“true Soho loft” at 169 Mercer St closes at $766/ft

how’d that happen?
It is difficult to argue that the block of Mercer Street just below Houston Street is Prime Soho, what with Silver Towers and NYU just to the north, but it certainly is a convenient location. And it is Soho, so how did the Manhattan loft on the 2nd floor at 169 Mercer Street close for only $766/ft, not to mention taking nearly a year to get even that??

2,350 sq ft One Bed Wonder
It has been quite a while since I was fixated on One Bed Wonders*, but this “2,350 sq ft” space was marketed as a “true One Bedroom One Bath Soho Loft”, with private space for only one bed here. Indeed, the very open Long-and-Narrow floor plan just reeks of a 1970s or early ‘80s provenance, with the single bathroom squeezed along the long wall between the stairwell and kitchen, and the kitchen a simple all-appliances-and-utilities-along-the-wall, affair, with a long island for additional storage and seating. (I was suprised to learn that the recent seller bought in 1998 … not 1988; my guess is that she did not move any walls.)

The building is 25 x 98 feet (per Property Shark), yet the entire back wall is a rather extravagantly large bedroom. (Obviously, the One Bed of Wonder!).

This layout hints at the reason it took a year to sell and got under $800/ft in Soho. No matter how chef-y the kitchen, if that is the only wall with plumbing stacks, any renovation will add a second bathroom; either further along that wall toward the (single, Wonderful) bedroom or, more likely, back-to-back with the present bathroom, pushing the kitchen down the wall and (probably) pivoted to perpendicular to the wall. And, of course, all but a single person or couple-without-plans-to-be-more would break up the (Wonderful) bedroom into two 12 foot wide bedrooms along that back narrow wall.

So add a minimum of $200/ft for someone to do a pretty complete build-out, with demolition. So a buyer who would put down ‘only’ 20% to buy this coop is committing $360,000 cash to buy and another half million or so to renovate. Without being able to easily finance the renovation expense (very likely), that is nearly $900,000 in cash and a mortgage of $1.44mm to own the opportunity to renovate this true Soho loft of “2,350 sq ft”. That  is what shrinks the market for a buy-and-build-out loft these days. Even among the relatively few people with the time, talent and patience to buy-and-build, not too many of them have $900k in cash, with enough left over to pass a coop board.

your reward is great (probably)
If a 2nd floor buyer were to make that $500k renovation investment on top of the $1.8mm purchase, there should still be some upside in The Market. The only other loft in the building to trade in available records was the 7th (top) floor, which has the benefit of open views along the long south wall, plus skylights for additional light. That sold in a classically minty condition in 2006 (a market frequently even, or a little behind the 2010 market) at $2.9mm. Even allowing for the difference between 7th-floor-with-light-and-views and the 2nd floor, that’s a lot of upside for the 2nd floor buyer.

a (happy) birthday loft
Note the patience (stubbornness?) of the December to May period:

By the time the listing had the (dreaded) first birthday, it had been in contract for 3 weeks. Whew!

* "One Bed Wonder" is a Manhattan Loft Guy locution for an unusually large space configured for a single person, or a couple sharing one bed. My all-time fave was the very first one I profiled, but here are links to five early posts about that genus:

Feb 24, 2007, what is a One Bed Wonder?
Feb 27, 2007, really big One Bed Wonders with really big prices at 716 Broadway + 32 Laight
Feb 28, 2007, smaller but still One Bed Wonder-full at 644 Broadway + 30 W 13
April 25, 2007, wondering about the 1 Bed Wonder at 543 Broadway / how much for how big?
Jan 29, 2008, limits of the loft form / 448 Greenwich St

(MLG note to self: revisit the One Bed Wonder phenomenon, or at least Tag ‘em when I see ‘em)

© Sandy Mattingly 2010