First one-day sale

Corcoran Group sells 84 cooperative apartments, at prices ranging from $48,500 for a studio to $245,500 for a three-bedroom unit. Corcoran has been hired by MacArthur Associates, which sponsored the cooperative conversion for the buildings, to market the unsold units amid a real estate downturn. She says the ‘sweepstakes atmosphere’ of the one-day sale helps create interest in the properties. Corcoran:

The goal of the owners was to sell these apartments in the shortest amount of time with the least amount of money spent on marketing or improvements to the units. I estimated that the advertisement cost alone for an auction would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $600,000 or $700,000. So we decided to try the one-day sale. It has worked.