Friday, May 22, 2009

Bad reporter

I recently saw this AP story in my local paper. It starts out:

The 40-story skyscraper sits on a prime corner in the country's wealthiest commercial market, steps from the Museum of Modern Art and a few blocks from Rockefeller Center and Central Park.

It recently sold for $100,000.


The commercial real estate market is currently not in the best of health but it surely isn't this bad is it? Is the building full of asbestos or something? Not until much deeper in the story do we learn:

... Otera took over the loan and the tower's $240 million mortgage. ...

So the real sales price was $240.1 million. This is a big drop from the $498 million 2006 sales price but not the total wipe out a $.1 million sales price would imply.

This is just terrible reporting.

1 comment:

  1. ..either that, or the reporter was thinking about moving the building to Detroit where the first figure wouldn't be so out of line...

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