Manhattan Condo Buyers Walk Away From $1 Million Down Payments

[girl gone mad]

http://www.businessinsider.com/manhattan-condo-buyers-walk-away-from-1-million-down-payments-2009-2

Here's another disturbing indicator of a coming cliff-dive in the New York real estate market. Buyers are getting so nervous that they're leaving huge deposits on the table just so they can get out of new purchases. We're not talking $100,000 or $200,000 deposits either

NYT: 304 Spring Street, a sleek condominium building in SoHo with stunning Hudson River views, the buyer for the duplex penthouse recently decided he would not go through with the deal and walked away from a $780,000 deposit.

At 1120 Park Avenue, a classic prewar co-op filled with multimillion-dollar apartments, it appears that a buyer forfeited a deposit of as much as $1.1 million.

Real estate agents representing buyers of at least three other multimillion-dollar properties also report clients who knowingly left deposits of more than $1 million or hundreds of thousands of dollars on the table.

Later in the piece a real estate expert offers the understatement of the year, saying that this behavior is “indicative of the degree of uncertainty in the market.”

Ya think?

[RollWithIt]

1. It's entirely possible they lost most of their liquidity in the market...

and simply didn't have the money or credit to close the deal.