22 Warren Street penthouse loft sells 6% above ask with 3 terraces, only 2 bedrooms

gorgeous, north-facing oversized master suite, located on the main level, includes double-height solarium windows, a private terrace, walk-in closet, sitting area and en suite bathroom with a Kohler Sok, ultra-deep therapeutic bath and separate glass encased shower with multiple jets

That would be a shame (leaving one bedroom without a closet and the other with a long walk upstairs to a full bathroom), and a choice that (nearly?) all penthouse loft buyers in the $3mm range would avoid. The recent buyers didn’t just pay $3.55mm to ruin that master suite; they paid $3.55mm because they they had to (the $200,000 premium to ask indicates there was at least one other set of buyers) and because they don’t need more than 2 real bedrooms but plan to enjoy “more than 1,000-square feet of private outdoor space” separated into 3 different terraces.

That’s what can happen with lofts: even with over 2,000 sa ft of interior space, it is a 2-bedroom, period. “Apartment” lovers would freak out.

another StreetEasy miss

If you clicked on the StreetEasy listing, you’d never know the penthouse had been actively available for sale (May 2: “Listed in StreetEasy, already in contract, by CORE at $3,350,000”). If you clicked on the StreetEasy building page, you’d see that a unit #6 sold on June 27 at $3.55mm, but “No listing [is] associated with this closing”. StreetEasy has been doing this a lot lately, though often you can figure out the listing that is associated with the sale. But there’s no way to do that with StreetEasy with this sale. Of course the penthouse loft was publicly marketed; here’s the real story from the inter-firm data-base:

the great outdoors

Yes, that master suite is gorgeous, but the money is outdoors. A full-width terrace at each end of the lower floor, plus a rooftop terrace way up on top. In all, over 1,000 sq ft, as noted. There’s no photo of that upper terrace, alas. The last sale in the building was the single-level full floor “1,800 sq ft” 4th floor on Leap Day in 2012 (gotta click around StreetEasy to find that it closed for $1.9mm), so the 6th floor at $3.55mm includes rather a large premium for the great outdoors. The comp adjustments between the 4th and 6th floors 16 months apart are basic, but difficult to quantify: similar quality and utility (2 real bedrooms and an interior room on the 4th floor floor plan), though the 11 foot ceilings on the 4th floor are trumped by the 17 feet on the 6th, with the 6th having the much better light from the massive skylights … er … “solarium windows”.

In order to have some basis for riffing with The Miller about the value of the 6th floor terraces, let’s guess that the ceilings and light are worth as much as 10% more on the 6th floor, with the 16 months spread between sales worth another 10% premium for the 6th floor. (I am going to ignore the small 4th floor terrace in this exercise; sue me.) That moves the $1,056/ft for the 4th floor in February 2012 up to $1,267/ft for the 6th floor interior. That implies the interior was worth $2.6mm of the recent market value, with the $955,000 balance allocated to the “more than 1,000 sq ft”. if you guess that the “more than 1,000 sq ft” is really 1,100 sq ft, that’s $868/ft for the exterior space, or 68% of the value of the interior on a $/ft basis.

This implied valuation is outside The Miller’s rubric (25% to 50% of the interior value), and is dependent on the validity of the assumptions made in comping from the 4th floor sale. While dramatic, I think this is an appropriate reflection of what happened: buyers who might have spent just $2.6mm for interior space spent $3.55mm for the whole package, in part because Tribeca private rooftop space is pretty rare, and in part because there was another set of buyers pushing them.

Your mileage may vary.

© Sandy Mattingly 2013