I don't see anything about the timeline of these purchases, which seems like a critical detail to me. Most NYC purchases are 1 month+ affairs, and it's not unusual for it to stretch to 3 months or even longer. I'd like to know the date they initiated a property search, went on-contract, and closed the sale.
If you wanted to be sure of closing before the official announcement, you'd have to start your search more like 6 months ahead of time. I doubt even Amazon itself was sure of the location that far in advance. Maybe they had already decided to move there with no knowledge of the HQ2 location at all?
Or have they even closed on these properties? It's more plausible that they could learn the information, start a search, and get a purchase contract signed in a week or two if they were in a rush and not too picky. Then they would be fairly well guaranteed to be able to complete the purchase at a pre-announcement price. Assuming that the announcement does infact affect the price - this isn't that huge of a corporate move for the NYC market. But that also means that the purchases could fall through if there are legal questions about it.
If you wanted to be sure of closing before the official announcement, you'd have to start your search more like 6 months ahead of time. I doubt even Amazon itself was sure of the location that far in advance. Maybe they had already decided to move there with no knowledge of the HQ2 location at all?
Or have they even closed on these properties? It's more plausible that they could learn the information, start a search, and get a purchase contract signed in a week or two if they were in a rush and not too picky. Then they would be fairly well guaranteed to be able to complete the purchase at a pre-announcement price. Assuming that the announcement does infact affect the price - this isn't that huge of a corporate move for the NYC market. But that also means that the purchases could fall through if there are legal questions about it.