the master rules / unbalanced loft sells near $1,000/ft at 58 West 15 Street

master always makes the rules
The Manhattan loft on the 2nd floor at 58 West 15 Street that sold two weeks ago commanded a nice price for classic coop lofts on this block ($980/ft) but I was struck by the floor plan for this Long-and-Narrow footprint: the master suite takes up the entire 27 foot back wall, while the 5 windows on the front wall are split between the living room and second bedroom. Interesting choice. I wonder if the unconventional layout (in some ways, inconvenient layout) had any impact on the marketing or sales price.

typical footprint, unusual floor plan
At about 27 x 93 feet, 58 West 15 Street has a classic Long-and-Narrow footprint, with no side windows on the second floor. All plumbing is on the same long wall as the elevator and public stairwell, so the placement of plumbing stacks may limit the flexibility of potential floor plans.

However long ago this “recent” renovation was done (we’ve wondered before if agents know what that word means; this loft was also marketed as “[m]agnificent, elegantly renovated” in October 2006), on the one hand it does seem to be a wonderful renovation: “incredible attention to detail”, “exudes warmth and scale”, “intelligent design” (but not that intelligent design), “open chef’s kitchen, central-air conditioning, … 200 bottle wine storage and integrated sound and video with Crestron control”.

On the other hand, the intelligence behind the design created a narrower-than-normal living area at the front windows (due to sharing the front with the other bedroom) and a second bathroom that is a very long walk from pretty much everywhere in the loft. (Seriously: look at how many steps it would take to get there from the second bedroom, or from the kitchen after going around the media wall … 20 steps??) You get wide separation of the bedrooms (ideal for that teenager!), but the floor plan is not what many people would create in this foot print, if given free rein.

hard to tell if it hurt
With no sales in this building for at least several years, it is impossible to say that the unconventional layout impacted the sales price of the 2nd floor. (There are no prior sales evident on StreetEasy or Property Shark; our data base has only a single 58 West 15 Street sale, way back in March 1993, when the 4th floor sold for $440,000.) On the one hand, this “2,500 sq ft” loft did sell: it came to market on April 15 at $2.75mm, dropped to $2.5mm on May 26, and did not do much negotiating to get to the contract on September 21 that closed on November 9 at $2.45mm. On the other hand, these sellers had pre-Peak delusions of grandeur: that October 2006 listing I linked to above was asking $3.425mm.

On yet another hand (and next door), the 3rd floor loft at 60 West 15 Street cleared on June 23 at $3.45mm for “3,133 sq ft” in a more typical Long-and-Narrow layout: living room across the front of the 33 foot wide loft, two bedrooms share the (irregular) back wall, with a third bedroom taking advantage of a long side-wall window. That loft may have been in even better condition than the 2nd floor at 58 West 15 Street, as the babble deems it “Beyond Triple Mint!” and as publication worthy. But it is hard to say that the different layouts account for the $121/ft difference (12%) in trading prices, as opposed to the width, condition, extra bedroom and bathroom, or some other factor in favor of 60 West 15 Street.

© Sandy Mattingly 2010