sign of a thaw? 147 West 22 Street closes up 9% over 2006, 263 Ninth does not

it wasn‘t the renovation
The most astute (anal? persistent??) among the readers of Manhattan Loft Guy may have noticed that I have once again been updating my master list of loft closings, having added a hundred or more in the last week (I have a long ways to go, to fill in since mid-August, but I am essentially current back through December). [Click here for the Master List, a Google Docs spreadsheet; see my August 23, 2009 post, master list of Manhattan loft closings since November, for some limitations.]

In doing that detail work I have been pleased to note many, many paired sales (lofts that have a prior sale, in addition to a current sale). My (everlasting?) To-Do list includes a note to focus on the lofts that have sold twice in the last few years, starting with  a list or table. But I won’t wait for this one, as it may be (another?) sign of a ‘thaw’….

The Manhattan loft #3S at 147 West 22 Street sold last week for $1.75mm. While it is babbled as both a "stunning example of contemporary sophistication" and as "triple mint & meticulously renovated", that condition should not account for the fact that this January sale was 9.4% above the same loft’s sale in February 2006. For that prior sale, the babble went like this: a "perfect union of pristine design and sophisticated elegance … [that was f]eatured in Wallpaper* Magazine". (I am willing to assume that someone did not buy a Perfect Union in 2006 to gut and re-build it as a Stunning Example, but my point here depends on that assumption being correct.)

data point giveth, data point taketh away
Of course, immediately after having noted the 147 West 22 Street sale as maybe being (another?) sign of a ‘thaw’, I came across a parallel paired sale at The Heywood, 263 Ninth Avenue. There, the story is different. The "1,489 sq ft" Manhattan loft #4D at 263 Ninth Avenue also closed on January 25 and also sold earlier in 2006. The recent sale at $1.315mm was, in contrast to #3S at 147 West 22 Street, 5.3%% lower than the January 10, 2006 sale at $1,389,375. (Same condition, but the recent sale included a storage unit that sold separately in 2006 for $24,056, so the better comparison is $1.315mm to $1.413mm, a decline of 7%.)

Maybe these two data indicate that any thaw is variable, or perhaps that we are in a bit of a sideways market. Ask me again in 6 months what they meant….

© Sandy Mattingly 2010