40 West 17 St sells, but it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas … 2004

June 2004 price + 6% = July 2009
The Manhattan loft #9A at 40 West 17 Street sold in June 2004 for $1.435mm and last week for $1.525mm. Let that sink in for a second….

I know you can’t really do this reverse-extrapolation, but if you make a rough estimate that 7 months after the June 2004 sale the loft might have appreciated by 6%, you get to the Christmas season 4.5 years ago. And you get to last week’s clearing price of $1.525mm. Which has me humming seasonally-inapporpriate diddies.

not that they didn’t try
They tried for a more exciting, a more modern price, asking $1.895mm when they came to market in late October. They dropped to $1.695mm after New Year’s, and held there until negotiating a 10% discount to get the deal in March that just closed at $1.525mm.

fits to a "T"
The loft has a somewhat unusual footprint, with windows along the top of a "T" shape that is wide enough to have split bedrooms and a living area wider than 20 feet. The kitchen and baths are along the narrower long axis, away from the windows. In a clever turn-of-phrase, the broker-babble describes this as a "strikingly logical floor plan" (paging Leonard Nimoy …). The finishes look pretty good (the kitchen is "superbly appointed"), but the price history suggests they are essentially unchanged since the prior sale in 2004.

There’s no overall measurement given with this listing (though the floor plan has room sizes), but the last "A" line to be marketed was listed as "1,500 sq ft". That makes for an interesting comparison with the last "B" line unit to sell, a loft that only technically overlapped the marketing of #9A.

were the neighbors a distraction?
#8B traded on December 8, after starting on October 1 — a rocket marketing success. The contract for #8B was signed October 29, two days before #9A came to market. I wonder if the rapid success of #8B caused #9A to over-shoot The Market….

#8B is said to be "2,200 sq ft" and looks to be at least the equal of #9A in finishes (I will see your "superbly appointed" kitchen and raise you a Viking double oven plus 6 burner Viking cooktop plus Viking hood …). #8B started modestly at $1.8mm, but the contract signed 4 weeks later was at $2.035mm. Very shrewd, no?

Note that two days after #8B signed a $2.035mm contract off an asking price of $1.8mm, #9A came to market at $1.895mm. Assuming that the "measurements" of the two lofts are at least proportionate at "2,200 sq ft" and "1,500 sq ft", you’d expect #9A to come in under about $1.5mm (assuming condition, light and view are roughly equivalent). From that perspective, #9A did more than OK at $1.525mm, the false start at $1.895mm notwithstanding. Indeed, if anything, #9A out-performed #8B on a nominal price-per-foot basis. It just took a while longer.

© Sandy Mattingly 2009