Last weekend, in the midst of a blustery snowfall and National Football League playoff games, a steady stream of prospective buyers visited Observatory Place, a new condominium at First Avenue and 104th Street. They stroked the stone kitchen counters, glided across on the bamboo floors and gazed out of the large glass windows at views that include glimpses of the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge, formerly the Triborough, at least from the upper floors.  Paul Hennessee, a music teacher at the Spence School, toured several one-bedroom apartments, a sleeping baby in the carrier on his chest. Mr. Hennessee and his wife, Rebecca Weis, an adolescent psychiatrist at Bellevue Hospital, were priced out of their Manhattan rental a few years ago, and have been renting half of a two-family house in Astoria, Queens, a long commute for them both.  They expected to have to wait a few more years until they could afford to buy, but with mortgage rates now so low (as low as 4.75 percent last week for a 15-year fixed mortgage on a condominium, with no points) the family of four decided to look for a modest one-bedroom.  The couple were willing to sleep in the living room if they had to. “We will do the Murphy bed,” Dr. Weis said. “We are looking while the mortgage rates are good.”  Jessica Armstead, a broker at the Corcoran Group, showed the couple a two-bedroom apartment whose floor was lined with blue painter’s tape, evidence of the developer’s plan to divide it into two apartments, a $466,000 one-bedroom and a $340,000 studio, since small one-bedrooms had already sold out.  As they toured that Saturday afternoon, Ms. Armstead’s cellphone kept ringing as the doorman announced other buyers arriving to look at the apartments. The Hennessees drifted away, but said they had plans to keep looking for apartments the next day.  “Our traffic has turned around,” Ms. Armstead said, adding that agents had seen higher turnouts in the last two weeks than in pervious months.  At three tenement buildings on West 107th Street last weekend, buyers shuffled past one another as they climbed the narrow staircases, often up to the fifth floor, to look at newly renovated two-bedroom apartments in otherwise unrenovated buildings.  The buyers, some of whom said they had been priced out of the market in the boom years, were drawn back by low prices and the promise of deals.  “It is price, price, price,” said Jason Haber, a broker at Prudential Douglas Elliman. “We get five to 15 inquiries a day.”  At the buildings, Nos. 63 through 67 West 107th Street, between Manhattan and Columbus Avenues, prices for two-bedrooms range from $395,000 to $440,000, extraordinarily low for two-bedroom apartments in Manhattan. But the units were often narrow and small, typically 615 square feet.  The apartments are among a number that Mr. Haber and his group are marketing on the West Side and Harlem in noneviction conversions of rental buildings owned by the Pinnacle Group, which has been embroiled in disputes with tenant groups over evictions in its buildings in the last few years.  “There will be some room for negotiations,” Henry Orenstein, a broker in Mr. Haber’s group, told several buyers.  While brokers used to cater to financiers and hedge fund managers, they are now singing the praises of the common worker of far more modest income.  “The meat-and-potatoes buyers are coming out right now,” said Kristina Leonetti, a broker at the Corcoran Group.  Inge Colsen, who works in music marketing, went into contract a few days before Christmas with Ms. Leonetti’s help on a corner one-bedroom on the 10th floor of a new 14-story building at 358 Grove Street in Bushwick, Brooklyn, with sweeping views over the surrounding low-rise apartment buildings.  Her parents, who live in the Netherlands, had been pressing her for years to get her own apartment, sending her e-mail messages with listings from brokers and Craigslist. They wanted her to buy because they were not keen on the sometimes roommate-packed rentals she has lived in, some in Northside Williamsburg when it was considered dangerous, she said.  When she finally decided to buy, with the help of her parents, she said they found “the market was on their side.” With Ms. Leonetti’s help she was able to negotiate the price from $353,000 to about $270,000, a 24 percent discount. She closed on Wednesday.  Another would-be Brooklyn buyer, Tarsha Carvey, an executive assistant in a lobbying and consulting firm, Reiter/Begun Associates, had been in the market for a studio. But she is now angling for a deal on a one-bedroom condominium, at be@schermerhorn, a new development in two buildings on Schermerhorn Street, near Hoyt Street in downtown Brooklyn.  The fifth-floor apartment has an asking price of $389,000. But she is hoping to get it for less, “with the market being where it is.”  “At this moment it is totally favorable,” she said. Like many other buyers active in this segment of the market, she said she preferred a condominium over a co-op because condos place fewer financial requirements on buyers. And her broker, Ms. Leonetti, is working with the developer to make sure the project qualifies for F.H.A. loans that could allow her to put less cash down.  There is no question that buyers are firmly in charge.  Barbara Rellstab, a real estate broker and former actress, is expecting a baby in May. She fell in love with the first apartment that she looked at. It is a 1,352-square-foot one-bedroom apartment with a den and a private rear garden on the first floor of an elegantly restored former church at 2056 Fifth Avenue and West 127th Street in Upper Manhattan.  The asking price was $699,000, but she bought it for $9,000 less. The final price was $270,000, or 28 percent, below its asking price as of March 2008. Prices might fall further, she said, but she bought it late last month. “I need the apartment now,” she said.  Some buyers are driven to buy in the current market because they feel rents have not fallen as fast as sale prices.  Two years ago when his lease was up, James Bobrowski, an accountant, looked for apartments with Lawrence Rich, a broker at Prudential Douglas Elliman. But the market was over his head.  With his lease up again, Mr. Bobrowski went looking again and at the end of October signed a contract to buy a one-bedroom apartment in a high-rise at 240 East 40th Street, for $700,000, Mr. Rich said, 5 percent off the $740,000 asking price. He closed last month.  Still, a great uncertainty for buyers in the current market is whether prices will fall further, as Ms. Rellstab fears.  In the slowdown of the 1980s, prices continued to fall over several years, especially for smaller, less desirable apartments. But that was at least in part because a construction boom had created a glut of studios and one-bedroom apartments.  In recent years, many developers have concentrated on larger, more expensive apartments.  But it isn’t clear when a market hits bottom until after it happens. “The minute everyone feels the market has leveled off, you are going to see people coming out of the woodwork to buy,” Mr. Rich said.  As for Mr. Hennessee and Dr. Weis, after exploring Observatory Place on Saturday, they ventured out to visit six other apartments on Sunday.  On the way, they came across an open house at another new condominium, the Mirada, at 161 East 110th Street at Lexington Avenue, much closer to the subway than Observatory Place. Now they hope to buy a one-bedroom there.  “We are pretty set on it,” Mr. Hennessee said.
Spurred by falling real estate prices and low mortgage rates, first-time buyers are cracking open the piggy bank earlier than planned. Traffic at open houses has stepped up.