ballyhooed loft masterpiece at 48 Bond Street off (only) 6% since peak

et tu, Berke?
When the Manhattan loft #7A at 48 Bond Street sold on February 23 at $2.395mm, it was the second resale in this much-praised 2007 new development that helped remake this corner of Noho, though the first resale of an original market level purchase. This loft was sold essentially at The Peak (April 4, 2008), though (as with most new development sales in those days) the contract was a full year earlier.

(That other resale was #8B, which sold in April at $2.1mm, probably off about 9%: original sponsor sale at $456,300 is either a typo or a ‘ friends-and-family deal [see below]; #7B sold in March 2008 at $2,291,062).

There may be hairs here not worth splitting in measuring against The Peak, as the resales that closed in the First Quarter of 2008 (The Peak) had contracts that were signed (typically) 2-4 months before they closed, but that peak pricing for 1Q08 sales also included new developments that, like #7A, were signed 2-7 months before those resale contracts. (You see why this numbers thing is hard??)

Suffice it for present purposes to note that that March 2007 contract on #7A puts this contract 6 to 9 months before the Peak, with a closing at the peak.

is David Lynch still out there?
The Miller might be able to identify twin peaks based on similar contract dates, one for resales and one for new developments, but if you (he) were going to go to all that trouble, maybe you’d need three peaks (and another director) to further separate the quicker-to-close condo contracts from coop contracts that are subject to the … errr … vagaries of coop board practice and schedules.

Let’s not ask The Miller to do that, as each qualification leads to another and we’d be down the rabbit hole (with that other director, Tim Burton?). Let’s stop and pull ourselves together before moving on to the next paragraph. (After you read that paragraph, written some hours ago when I started this post then tended to other things, I will share you the stuff that I forgot I had already written about this building. Confused? Some clarity is ahead, or your money back….)

a sponsor with (almost!) perfect timing
It is better to be lucky than good, in Manhattan residential real estate as in other things. Back in the day, in the months leading up to The Peak, many condo conversions were on the market but not all of which could finish early enough to close many units before market conditions changed. I can’t remember at the moment which new development I have previously mentioned as having fortuitous timing, but 48 Bond Street is one penthouse short of retiring the trophy: out of 17 original units, 15 closed by April 24, 2008 (several as full floor, 2-unit, combos), one closed in March 2009 at what looks very much like a Peak-level contract price, and I can’t find an attempt by the developer to sell the penthouse before 2010.

(Fortunately, I try not to finish blog posts without checking the Manhattan Loft Guy backlist [nearly FIVE years worth!!], so I came across my April 27, 2010, 48 Bond Street closes up 400% since 2008, but …, in which I dealt with that other resale #8B, and the fact that the 2008 sponsor sale was not a market transaction. This pair of paragraphs will sound familiar to readers who already had that earlier post in mind:

If there is another new development in Manhattan (lofts or otherwise) that timed The Market more perfectly than 48 Bond Street, I can’t think of it. The two key calendar points for The Market were The Peak (roughly, deals closing in the first quarter of 2008) and The Freeze (the nuclear winter that followed the Fall of the House of Lehman, September 2008).

There were 11 sales in this new development in March and April 2008; two were in July 2008; one was in October 2008 (on a pre-Lehman contract, no doubt). (The building was built as a 17-unit condop, but the two 6th floor units were sold combined in April 2008, the 9th floor sold as a unit in October 2008, and I don’t see any record of a 10th floor unit changing hands.)

At least I am consistent! That one included price change analysis, so is a bit more developed than the point I started to make today.

recalibrating micro-nabe values
Obviously, I had forgotten that 48 Bond Street was the example of nearly-perfect-timing I could not remember a few hours ago. But I found that April 27 post because I was looking for the post in which I talked about how this new development and another down the block drove up values for their (new) neighbors on Bond Street. Again I was consistent (a small value and occasional hobgobblin, but I will take it), as the cite and quote I was looking for are right there:

there went the neighborhood

Way back in November 2007 I observed that this project and another just down the street changed the values in the neighborhood. From that post of November 1, 2007, re-setting values at 57 Bond / there goes the neighborhood:

the new kids on the block that have driven prices very far very fast are 40 Bond and 48 Bond. 40 Bond is the 31-unit Ian Schrager project with "five star hotel services and amenities", in which original units can still be had for as little as $3.5mm for "1,269 sq ft" (#6D) or as much as $9.95mm for "3,288 sq ft’ (#9A). 48 Bond is the smaller (17 unit) Deborah Berke designed project that has a "3,141 sq ft" full floor unit left, asking $5.15mm.

My March 13, 2008, 30 Bond new on hot block / how hot a renovation?, focused on one of the beneficiaries of the new values, with a (clever?) locution for the phenomenon: Bond Magic.

Somehow this post has turned into an apologia about my memory. Nonetheless, I am going to close as I originally planned, with the note I stuck at the end as I started drafting this post hours ago: I am trying to remember why this new development was done as a condop. But I can’t. Anyone??

© Sandy Mattingly 2011