NYT article on condo end game

This weekend the New York Times had an article on the condo end game; delays, defects and dissatisfaction, Condos, Brand-New Yet Not So Perfect:

WHEN dozens of buyers put down payments on apartments in the glassy new condominium tower called the Link at 310 West 52nd Street, they were looking forward to living with features like floor-to-ceiling windows and a meditation garden. But six months after they started moving in, they are still living in a construction site with an unfinished lobby, uncarpeted hallways and no access to the garden that was supposed to help them escape from the city’s stresses.

What I find disconcerting is this quote,

He said that the most frustrating part was not knowing what caused the delays. He searched the city’s Buildings Department Web site for clues.

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Greg Baron, one of the project’s developers, said he did not feel comfortable explaining reasons for delays to buyers who did not have construction backgrounds and therefore would not understand the project’s complexity.

I’m sure this rings true for a lot of buyers at projects like Noma and the Parc.

Both the projects I have bought at have had slight delays and in this day and age there is no way for people to keep a secret. Instead of holding back information and waiting until the appropriate message has been crafted (which apparently can take quite some time) developers and sales reps should just have a building blog where they give us the gory details in real time. We’re all grown ups and I’m sure you’d rather we heard from you instead of having the buyers all emailing amongst themselves blowing themselves up into a big tizzy because we’re going off third hand information from a friend of a friend who knows an architect on the project who said that it was all hands on deck and that there was no way the team would be done on time.