price discovery is (still) a female dog / flailing in Flatiron
not finding buyers at that level, or that one
There’s a lovely classic Manhattan loft for sale (nearly all of) the last 9 months. It has always been difficult to value lofts in small buildings that don’t have a lot of turnover, but this one proved particularly challenging for the seller and agent.
When they started in the glow of the embers of Lehman, they were asking $3.6mm for the mints, renovation and light typical of "very nice" lofts in this area. I can’t imagine there was much activity (given the history as it unfolded), but it took about five months for them to drop the price to a place there might be some buyers. Given that they dropped $650,000, I’d say they were (finally) convinced there were no buyers near $3.6mm.
As it happens, there were no buyers in the range of $2.95mm either, as the price is now about 30% south of where they started.
I ruminated about the problems of price discovery a month ago (April 11, the problem of price discovery (hint: you have to pay attention)), expressing the hope that that post would get me closer to doing:
This ain’t that long-ish post, but it is illustrative of the problem. The seller of the (so far) 30% off loft is represented by an experienced and successful agent. Yet they have burned nine critical months in a weakening (for sellers) market not finding the price range at which buyers will take their hands out of their pockets. That makes this loft a candidate for the too pushy …? thread.
© Sandy Mattingly 2009
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