OPTIMISTIC NEWCOMER LANDS CONDO STUDIO – WITH DREAM VIEWS
She Bought: Upscale Upper West studio in the Park Millennium, $515,000
Search Time – Four months
TODAY, Elena Korol has a view of Central Park. Her secret: not realizing it was impossible.
When Elena came to the United States from Europe, she had no job – and no American assets. And yet, with the streets-paved-with-gold confidence of a new arrival, she pointed to the Park Millennium – a luxury condo near Lincoln Center – and said, “It’s my dream to live in that building.”
Despite the odds against her, just three months after stepping off the plane, Elena moved into the building. “I had pretty much told her, not all dreams come true,” says Elena’s broker, Patrick Hurston of Coldwell Banker Hunt Kennedy. “Boy, was I wrong.”
A native of St. Peters-burg, Elena, a computer programmer, had bopped around Europe, living in Germany, England and, most recently, France. However, having spent the previous decade living in rentals around Manhattan, she was aching to return.
“New York is the best city in the world,” she says. “It’s difficult, strange and unique, but it’s the best city in the world.”
In January, sitting in her flat in Paris, she began searching the Internet for an affordable Manhattan apartment – read: somewhere in the $300,000 to $500,000 range – and making phone calls to potential real-estate brokers.
The response was . . . underwhelming. “Not many people called me back,” she says, raising the question of whether real-estate brokers do, indeed, work on commission. “People didn’t take me seriously.” Except Hurston, that is. He urged Elena to come to New York as soon as possible so they could start looking in real time (and three dimensions). By February, Elena was staying with friends in
Brooklyn and apartment-hunting in Manhattan. Straight away, the pair realized Elena’s options were rather limited. For one, as a foreign buyer, Elena was pretty much limited to a condo – a tough market, given that the most recent average price has clocked in at above $1.5 million. Furthermore, as even condominiums require some form of board approval, Elena was likely limited to a sponsor unit. “In this market, with so many bidders, Elena did not have a strong enough profile for a seller to have confidence in her offer,” says Hurston. “With a sponsor unit, that was off the table.”
Then Elean made the search even narrower: “I decided the only place I’d like to live was on West 66th, 67th and 68th streets,” she said, adding that a pad at the Park Millennium – where two-bedroom units sell in the multimillions – would make her dreams come true. “I know what works for me,” says Elena, waxing poetic about the Reebok Sports Club/NY in the building and the proximity to Central Park.
“I want to wake up and be in my building on the West Side.” A skeptical Hurston kept an eye on the building, and two weeks after Elena’s proclamation, a miracle happened: A rarely available sponsor unit – a studio that recently served as corporate housing – came on the market. In March, prior to an open house, Hurston took
Elena to see the space (which admittedly was only 396 square feet). “Right away I said, that’s it,” she says, with a nod to the studio’s unobstructed view of Central Park. “I’m at home.” Elena made a full-price offer of $515,000 on the spot. Using her European savings – and thanks to the strength of the Euro -she put down roughly 35 percent of the price and closed last month. “It’s a nice place,” she says, ” but it’s not the biggest one.”
e-mail: lkeys@nypost.com