small loft sale at 252 Seventh Avenue is another double-sided bold name transaction

once more into The Merc
The New York Observer has the news about a recent sale of a small loft at the Chelsea Mercantile, sold by a photographer to an HBO executive. (I have heard of one half of these bolds, this time.) As usual, I am less interested in the names and more interested in the numbers. The key number in the June 6 sale of the “1,001 sq ft” Manhattan loft #7N at 252 Seventh Avenue at $1.295mm is the spread between that sale and the price the photographer paid on October 3, 2008, $1.2mm. That 2008 sale was post-Peak and even post-Lehman, although the contract had to have been signed before Lehman’s bankruptcy filing. It may have been a private sale or a well-marketed FSBO; there’s no way to tell from our listing system or from StreetEasy, so there is no way to tell if that represented fair value at the time without doing more work than I am willing to do this morning about the late 2008 micro-market at The Merc. (Sue me.)

east light, no view
We do have a way to put the recent sale at $1,295/ft within the 2012 micro-market at The Merc, of course, as I have done a series of posts about the ways that views (or their lack) sharply influence values here, ranging from courtyard “views” around $1,040/ft to Statue of Liberty views at $1,730/ft. Loft #7N looks at neither pole, but boasts of an “Eastern exposure [that] fills the apartment with sunlight from 4 extra-large Thermopane tilt-and-turn windows”. Note that it says nothing about what is outside those windows, beyond light, but that is the 12-story 245 Seventh Avenue across the street from the Merc in the lead picture.

You can start with my blog posts of December 21, 2011 and January 20, but you can find all Manhattan Loft Guy posts tagged “Chelsea Mercantile” here.

Probably the most interesting comparable sale for #7N at $1,295/ft was #4J at $1,283/ft on November 1, 2011, a sale I hit in my November 22, 2011,uber-renovated (?) loft at Chelsea Mercantile sells 7% above Peak. That one is actually a 1-bedroom + home office, as opposed to #7N as just a home office, and boasts more about light (“sunblasted“) than views, like #7N. As that title says, #4J was uber-renovated (the locution is from the babble, not from me).Yet the sunblasted+uber-4J sold for a tiny bit less than the filled-with-light 7N.

With #7N having gone quickly (to market February 28, full-price contract by April 6), I suspect that either the photographer drove a hard bargain or the HBO executive really wanted the space. Either way, strong sales price for #7N.

if NYO wrote babble
An agent could strip out the specific person in favor of a more generic description, but this approach to drafting broker babble is certainly bold:

The airy, open layout looks perfect for Ms. Nevins. Modern and no-nonsense, it’s just the kind of place we’d picture a woman who is sometimes referred to as the “de Medici of Television” for her stalwart support of non-fiction filmmakers.

“Modern and no nonsense”! I don’t think I have the courage, but with the right seller, maybe ….

© Sandy Mattingly 2012