end furnishes, high-end appliances, over 50 different layouts. There’s something for everybody.”
The building includes a fitness center, a residents’ lounge and event space, a business center and a children’s playroom named the “Little Door.”
There are two different finish packages for the residences, each with a different color palette for the wood floors, kitchens and bathrooms. Most rooms have balconies and beginning on the 8th floor, the north-facing units have river views.
