PhillyDeals: With price established, seller halts condo sales

'We could have sold 50," says auctioneer Jon Gollinger.

But the boss of Boston-based Accelerated Marketing Partners says he stopped Sunday's sale after 29 of the 35 condos offered at Philadelphia's Waterfront Square had been sold. That's because his client, Israeli developer Doron Gelfand, got what he wanted.

This wasn't just about collecting piles of cash quickly? "The idea on this sale, we really needed the market to show what the right price was," Gollinger

told me.

The mostly one-bedroom condos, in the newest tower, called Reef, at the Waterfront Square complex, which rises improbably from the old Fishtown waterfront near the new SugarHouse gambling hall, had listed from $470,000 on up - before the real estate collapse.

The average unit sold at auction for $329,000, to "empty nesters and first-time purchasers," Gollinger said.

"We used this event," which drew 74 registered bidders and more than 100 spectators to the Hyatt Regency Philadelphia at Penn's Landing, "so the consumer could set the price," Gollinger said. "We stopped it when we had achieved price points. We established the price we needed."

Even with 29 sales, just 51 of the 179 units in the building have changed hands to date. There are plenty more to haggle over, in the months and years to come.

But after 40 minutes with the bidders and more than 100 onlookers, Gollinger figured he'd gotten the best prices his client could expect for the day.

Gollinger's firm has also auctioned condos at Philadelphia's Murano and Phoenix buildings. At Waterfront Square, "there was a financing issue, and there was an irrational-exuberance issue. This one got caught in both," he concluded. "That's why it was necessary to reestablish market value."

They won't make as much as they'd hoped, but the sellers again have a foundation on which to build.

Connected

The younger Biden's new employer, Hill International, of Marlton, says he parlayed his fund-raising skills into a 38-year career "in business, real estate, politics and marketing." That included a hedge-fund firm, Paradigm Global Advisors L.L.C. (where now-Vice President Biden's son Hunter was also a partner). It all led James Biden to his new job as executive vice president of Hill's HillStone International L.L.C. unit.