The desperate tale of Philly condo for sale

Adam Friedman is desperate to sell his East Falls condo. After two years of runarounds with real estate agents, a still-sinking market and a lack of offers, Adam Friedman, 32, decided to do something about it.

He created a trivia website.

“I can’t go up to people on the street and say, ‘I’ve got a condo for sale. Are you looking for something?’” Friedman said. “But I thought about what would give me an excuse to go up to everyone in Philadelphia and say, ‘This is something you might be interested in.’”

PhillyDailyTrivia.com, launched Aug. 1, asks one Philadelphia-centric question per day and prominently features a banner link advertising Friedman’s condominium in the Gypsy Lane Apartments complex.

But his efforts haven’t attracted any buyers so far.

“I only get a few hundred views a day at this point,” he said. “I advertise on Realtor.com, but I don’t know how much traffic I’m getting; my ad is buried with thousands of other ads from that site. I know the trivia site is drawing a certain amount of traffic, and it’s encouraging to see people going to it.”

“If a house is priced right, it will generally sell in the first 30 to 60 days. But he’s got a unique situation here. The condominium market has been hit the hardest,” Realtor Lisa Budnick of Prudential, Fox and Roach said. “The pool of available buyers has shrunk and there is an abundance of condos.”

Next up, renting

Friedman found himself stuck with the condo after buying it six years ago.

“My dad’s a finance guy, so he drilled it into my head to invest in real estate as soon as I could,”

Friedman said. “But I’m finding out that buying real estate is not the right investment for me.”

The television editor first decided to sell when he moved to Los Angeles for work. He had to quit his job and move back to the East Coast when efforts to rent or sell the unit failed. Now employed in Philadelphia, he hopes to return to renting so he has more freedom to travel and take out-of-state jobs, should the opportunities present themselves.

“It’s been so long that I’ve just been handcuffed to this thing,” he said. “Every decision I’ve made for the past six years has been influenced by this condo.”