hard to argue with success, as owner sells 29 East 22 Street with NO BROKERS (no “please”?)

much as I’d like to
I can appreciate that owners want to “save” money by not listing with an agent, and even that some owners are able to do it. (Most owners who go FSBO put less money in their pocket, but that’s a longer story.) The owner who sold the “1,600 sq ft” Manhattan loft #10S at 29 East 22 Street on November 21 took pretty horrible photos but got it done: to market on May 27 at $1.75mm, in contract by June 25, and closed a month ago for $1.7mm. That’s 4 weeks to contract at $1,062/ft in a 20-unit coop in which the last sale overlapped with this one, as the larger (“2,300 sq ft”) loft #5N got only $2.3mm on September 5. My calculator says that #10S at $1,062/ft sold at a higher price per foot than #5N at $1,000/ft, without taking into account the sales fee on #5N.

Bad photos or no, dollars are dollars, and more dollars are more dollars. Nicely played, ma’am; nicely played.

some (one!) would criticize everything but the result
The seller babble was hardly poetic, but (again) you can’t argue with success. Potential buyers were told that this loft was all about the bones, and the sun, and the new windows. The rest the new owner would be responsible for, this implies:

Very sunny spacious coop loft apartment. 1,600 square feet, 2 bedrooms and extra room/bedroom/office, 2 bathrooms,kitchen, dining room, and living room. Washing machine and dryer in apartment, new windows, air-conditioning units, spacious closets and beautiful common rooftop deck with Manhattan skyline views. Centrally located in the heart of Gramercy with convenient access to restaurants,groceries, pharmacies, dry cleaners, parks, buses and subways.

The floor plan has funky angles and changes in height that are consistent with a sensibility from the 1980s (or earlier), with the major limitation being a single exposure. Fortunately, the south wall of windows is the longest wall in the loft, so fits two bedrooms while still leaving room for a 27 foot living room. (The third “bedroom” is interior.) If anything other than the windows is newer than the 1980s, it is not apparent from the babble or the photos. One more time:

Nicely played, ma’am; nicely played.

That last sale in the building was the subject of my September 18, 29 East 22 Street loft sellers take the money and run (up 41% since 2010 purchase), and I also hit that loft #5N when it set that low, in my May 11, 2010, 29 East 22 Street loft closes off 40%. There’s a long and ugly story to be told about that loft, but the main take-away for present purposes is that the “2,300 sq ft” #5N was professionally exposed to the same market in which #10S was offered (though they only overlapped briefly) and sold at a lower dollar per foot value. #5N came out on March 21 at $2.395mm, found a contract by June 7 (a week after #10S came out), and closed on September 5 at $2.3mm.

As offered, the much larger loft #5N had similar utility as #10S, with 2 bedrooms plus and interior room, and 2 baths. The babble notes the kitchen is “modern” but is otherwise silent about finishes, hinting broadly that there is updating to be done even for someone who did not take the hint from the two alternative floor plans to do a major renovation (hint, hint). If you look at the old listing in my May 11, 2010 post you will see that #5N was not changed in between sales in 2010 and 2012, and that it then explicitly needed TLC (no hinting required there).

Again: #5N at $1,000/ft, before expenses; #10S at $1,062/ft, before expenses that (presumably) did not include a sales fee.

a building for do-it-yourself-ers
Apart from #5N in 2010, the 3 sales at this 20-unit Flatiron coop from mid-2009 through 2011 were all done without public marketing, making a more extended comp analysis than #10S v. #5N v. #5N more difficult. Loft #7S was sold to the downstairs neighbors for (only!) $1,333,750 14 months ago; those #7S buyers bought #6S in September 2009 at $1.245mm from sellers who did not use a broker, and in between loft #4N sold for $1.765mm in October 2010.

Without public marketing there is no way to know the conditions of these lofts, or even their size. (StreetEasy thinks #4N is 100 sq ft smaller than #5N.) But they were likely not much more primitive than #10S or #5N, and they all sold at much lower values than #10S.

Nicely played, ma’am; nicely played.

© Sandy Mattingly 2012