245 Seventh Avenue loft sells after freezing in nuclear winter

not a new story, but stay for the floor plan porn
The Manhattan loft #2A at 245 Seventh Avenue that sold on April 12 at $1.675mm has a history that includes a nearly perfectly mis-timed sales campaign, starting within a few weeks of the Lehman bankruptcy filing, showing enough motivation to drop the price 3 times, but finally succumbing to the frigid market by going off the market on March 9, 2009. Long-time Manhattan Loft Guy readers will anticipate the punch-line: the sale price achieved last month was higher than the last unsuccessful asking price in 2009, and well within normal negotiating range of the asking prices in place for the last 4+ months the loft was then offered for sale.

Here is that ancient history for this “1,800 sq ft” loft:

Doubters beware: if you wonder if the recent sales price was really within normal negotiating range of the asking prices, note the price from which the recent $1.675mm sale was negotiated to a contract within 7 weeks of being brought back to market:

Of course The Market froze up after Lehman. Of course transaction volume plummeted across the Manhattan residential real estate market in the last quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009.

Had the current market conditions existed two years ago, #2A would have sold for $1.675mm (or thereabouts) two years ago, instead of languishing as low as $1.629mm.

Props to the seller for really testing the current market at $1.775mm before discovering that the market valued #2A at $1.675mm.

fun facts
The loft sold twice before:

• Aug 16, 2005 $1.575mm
• May 13, 1997 $482,000

You’d think (or, Manhattan Loft Guy would think …) that a loft that sold in 2005 at $1.575mm would do better than a 6.4% gain from 2005 to 2011. But you’d (I’d) be wrong. I can’t help but wonder if, when #2A was brought back in January, The Market anticipated that the seller would drop (be negotiable) from that $1.775mm based on the 2008-09 price drops.

wonderful, wonderful
I also can’t help but wonder at what price this loft would have cleared had it been exposed to The Market at The Peak … if it had come out in February 2008 instead of October that year. You can’t prove me wrong, so I am betting at least $1.775mm.

damned awkward footprint
It could not have helped to sell this loft that #2A has one of the more challenging layouts for a loft. There is one big window in the smaller bedroom and one really big window in the ‘master’ bedroom; there are no other windows in the place! I wonder if most people would not put the master bedroom back where it belongs, where the (dark) family room is, and leave at least the larger window to bring light into the living area. And, probably, stick the second ‘bedroom’ back there too, reconfiguring the family room / walk-in closet area into two bedrooms.

While I am at it, I suspect most people would chafe enough at 1,800 sq ft with only one full bath to turn that half into a full, unless that half is hemmed in on both sides by structural elements.

The equivalent unit on the 3rd floor is a bit larger than #2A (“2,002 sq ft” vs. “1,800 sq ft”), with most of those extra feet behind the full bath. The main advantage of #3A over #2A (even more than the extra feet, per se) is that #3A has 3 windows in the back, permitting the two bedrooms to go back there easily. (Note that there is an extra full bath in #3A, so it should be a simple matter to expand the #2A half to a full.)

Rationalizing the floor plan to take advantage of the back windows was worth rather less than I would have anticipated. #3A, with those (to me) significant layout advantages over #2A, sold on August 5, 2010 for $1.92mm, or $959/ft. With all its challenges, the slioghtly smaller #2A sodl last month, as we have seen, at $1.675mm, or $930/ft.

Does that (small) spread make sense to you?

© Sandy Mattingly 2011