Waiting to see results of 350 Park bidding.

Bids for 350 Park Avenue were only due this week, but investment sales brokers and real estate investors alike are already speculating whether the rigid process being used to sell the 540,000 s/f building will take a bite out of its sales price.

Upon the insistence of the building's owners, a partnership whose controlling member is the Kuwaiti Investment Authority, a CB Richard Ellis team led by Bill Shanahan and Darcy Stacom, will be selling the property in an unusual one-round auction in which an opening round bid is as good as a final offer.

Bidders were also required to put down a $500,000 deposit just to receive the building's financial and leasing information, material that is typically freely available to potential buyers. Investors use this information, which outlines a property's current cash flow and provides data that can help project potential future earnings, to determine how much they are willing to pay.

Even in a market where supply has been outstripped by demand and buyers, for fear of losing a deal, have accepted the added rigors of operating in a competitive environment such as shorter due diligence periods and sparser contract negotiations, many real estate investors were nonetheless put off by the Kuwaiti Investment Authority's rigidity.

"You usually don't like to start a sale by pissing everyone off," one broker remarked.

Some institutional buyers aren't even set up to shell out such a significant deposit so early in a bidding process. But then the auction's method is meant to be selective, the broker said, in order to separate the "pretenders from the contenders"--a luxury a seller is afforded in today's market, where nearly every office asset put up for sale attracts a horde of investors.

Some feel that the single round bidding process being used was another ill-advised decision by the seller because it prevents the kind of bidding war that can ratchet prices beyond a sale's initial expectations. The method differs markedly from the typical process employed for most major building sales in the city, which uses multiple bidding rounds and encourages a maximum number of participants. Brokers still expect the building to yield between $800-$1000 per s/f.

KIA's last sale in the Manhattan, the $235 million disposition of 885 Third Avenue to Tishman Speyer in 2004, was executed in a single round bid and produced questions whether the authority realized the building's maximum value at the time.

Only a year later, Tishman Speyer recapitalized the building based on a $335 million valuation of the property, over 40% more than what they had paid.

Although Manhattan property had appreciated markedly in that time, some brokers and investors concluded that the building's jump in value could also be credited in part to a cushy sale price.