another sign that 2010 is not 2009, as 60 West 15 Street loft sells

today’s trend: trying again might work
Yesterday’s post, 12 examples of the (rapid) velocity of the Manhattan loft market, provided data confirmation that the velocity of the Manhattan loft market was pretty high, at least for the last three months. Today I want to talk about a different phenomenon that also confirms that the 2010 market (so far) has been very different form the 2009 market.

The Manhattan loft on the 3rd floor at 60 West 15 Street had been on the market last year, from April to November, asking $3.5mm, proving that that was the wrong price in that market. When they brought it back this year (January 22) and found a contract within 7 weeks (March 11), they proved they had found the right price, right?

Right, indeed, but the successful 2010 asking price was the same $3.5mm as the unsuccessful 2009 asking price, and it was pretty successful, indeed, as it generated a deal at $3.45mm, a mere 1.4% discount.

The loft is said to be "3,133 sq ft" of "beyond triple mint" that is not quite a classic Long-and-Narrow, with a master bedroom that juts out of one narrow side, and three windows on one long side (enough to have a windowed kitchen and two bedrooms on that long wall). That is one huge kitchen (19×24 ft), described with a nice sleight of hand (if you like broker babble sleight of hands) (note my bold): "a gourmet kitchen the likes of which is found in the pages of Metropolitan Home!" Sleight!

the mints have it
The condition must be awfully nice, as the loft sold on June 23 at $1,100/ft. Not bad for a coop loft in a no-amenities small building (5 units) in east Chelsea. Especially as the 4th floor sold in May 2009 at only $1.95mm as a gut renovation candidate ("design a masterpiece"), as there is an awful lot of room between $1.95mm + reno and $3.45mm with three mints.

On the other hand, the mints were more powerful (and presumably more fresh) in August 2005, when the 3rd floor sold for $3.595mm. For those scoring at home, that’s 4.2% of slippage from August 2005 to June 2010.

back to my point
The trend of which 60 West 15 Street #3 is a part is that at least some prices that were unsuccessful in 2009 were successful in 2010, showing that the first half of 2010 was a stronger market (more active buyers) than the market in 2009. I say ‘trend’ because I have seen this before, and noted it on at least two prior occasions.

In my June 30, Chelsea House kinda sorta holds its own, reveals Truths in The Market, about #8D at 130 West 19 Street, I described that loft as

In fact, in that June 30 post, I linked to my June 15, 808 Broadway seller bites painful bullet, closes off 15% since 2006, about another poster child:

there’s always another hand
On the other hand, just to prove that any generalization about the market cannot apply to all transactions, there are the two identical lofts at 129 Lafayette Street that sold at identical prices, though one sold in November 2009 and the other on June 3, 2010, which I hit in my June 16, 129 Lafayette sells but NOT because of the designer (contra The Observer). In that case, the market reaction to the identical lofts was identical, despite the very different market conditions when the lofts went to contract in September 2009 and April 2010. Either that pair of sales is an outlier, or just maybe that was a too-subtle-to-be-noticed indication last September that the nuclear winter was ending.

If an outlier, I am not going to worry: there are always outliers. I am confident that there is a trend for some unsuccessful 2009 prices to be successful in 2010. (Of course, some unsuccessful 2009 prices were very wrong, to a degree that can’t be ‘cured’ by bringing them back in 2010.)

© Sandy Mattingly 2010