From luxury condo flop to sales success?
There may be no Boston area project that exemplifies the illusions of the housing bubble years than Natick's Nouvelle.
That's the urban style condo high-rise retail giant General Growth built at the revamped and now uptown Natick Collection, formerly known as the Natick mall.
Bubble era euphoria apparently convinced General Growth that wealthy empty nesters from Wellesley would flock to mall and department store-lined Rt. 9 in Natick to snap up units that in some cases were priced at as much as $1.7 million.
Of course, the bubble collapsed and only a few buyers were willing to pay these sky-high prices amid one of the worst real estate downturns since the Great Depression.
Then, apparently, the Nouvelle's developers did a smart thing - they hired Accelerated Marketing Partners and decided to auction off a chunk of the mall high-rise at bargain basement prices.
Now that tough decision appears to have revitalized the Nouvelle's previously flagging marketing campaign, with sales finally picking up at the high-end mall condo tower.
A penthouse unit that had been on the market for nearly $1.7 million sold for $626,000, for example.
Now fast forward two months.
Accelerated and its marketing partner, PrimeTime Communities, has since inked another 25 sales since the auction, with an additional five under agreement, notes Thomas Skahen, co-founder and partner of PrimeTime.
Those 30 signed and pending sales, plus the 43 sold at the auction and the 40 condos that had been sold before the new sales strategy, adds up to 113.
And that's just more than half the Nouvelle's 215 units - maybe nothing to write home about during flush times but not half bad given the still battered state of the real estate market.
One reason the auction helped boost sales afterward was the marketing team used the big, publicity spawning event as a catalyst.
Hundreds of potential buyers who showed up at the auction walked away without a deal, but were then solid sales prospects to follow up with.
The home buyer tax credit has also helped as well, Skahen notes.
The after-auction sales, in turn, have been in the same general price range of $270,000 to $600,000, Skahen said.
I know I am really going to get it from the high-end condo haters out there - and so be it.
And the Nouvelle still has a long way to go - maybe another 12-to-18 months before it finally sells out, Skahen estimates.
But in a tough market, this is arguably progress.
