11 West 20 Street loft zooms through market, beats higher floor

it’s the renovation, Mars
If you blinked in June, you missed the Manhattan loft on the 5th floor of 11 West 20 Street. This "2,205 sq ft" full floor condo loft came to market on June 2 and was in contract by June 18. Zoom!

The 5th floor closed on August 24 and (no surprise) got the full ask of $2.26mm. The broker babble is very enthusiastic about the "recent renovation by an award-winning architect", which renovation is probably might be why the 5th floor did better than the 8th floor when that loft closed on February 11.

about the renovation…
The layout is classic Long-and-Narrow: 2 bedrooms split the back wall, plumbing on both sides permits the second bedroom an en suite bath while lining up the master bath, half-bath and kitchen on the long wall opposite, a window-less office is opposite the public staircase, and the kitchen opens to the living room at the front, with four south-facing 9-foot windows. The classic loft features that remain are the barrel vaulted ceilings, brick walls, and hardwood flooring. The most interesting modern improvement is the externally vented stove … from the 5th floor in a 9-story building (!).

was it the windows, Mars?
Given that the 8th floor loft has exactly the same footprint as the 5th floor loft, they are a study in contrasts. First, as to market response; second as to layout.

The 8th floor came back to the market in November at $2.25mm and hardly lingered. In contrast to the full-price contract in 16 days on the 5th floor in June, the 8th floor took all of 5 weeks to get a contract at $2.15mm, only a slight discount. (When it had been offered earlier, the ask was $2.495mm, in the teeth of the Nuclear Winter, December 2008 to June 2009.) That slight discount from the 8th floor (last) ask amounted to a similarly slight discount compared to the recent sale of the renovated 5th floor. The less enthusiastic babble in the 8th floor listing descriptions suggests that the 8th floor was in a bit more ‘dated’ condition than the "recent renovation’ on the 5th floor, but the 8th floor floor plan is also rather awkward.

On the 8th floor, those four huge north windows in the back are ‘shared’ only by the master bedroom and master bath, leaving a second "bedroom" and an office without windows on one long wall. That suggests to me that the layout hasn’t changed in quite a while, after some prior owner built it out as a one-bedroom-with-other-spaces. The result is not a layout that should compete well with ‘real’ 2 bedroom floor plans. But in this case it actually did compete, allowing for an adjustment of $110,000 between the 5th and 8th floors due to condition.

It is also interesting how the 5th floor and 8th floor dealt with brick. On the 5th floor, the exposed brick walls are painted white and it appears that they uncovered the brick in the barrel vaults of the ceilings. On the 8th floor they merely sealed the (natural) brick walls, while leaving the barrel vaults painted white (not clear if the vaults are opened to the brick, or whether the vaults are covered). Different strokes, different folks.

how recent should "recent" be?
Look at the pictures for the 5th floor listing and see if they are not perfectly described by this listing description:

That is, of course, a listing description for the 5th floor.

But from 2006. Two thousand SIX. (Same floor plan as 2010, also.)

fun with numbers
The 5th floor was marketed like that from April 2006 to a contract in November (it sold on January 18, 2007). The asking price Way Back Then was $2.25mm, then $2.125m; the clearing price was that last ask, $2.125mm. Yes, that is (just) $135,000 less than the 5th floor just sold for.

It is no surprise that the 8th floor was in exactly the same condition in 2007 as when it sold last February. You can’t see more than one photo, but when the 8th floor was marketed in December 2006, our data base has the same (awkward) floor plan as the 2010 plan, and that single photo has the white ceilings and (natural) brick walls as in the recent marketing.

You noticed, just now, that the 5th floor went to contract November 2006 and that the 8th floor was marketed in December 2006, right? If the listing and contract dates can be believed (our data base matches what StreetEasy has), it was the 8th floor that zoomed through the market in 2006: listed December 12, contract December 18 … an almost impossible sequence. Of course, with that trajectory, it is a bit odd that the 8th floor closed on February 6, 2007 at $2.15mm, a slight discount from the $2.25mm ask.

That is $25,000 more than the 5th floor got 2 weeks earlier. And exactly the same price as the 8th floor got three years later. Let’s simplify (I hope, I hope):

to the trees!
I am going to go out on a short limb here and conclude that both sets of paired sales are within the range reasonable variation in a Manhattan real estate market that this not-very-efficient. In 2006/07 the spread was $25,000 in favor of the 8th floor. In 2009/10 the spread shifted in favor of the 5th floor, at $110,000. I would think that there would be a deeper market for a more recently renovated space with two real bedrooms (5th floor), so the 2010 spread is easier to explain.

And, yes, that is real money (especially $110,000), but normal variation (even 5%).

© Sandy Mattingly 2010