43 West 21 Street penthouse loft dresses up (a little) to close up (a lot: $1.1 million!) since 2007

going all white on ya
I have been poring over the pictures and floor plans comparing the recent sale and June 2007 sale of the Manhattan loft at the top of 43 West 21 Street, trying to find seven figures of added value. No luck.

It will take a few clicks for you to track this penthouse loft, as the recent listing on StreetEasy is in the link above but the April 4 deed record is here, and you won’t find pix or floor plan from the StreetEasy link to the June 26, 2007 sale, but I can see them in our data-base. (Trust me. Please.) The main structural difference from 2007 to the present is that an old home office was opened up for the new den and the “renovated chef’s kitchen with center-island [that] is open to the entertaining area” was renovated by opening it up (taking down a column and low wall) and the island was (probably) rebuilt (at least, reshaped). Otherwise, the palette has been lightened up: walls painted, floors and stairs whitened.

If any other changes were made (including, whether the bathrooms were upgraded in any way) is not evident from the pictures or floor plans, as no other walls were moved or functions changed from 2007 to the present.

The result of that (modest) renovation and (cosmetic) lightening: what had been bought for $3.2mm in June 2007 was just sold for $4.3mm. Talk about bang for the buck!

fun with numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4 …?
As with the loft with a sequence of sales I hit yesterday (down and down 44 Walker Street loft closes after a year, off 7% since Peak), this loft has a long sales history. This one is much more linear than yesterday, starting with a developer’s sale 12 years ago:

• Nov 18, 1999 $1,672,500
• May 12, 2003 $2,250,000
• June 26, 2007 $3,200,000
• April 4, 2011 $4,300,000

I can’t see any description of the condition of the loft when it was sold either by the sponsor in 1999 or in the first resale in 2003, so I have no idea if the sequence of gains was just The Market, or included ‘earned’ premiums for improvements. But the gains are impressive, here expressed as a percentage of the former clearing price:

• May 12, 2003 34.5%
• June 26, 2007 42.2%
• April 4, 2011 34.4%

For ridiculous numbers, look at the cumulative gains over the 1999 sponsor sale:

• May 12, 2003 34.4%
• June 26, 2007 91.3%
• April 4, 2011 157%

inside and out
The loft is a duplex penthouse with two roof terraces, with the upper level apparently added to the 4-story building in the 1999 conversion. The bulk of the “2,691 sq ft” are on the 4th floor, which is a classic 22 foot wide Long-and-Narrow loft with 2 bedrooms at the back (north), one of which enjoys the sole side window, and plumbing on both long sides (kitchen east, bathrooms and laundry west). The (new?) 5th floor has a master suite and a library that is open to below, both set back from the building edges by those two terraces that (per the prior listing) total “1,000 sq ft”. There is a huge skylight over the living room and a second skylight over the interior stairway.

Comping is very difficult in a 4-unit building, but the last sale was the “2,055 sq ft” 3rd floor, which sold in a nuclear-winter-challenged sale on July 24, 2009 for $1.5mm (listing here, deed here) and on August 11, 2005 for $1.775mm. A very rough estimate of the comparative values of the 3rd floor versus the penthouse duplex, based on the 2005 3rd floor sale and splitting the difference between the 2003 and 2007 penthouse sales, is that the penthouse is worth a bit more than half again as much as the 3rd floor, with that premium split between the larger space, the two terraces, and the greater ‘drama’ afforded by the duplex + skylighted penthouse. (Did I mention that this estimate is very rough??)

up, up and away!
That 3rd Floor vs. Penthouse thing should not distract you from the real fun comparison here: the four clearing prices of the Penthouse over time. That is some serious appreciation! If that last bump is due more to interior improvements than to changing market reaction to (essentially) the same loft, I can’t see that in the old pix, description or floor plan.

© Sandy Mattingly 2011