39 Worth Street loft finally closes, makes the papers

out of my league
The Manhattan loft #3E at 39 Worth Street finally sold last week, but that’s not why it made the papers. The buyer is a hotshot young designer who used to live on the Lower East Side, a fact that brings out the snark from The Observer:

I am way out of my league in commenting on designers and fashion, but I see that the guy has won awards two years running from the Council of Fashion Designers of America (tip of the Manhattan Loft Guy hat to him). I guess he was something of a phenom ("debuted his first collection during his sophomore year at Parsons in 2005"), but probably not the impoverished young designer type, as he bought his Second Avenue loft that same year for $675k (i.e., as a sophomore at Parsons).

back to my league
Let’s just say that Chloe Malle of The Observer is not a fan of Tribeca, as this is how she describes the loft:

Meow!

I have seen the loft, and it is a charmer … if you happen to like Manhattan lofts. (I do; Ms. Malle doesn’t.) It has had a celebrity pedigree before young hotshot designer, as the seller is a former Style editor for the New York Times (a fact mentioned by The Observer, but curiously without snark). It is a classic Long-and-Narrow of "2,560 sq ft" (per the former listing), set up as a one bedroom plus "guest quarters" plus home office, with the single bedroom (with bath) taking up the entire back of the loft, and lot line windows along the long side where the guest and office areas are (more about those windows later).

Ms. Malle would be as unimpressed that the loft was designed by "internationally-renowned architect Richard Gluckman" as she was in describing its classic loft elements as "the faux-former factory aspects of the pseudo-industrial rusticity Tribeca buyers go gaga for". Meow, meow! (Malle writes well; I will give her that.)

I saw it several years ago, during its very long, very difficult prior marketing campaign. It came to market in April 2006, asking $2.95mm; with just a few breaks from active marketing totaling 5 months, it stayed on the market until February 2009 at the $2.795mm asking price in effect since May 2006. Ouch. That is a rather persistent campaign, with no price change for 33 months (less the five it was occasionally off). Some would say stubborn. Some would say misguided.

Cut to the chase: it sold after a change in firms and a dramatic change in price, coming back to market last October at $2.2mm. Seller was again rather persistent (stubborn? not misguided), as she went without a contract (or price change) until the hotshot signed a contract by March 5 at $2mm. That’s 9% off the last ask, if you are scoring at home, and nearly a third off the original (2006) asking price.

gotta love the law school
With the kind of spread, it is hard to know now where the right price would have been in 2006, 2007 or 2008. But this loft suffered because of New York Law School, which built a huge new facility behind (around?) this building.  Click on the Our Space tab on the NYLS site for a slide show and description of the new complex that opened in 2009 — on the north side of the block that 39 Worth is on.

I don’t know what the separation is between the two buildings, but the fifth picture in the slide-show shows the new law school building from the northwest, an angle from which 39 Worth Street would earlier have been visible. (The last listing description claims the #3E bedroom is sun-splashed, so there may be a slice of sky remaining.)

When I saw #3E, the construction was at an early phase, but was a dominant feature of the local landscape. As I remember it, there were lot line windows along the east side, then covered with butcher paper as a hint not to get too attached to them. The bedroom offered wonderful views of the construction site. Let’s just say that there is a lot of digging (noise, dust) involved in a building with five floors above ground and four floors below. The fact is that very few buyers will buy into a construction zone that close and that large, if they had other choices.

fun fact
That NY Times former editor paid $485,000 when she bought the loft in September 1995, presumably before the internationally-renowned architect got his hands on it.

bitchin‘ ’bout brokers
The surviving StreetEasy listing from the successful sale lacks photos. I wonder why they did that (not StreetEasy, BHS), as I believe that the default result is that the photos stay on StreetEasy even after the listing disappears for the firm website (as the floor plan still survives, in this case). There are surviving photos from the prior listing. But that is not what irks me most about this listing history.

Per the inter-firm data-base, the hotshot signed the contract by March 5, when the asking price was $2.2mm (as it had been since October 15). The listing was updated on June 8 to change the asking price from $2.2mm to $2mm. Of course, the loft had sold the day before.

In other words, the history of a sale was embellished to change the "asking" price to match the "sold" price after the loft had been sold but before the inter-firm system had been updated to reflect that it had really sold the day before. Did somebody click the wrong box by mistake when updating the listing status? I suppose it is possible, but the system is not hard to navigate. It happens far too often. (Here’s another one, from two weeks ago, in which it is more difficult to see what happened.)

This is a small thing. But it pisses me off. I don’t understand why the agent thinks there is a benefit to doing this, but there is no reason to fudge like this if you don’t think there is  a benefit. Does it make an agent look good, to show an exclusive that sold for the full asking price? I suppose so, to people who don’t know to check the dates.

I see no indication that REBNY cares about this record-keeping thing. Transparency has its limits.

© Sandy Mattingly 2010