ballyhooed artist loft with unique floor plan + top kitchen sells for $962/ft at 307 West Broadway

famous in New York Times, and Manhattan Loft Guy
Talk about using the Real Estate Industrial Complex, Manhattan Media Division to your benefit! I have to wonder if there is any connection between the fact that the “3,300 sq ft” Manhattan loft on the 7th floor at 307 West Broadway that just sold was brought to market within two months of having been the subject of a lovely piece in the New York Times about Soho, back in the day. I hit that Times piece in my August 7, 2011, Soho in 1983: $211,000 for 3,300 sq ft; still an artist’s loft., which gave me the chance to walk down memory lane, as I knew well the brick-strewn lot across the street from #307 (which a reader corrected me was the former St Alphonsus Church site, lost to foundation problems from the underground stream). Whether the Times piece coincided with or prompted the idea, the long-time, old school artist types who built this loft and lived to negotiate construction indemnification agreements with the developers of the Soho Mews next door put the loft up for sale on October 4. (Maybe, after the lovely publicity, they had people asking if they would sell.)

They shot for the moon in pricing, but accepted the stars:

no stars below
The 7th floor loft is in better condition than the loft immediately below, which was being offered for sale when the NY Times piece was published, as I noted in my August 7 post. As I said then about the 6th floor, then asking $2.8mm, “[t]hat loft appears to be in truly primitive condition, with just one bath, compared to the 7th floor with its nice (modern) kitchen with a huge Viking cook top“, and

Of course, that loft has not yet sold, so the asking price is just the … you know … asking price. But $2.8mm might well be a reasonable starting point for negotiations for a “3,300 sq ft” loft in much more primitive condition than the 7th floor.

Wherever those negotiations for the 6th floor started, they ended at $2.45mm. I hit that sale in my April 16, artist loft clears at $742/ft in south Soho, 307 West Broadway, when the 7th floor was in contract but not yet closed. That spread of $725,000 between the 6th and 7th floors is fascinating, at $220/ft enough by itself to do a reasonable gut renovation. But I suspect that the 7th floor buyers will not gut the place, as the front of the 7th floor (featuring the “top of the line eat-in kitchen with chef’s appliances … [and] a spa like master bath”) looks to be in quite good enough shape to retain. I can imagine a buyer redoing only the back of the loft into 2 or 3 massive bedrooms and open space to take advantage of the north and south exposures. (The proposed alternate floor plan is about as simple [and inexpensive] a re-do as possible, requiring a new [or newly finished] floor and only the carpentry to put up 3 walls.)

Net-net, I am surprised that the 7th floor did so well in comparison to the 6th floor.

unique is in the eyes of the beholder
Lofts in the building are full floor, a nicely proportioned Long-and-Narrow footprint. On the 7th floor there are 5 south windows and 4 north windows, in addition to the front and back extensive walls of windows (arched in front!). One never knows what someone else thinks is “unique”, but the babble has this as “a unique floor plan that will intrigue”. Whether that is that because of the angled walls or because there is finished space up front and artist space in back, does not really matter; neither is a unique feature. But brokers will babble ….

The 6th floor listing contains several “view” pictures that offer perspectives that would also be available one flight up. I wondered in that April 16 post about one of the “views” offered in that listing:

There are more photos of the nearby environs than there are of the interior, which makes sense to a point. That point ends with the pic #6, looking southwest at the intersection of West Broadway and Canal Street, with its aggressive painting to prevent box-blocking suggesting the reality that the intersection tends to get backed up, with attendant horns. I applaud the presentation of reality; I wonder about the image as a sales item.

The 7th floor has the advantage of the arched front windows, which offer “Hudson River views to the west”. Maybe the extra 12 feet in height really makes a difference here, as you would think the 6th floor would have highlighted a river view (if it existed) given the prominence of the canal Street ‘view’.

If you like your wood columns au natural and the beams exposed you will prefer the 6th floor look; if you like white columns in white rooms, without exposed beams, you will prefer the 7th floor look.

one more time: an editing mistake or bad pun?
I didn’t get the NY Times headline back in August. (The loft-owning artist did not seem to need a muse.) Only for that April 16 post did I go back and notice the mis-spelling in the Times piece of Soho Mews condo as Soho Muse. Presumably, that is the source of the unfortunate headline pun, but I wonder if Constance Rosenbloom did that on purpose, or if she simply got the name of the 311 West Broadway condo as the wrong homonym.

© Sandy Mattingly 2012