Hudson Heights
200 Cabrini Boulevard
1-bedroom, 1-bath, 850-square-foot co-op. Ask: $255,000. Sell: $250,000. Maintenance: $807. One week on market.
"There was a bidding war," says agent Hikari Hathaway about this apartment in Castle Village, a 1939 cluster of five towers way up at 181st Street. But wait -- how does a bidding war end below the asking price? "The seller decided that she liked this couple so much that she'd sell it to them," explains Hathaway, who works for Simone Song Properties. The other bidder, she says, was making offers sight-unseen, whereas the final buyers, a retired couple giving up their rental pied-à-terre downtown and moving in from Long Island, had spent some time in the neighborhood. They were particularly fond of all the park space in the area, which is an exquisitely carved stone's throw from the Cloisters.
CHRISTOPHER BONANOS

Upper East Side
45 East End Avenue
2-bed, 2-bath, 1,400-square-foot co-op. Ask: $850,000. Sell: $795,000. Charges and taxes: $1,704. One day on market.
The water views at this "boathouse," as Linda Baron of the Baron Group at Halstead likes to call it, were enough to impress even a New England buyer. The couple, who moved from Connecticut and still summer in Nantucket, get wall-to-wall East River on a mid-level floor -- a sweet deal, says Baron, because "the intimacy would be lost on a high floor." No renovations were needed: The seller, who relocated to Saudi Arabia on business, left the place so impeccable, "you'd think he had $10 million under the carpet," says Baron.
JOY ARMSTRONG

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