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Condominium apartments at Cityspire, the high-profile office-residential tower on West 56th Street, aren't selling very fast, even after a celebrity-studded television advertising campaign -- the most flamboyant condo marketing effort so far.
Sources say that after nearly six months New Yorkers have snapped up just one-sixth of the available units in Cityspire. And Cityspire is not alone. In the midst of a major housing shortage, other new apartment projects on the West Side of midtown, including Metropolitan Tower, are finding the going tough because they're not competitively priced for their locations, may not meet the needs of today's apartment buyer and aren't being marketing properly.
"I wouldn't be interested in buying into buildings in midtown west," says Warren A. Estis, a real estate lawyer who owns 70 condominium units around Manhattan for the sake of investment. "The numbers they're asking are really high, so I'm not real sure about appreciation -- especially since Metropolitan Tower hasn't burned up the market at all."
Cityspire's developer, Bruce Eichner, won't reveal how many apartments he's sold in what's to be the tallest apartment building in New York. But he contends that his TV ads boosted the building's status and profit potential. "The television campaign was very successful in terms of recognition, which is important for an expensive project with apartments costing well north of $400 a square foot," he says.
But others say that since March, when Mr. Eichner first started selling apartments, he's only peddled about 60 of Cityspire's 340 units, making it a...