55 Great Jones Street loft with unobstructed views + potential sells for $1,016/ft

reading between the lines, and pix
You could just “[p]aint and move right in” to the “2,300 sq ft” Manhattan loft on the 4th floor at 55 Great Jones Street “or [you could] update with your own vision”, as the broker babble outlines your options. But in view of the fact that StreetEasy has only two interior listing photos and no as-is floor plan (the listing floor plan is an “alternate”; the Corcoran website has the current floor plan [click on “2”] and 3 more interior photos), the smart money says you will at least update, and probably renovate. The “renovated bathrooms [and] open kitchen” notwithstanding, the babble is all about bones, and potential.

easily convertible to two or more bedrooms. Paint and move right in or update with your own vision, this flexible apartment with unobstructed light and views is an amazing opportunity. A manual pressure elevator opens up to your own full floor apartment with sixteen over-sized windows, hardwood floors, 11’+ ceilings, renovated bathrooms, open kitchen, W/D in apartment, and an open floorplan with north, east, south and west exposures. This intimate self-managed coop is located in the perfect NoHo location ….

Not that these choices made it hard for The Market to swallow this loft:

That’s 30 days to contract after a bidding war, to get $1,016/ft, $181,000 or 8% over the ask. Not hard to swallow at all.

old school includes self management, manual pressure elevator
I am not sure which fact about the building is a more potent indicator of an old school Manhattan loft building, that it is self-managed or that it has a manual pressure elevator. Each is fitting for a 7-story 6-unit coop that was formed (possibly by residents) in 1980. Even many of those pioneering coops have moved to professional management, rather than doing everything themselves or hiring their own professionals and maintenance workers. And people get tired of having to run a manual elevator back to the street level each time after they use it to get home with ‘stuff’. But not these hardy cooperators. (Yet.)

With all this ‘cooperation’, it is no wonder that the maintenance is $1,200/mo, a spare $0.52/ft that would put many other no-frills coops to shame. With one of the missing frills being a mortgage, the only part of the maintenance that will be tax deductible is for real estate taxes. That is a very conservative way shareholders to their successors.

don’t let the A.I.R. bogeyman get ya
It is nice to see a marketing campaign that both identifies a problem (“established AIR co-op”) and the practical (almost) solution (“AIR waivers are accepted”). It is a dirty little secret of the oh-so-hot Noho that there are buildings here zoned M1-A or M1-B, and subject to the same Artist in Residence restrictions for legal residential living in Joint Live Work Quarters For Artists as most of Soho.

That little wrinkle did not slow down the sale, or dampen the market, either.

© Sandy Mattingly 2012