pop-up (mystery) contract for loft at 476 Broadway

still not a ‘trend’, but a reminder
In my October 7 post, the puzzle of pop-up contracts, signed long after Off The Market at 144 West 27 Street and 24 East 21 Street lofts, I touched on the phenomenon of Manhattan loft contracts that appear long after a loft has been taken “off” the market. Those two “pop-up contracts” caught me eye, in part, because they were two within a short period, which lead to me a resolution about better servicing buyer clients with very specific criteria: do not take Off The Market as the last word.

Resolution affirmed, as here is a similar one: the Manhattan loft 476 Broadway #11F closed on September 28 despite having seemingly expired as an active listing with a REBNY firm a year ago.

the learning, re-learned
That October 7 post had to do with Manhattan lofts at 144 West 27 Street #9R and 24 East 21 Street #5 (Infinity Flats); they are a little different from the history of #11F at 476 Broadway because they were eventually updated as Sold within the inter-firm data-base by the (former) listing firm.

In both cases, these lofts had been marketed, then taken off the market (when exclusive listing agreements expired?), then revived as an active listing already in contract. (In both cases, the information on StreetEasy corresponds to the inter-firm data-base, so this is not a situation in which StreetEasy failed to scrape some data.)

StreetEasy’s history for #11F includes the active listing beginning August 2009, a weird “Listing sold” on January 7, 2010 and the (much later) recorded sale on September 28. I have no idea what the source of that “Listing sold” (mis) information was, as it appears that the (former) listing firm stopped updating after an October 6, 2009 “expired”.

The inter-firm data-base suggests that this was a very limited, perhaps OK, but I will give you only one shot to sell, exclusive listing (for those who need a map here, in our lingo TOTM = temporarily off the market, BOM = back on the market,  EXPR = expired):

The bot coup de grace was delivered by The System on April 6, when no activity updates had been provided for 6 months:  “Made POTM from EXPR due to inactivity”.

There’s no indication within the REBNY world or city records that anyone claimed “Listing sold” on January 7, 2010 so it is a complete mystery where StreetEasy got that “information”.

stuff happens, including sales
Somehow, the seller of #11F found a buyer long enough before September 28 that the buyer passed the coop board (476 Broadway is a true “condop”: a condo with one commercial unit and one residential unit, with that single residential condo unit being owned by coop shareholders, but I digress…). I doubt that the former listing firm was involved in that sale, for that firm would then have updated us REBNY members about it when it went into contract (probably) and sold (almost certainly; both status updates being “required”).

I didn’t find any indication in the inter-tubes that the seller offered #11F for sale directly, yet somehow the sale got made. Perhaps to a friend, perhaps to someone who remained in contact after seeing it in late 2009. Having paid $2.995mm in late 2007 (see below) and having offered it in late 2009 at $3.3mm, the seller certainly did not get a deal when it sold four weeks ago at $2.85mm. But she did get what she wanted: a sale.

repeating, again
Once again, the lesson for Manhattan Loft Guy is that someone who was once a “seller” may still be willing to sell even without having had an active listing for months and months. A useful lesson, especially  for finicky buyers for whom the TOM and POM market segments may be fertile ground.

fun Manhattan Loft Guy fact(s)
When I Googled the unit to try to find any web presence as a For Sale By Owner I was … errr … reminded that I hit this loft almost exactly three years ago when it sold for $2.995mm. That was October 18, 2007 in the virtues of patience as a marketing strategy / 476 Bway gets full ask after 51 weeks. True confessions: I had forgotten that this post was about this loft, but I well remember the point that Some Stubborn Loft Seller refused to adjust the sales price for nearly a year, yet got a deal at 100% of the asking price. In retrospect, of course, that closing at the end of the Third Quarter of 2007 was just about two quarters shy of The Peak for general Manhattan real estate values, so that may have been more about a Rising Tide (raising all boats, of course) than a lesson about the ‘virtue’ of ‘patiently’ refusing to adjust to (negative) market feedback.

Because this loft had been on the market for so long, it was also around a year earlier (in the very early days of Manhattan Loft Guy, when I talked about lofts currently offered for sale) when I did an informal survey of loft open house listings about how it is more unusual to find relatively expensive lofts in buildings with doormen than in buildings with no doorman, compared to (say) the Upper East Side, where a $3mm listing without a doorman would find a very small market. That post was my September 16, 2006  loft owners open their own doors. Fun stuff in the Manhattan Loft Guy archives!

© Sandy Mattingly 2010