Kirsten Grind over at the Puget Sound Business Journal posted a more detailed update yesterday on the 180° strategy turnaround at the upscale downtown condo complex Escala that we mentioned a month ago.
Escala cutting condo prices by 50 percent
Downtown Seattle condominium tower Escala will lower prices by as much as 50 percent on unsold units, the luxury building’s new marketing firm said Tuesday.
Rennie Marketing Systems and the building’s listing agent, Bellevue-based Teambuilder, declined to release price cuts on each unit, but said savings will range from 20 percent to 50 percent.
…
“What the prices were has no bearing on what they should be for this market,” Mehr said. “We priced it as if we had a brand-new building today.”
This is quite the turnaround from April 2008:
Lexas principals John Midby and Eric Midby said prices are going up partly to send a message to prospective buyers: If they’re waiting to buy until prices drop, they’re reading the local market wrong.
That was some top quality denial, right there. Somebody was certainly reading the local market wrong, but it wasn’t the prospective buyers.
Back to Kirsten…
Escala cost $370 million to build and has sold just six units.
Just six units. Out of over two hundred and sixty. Considering the fact that they claimed in ’08 that around seventy units had sold, I suppose it was only a matter of time before they finally faced reality.
You can only live in crazy fantasy land for so long.
(Kirsten Grind, Puget Sound Business Journal, 2010.03.02)
(Eric Pryne, Seattle Times, 2008.04.26)