TheAskingPrice.com

Real Estate Weekly, Jan 19, 2000 by Lois Weiss

TheAskingPrice.com expects to launch on February 1st with over 100 pages of listings, including those for the office condominiums at Donald J. Trump's latest Tower of Power, Trump International Plaza at the General Motors Building.

Former investment banker and real estate broker Richard Tola, who founded the web site and is its CEO, says Trump signed on for the "platinum listing" at $199 a month. "He's taking the best," says Tola, who will be working out the marketing plan for the condominium unit bundles this week. Free "gold' listings are also available to owners.

TheAskingPrice.com is about being "simple, direct and inexpensive," says Tola. "We really want to be a community for professionals. We're going to focus on providing the platforms and building the relationships, and then expand to the other professionals within the community."

Along with listings, the site's services include non-binding auctions, from which the owner can deal directly with the participants, the broadcasting of listings, a preferred membership "which has perks," and a 1031 exchange platform.

But Trump sloughs off the Internet listing as being an "unproven" marketplace format. While the condominium units have garnered a lot of interest already, and they have "potentially a lot of sales to make," Trump has to make a decision over the next two months about whether to sell or not to sell, because "once we sell it, we never have it" again.

"We are holding back because we are getting over $100 a foot (for leases)," he says. "We did one at $85, and now we're doing one at $101 - the highest in the city by far. I bought based on a pro forma of $60 a foot and now we're over a $100. It's been amazing."