Every new condo that wants to get noticed gives itself a name. Oro means “gold” in Spanish.
And the developers’ original vision for life in The Oro, a 40-story, 300-unit beige brick tower was glittering.
A promotional video for the project was packed with yuppie signifiers: flower shops, joggers on the Brooklyn Bridge , the Jaques Torres chocolate boutique. A subway ad campaign in declared “It Defines You Well.”
A couple of years ago, you couldn’t travel around New York without being aware of The Oro, says Bob Scaglion of Rose Associates, Oro’s property and sales manager. But then the market changed.
“The so-called luxury lifestyle -- you know, the champagne or the martini glass and scantily clad women coming in and out of the pool -- that’s not what people are interested in," Scaglion says. "People are looking for real value for their money.”
Below is an audio slideshow with more background on The Oro and the neighborhood.
The Oro’s address has been valued a lot of different ways over the past five years.
In 2005, a group of investors spent $23 million to buy a lot on a dingy stretch of Flatbush Avenue .
Their vision: a luxury building in the middle of an emerging residential boulevard. Builder Dean Palin told CUNY TV in 2007 he was inspired by the success of a nearby factory-to-loft conversion known as The Toy Factory.
“I would have never guessed and there were lines and it sold out very quickly -- within six months,” Palin said. “And that gave me the confidence to go across the street and do this project.”
The developers bet big. They took out a $145 million mortgage, and equipped the building with a pool, a gym, and a screening room. The Oro was ready for move-ins the same month Lehman Brothers collapsed. It turned out to be very bad timing.
Suddenly, potential buyers couldn’t get a loan. By last June, the building was only one-third full, and hardly selling.
The real estate newspaper The Real Deal ran a story with the headline “New York City’s Future Ghost Towers.” The illustration: a PhotoShopped image of The Oro at night, with just one light on.
“That was really a pretty low blow from The Real Deal,” Scaglion says. “And not greatly appreciated.”
But, Scaglion says it was a wake up call. Greenfield Partners, The Oro’s developer, realized it wasn’t going to attract people with two-bedrooms priced at $860,000. Something had to change.
"Greenfield partners came out and said OK, we hear ya, we’re adjusted the pricing, let's make a deal,” Scaglion says.
In September, the building introduced price reductions of up to one quarter. A rent-to-own program, FHA loans, and lower maintenance costs were additional new incentives. It’s not clear how much Greenfield had to sacrifice its own profits in order to move product. The firm declined to do an interview with WNYC.
Realtor Nicole Rodriguez is on the front lines of the effort to get this building sold.
She’s showing Apartment 21E , an airy and sunny one bedroom with a view of Manhattan . It has Italian stone countertops and Kohler fixtures. And the price tag? $529,000.
“It probably would have been about $650 three months ago. So that’s a huge reduction,” Rodriguez says.
And people are taking notice. Last Sunday the Oro had a steady flow of prospective buyers.
Michael Brantley is thinking of moving to Brooklyn from Jersey City .
“I like the layout of the apartments, the quality of them was pretty good,” Brantley says. “It’s probably about $100 more per square foot than I guess some of the other places around here. But maybe you get a little bit more for your money.”
John Michael Hannah and his partner have been window shopping for a one or two-bedroom.
“We’ve been looking for like maybe a year or two,” Hannah says. “Each time we come back to it we’re at pretty much the same price point the entire time. But each time we come back it’s a little bit of a larger apartment that we can get for the money. So it’s like, how big this time?”
He’s in no hurry. This part of Brooklyn added 4,000 units in the past three years, and there’s more in the pipeline. Two newly built condo buildings have already fallen into financial distress and changed hands.
But Bob Scaglion says The Oro is now secure. The building has been selling 10 to 12 apartments every month since prices were cut. At that rate, The Oro will finally be fully occupied sometime around July 2011.
