floor plan envy, as 110 West 25 Street loft cuts + sells

a fan letter for 2 dimensions
Savor, if you will, the floor plan of the Manhattan loft on the 4th floor at 110 West 25 Street, a “2,500 sq ft” loft that sold on March 7 at $2.4mm after having more than a little trouble discovering the right price. How do I love it? Let me count the ways ….

• the shape is nearly ideal, not really long enough or narrow enough to be a Long-and-Narrow, but neither is it square (a footprint that can result in vast open spaces, far from windows)
• there are 20 windows, arrayed so that the longest length of exterior wall without a window in any room in the entire loft is that 10 foot length in both the second and third bedrooms
• although most of the plumbing is concentrated on the public stairwell wall (kitchen, master bath, ‘public’ bath) there is also a stack to service a bathroom for the two other bedrooms
• the width permits spacious rooms; many of them (the smallest spaces other than closets are the bedrooms at 10 x 16 feet and the den at 13 ft square

I’ve only got two issues: the main one is that the open kitchen opens to more than half the length of the living room (not ideal, but not bad); the other is that the bathroom next to the kitchen opens east, into the living room (I bet they could not have done it with the door opening south).

Did I mention that I love this floor plan??

price discovery can be painful
The Market liked it too, but not as well as the sellers hoped. They came out on October 4 at $2.995mm, dropped to $2.795mm after one month and $2.495mm after another two months, before striking the deal at $2.4mm with a contract by  February 9. Not a long campaign, but it cleared off 20% from the first ask.

if you prefer more light + views and a large terrace …
The 12th floor penthouse sold a year ago for $3.885mm. Obviously, the 4th floor sellers thought that was a better comp (less determined by higher floor light and views, and by a “1,500 sq ft” roof terrace) than it turned out to be. Allowing $200,000 of the difference to being nearly 100 feet higher, that rooftop terrace was worth about $1.2mm; if you assume a more generous differential based on floor height as a $400,000 premium of the 12th floor over the 4th, the terrace was worth ‘only’ a million bucks.

Comping is hard.

I have often said that outdoor space is something that some people will over-pay for. Apparently, the market a year ago was deep enough for the penthouse sellers to find such a buyer, as the outdoor space was valued at least at $750/ft, under my assumptions above, for outdoor space that cannot be accessed without going up the common stair or in the elevator..

Note one other thing about the 12th floor floor plan: the half bath is more or less where that troublesome (to me) 4th floor full bath is; while it opens toward the living room, as a half bath there is more separation so that it does not open into the living room. Sometimes a half is better than a whole…

Did I mention that I love this floor plan??

© Sandy Mattingly 2011