same floor lofts sell at 46 Mercer Street, in same condition but at different prices

East meets West, West wins
The Residential Sales Around The Region feature in yesterday’s New York Times featured one Manhattan loft, 46 Mercer Street (also known as 473 Broadway, aka the Hohner Building), at $3.01mm after 17 weeks on the market. That is #6W, which city records (per Property Shark) peg as “1,901 sq ft” instead of “2,500 sq ft” and which came to market on March 6, went to contract by April 16 (6 weeks) and closed on June 1 (12+ weeks, not 17).

Aside from wondering why the Times is reporting about a loft sale from June 1, what caught my eye about this sale is that #6E next door sold on June 10 for $2.85mm. Why the $160,000 premium for #6W over #6E?

#6W was billed as a "no detail spared" renovation, with 2 bedrooms, office / den, and 3 baths. When #6E was marketed (briefly, unsuccessfully) in 2008 , the babble was only a slight variation (“no detail was overlooked”), but more enthusiastic about #6E than the 2010 prose for #6W. The footprint of #6E is the mirror image of its neighbor, though city records rate #6E as (very) slightly larger, at “1,958 sq ft”.

Is it the professional marketing of one and not the other, Mars?
The 8.8% spread between #6W at $1,583/ft and #6E at $1,455/ft (using #6e as the baseline) is larger than a rounding error. I was willing to ascribe the difference to the Power of Marketing (this is a StreetEasy “[n]o listing associated with this closing” transaction) until I discovered that StreetEasy is wrong: our data-base shows that this loft was offered for sale as a co-broke by Leslie J. Garfield & Co. from October 21, 2009 until it was marked as “temporarily off the market” as of May 26 (2 weeks before it sold).

It is possible that the sale was independent of Garfield (it does not show up on that firm’s brag page), but it seems clear that #6E was exposed to the market by Garfield for at least some time before the June 10 sale.

Aphorisms ‘R Us
Frequent Manhattan Loft Guy readers can guess where this is going. (Waiting ….) Yes, the Manhattan real estate market is not efficient. (As in my August 15, tales of one loft building / the inefficient market at 718 Broadway, circa 2006, weaker market, 2010.) Except when it is efficient (which is more rare; as in my August 26, loft market at 476 Broadway is pretty F’in efficient, and May 6, 2009, pretty efficient (depressed) market at 505 Greenwich Street as both 6F and 7F sell, off 25%).

and: Rants ‘R Us
Now that I have ‘explained’ that, can someone please tell me why the NY Times reports on a loft sale that is 3.5 months old? I know the Residential Sales Around The Region is not the RECENT Residential Sales Around The Region, but are they trying to prove that print is dead as a “news” media? Sigh….

Because Manhattan Loft Guy might be re-titled as Manhattan Loft Anal Guy, I checked the closing dates of the other 3 Manhattan sales in Sunday’s real estate section: 335 West 21 St #2RE = June 24; I can’t find a 870 Riverside Drive closing, except in our data base, but the price at which #6C closed on July 6 does not match; 10 West End Av #11J = July 7. All these are more “recent” than #6W at the Hohner Building, but none is really recent. Sigh….

© Sandy Mattingly 2010