50 Walker Street loft sells with huge deck, NY Observer observes

how to value the deck??
I am going to have to struggle some other time with applying The Miller’s approach to valuing outdoor space to this beautiful Manhattan loft #6B at 50 Walker Street that sold on July 13 for an even $2.5mm. It merited only a brief mention in The Observer last week (using the official City address of 48 Walker St):

(h/t

The Real Deal

.)

That brief Observer mention was enough to send me to look at the pix, floor plan and listing description. I am going to post this today, then come back to it to address some open questions. Not having posted anything substantive since last month, I feel badly about having been away from the blog; press of appointments and some evening (late evening) activity have severely cut into my normal blogging schedule. I hope there is enough here of interest to be worthwhile, with the tease that I will expand a couple of things in one or two updates.

the loft

What a lovely loft! Said to be "1,763 sq ft" with a "1,850 sq ft" private roof deck, there is an efficient nearly square layout, with windows only on one side (a skylight makes the second bedroom a legal bedroom). It has "the intrinsic architectural details of this circa 1880’s … loft, such as original pillars, exposed brick, [and] wood beams", plus a "[s]

teel

staircase [that] leads to glass-floored greenhouse room and spectacular outdoor deck with glorious views." This List Of Materials ("natural materials

includ

[e] stainless steel, copper, concrete, glass and wood") omits one very cool material ("a long, zinc island dining").

Two things about the decor leave me scratching my head. Can anyone explain how that (bookcase? book pile??) works (in the living room corner in pix 1 and 2)? I can’t decide if I love or loathe the oh-so-spare light fixtures in the bedroom and bath in pix 6 and 7.

about that deck

At "1,850 sq ft", that private deck has more space than the interior space. Judging from the peak at the old AT&T headquarters in the photo of the  stairs (pic 3), the loft windows face north and the deck seems to go west to east along the north edge of the building, though without a deck floor plan I can’t be sure. It id a challenge to specify the value of the deck to the entire $2.5mm loft. You should read the entire may 6 post,

riffing with The Miller on the value of Manhattan terraces, decks + balconies

, to do justice to The Miller’s approach to valuing outdoor space, but I there distilled it to this:

Even much qualified, his "non-formula formula" comes down to:

A. Start with a value for the interior in $/ft

Yes, this approach is better than a number Pulled From (the) Air.

But it hardly inspires confidence that three appraisers would come within a reasonable range of each other in valuing a specific terrace. I obviously don’t have an alternative. But my take-away from this is that no one could push too hard in saying that a terrace is ‘really’ worth $xxx because at the end of the day it is going to come down to an appraiser’s opinion. (JM: is that why they pay the appraisers such Big Bucks??) Any principled conversation about a specific loft will run out of gloves (on the one hand … on the other hand … on yet another hand …).

If I can find useful comps for this loft without considering the deck, I will be back to talk more about what that deck contributed to the overall $2.5mm value. For now, I will ballpark the loft interior as $1,000/ft (based on non-prime Tribeca location, condition and quality of finishes), implying that The Market thought the deck was worth $737k, or about 40% of the value on a per square foot basis to the interior space. That seems like a reasonable (defensible) ballpark.

I hope to come back to that….

neighborly calculus
I will also come back to the sale last year of the other loft on the 6th floor, which also has a roof deck. For now I will just mention that #6A sold on March 17, 2009 for $2.175mm after a long (grueling) campaign. At "1,600 sq ft" of interior space and a "1,000 sq ft" private deck, that will be an interesting (very nearby) comp from a more challenging market to add to the valuation discussion. That listing has a (complicated) deck floor plan, but no interior floor plan (darn!).

One more thing about #6A before I go …. That baby sold in December 2006 for $2.1mm in what was probably the same condition (with the same dining room fixture) as the resale 27 months later, a modest 3.6% appreciation over those 27 months from pre-Peak to post-Lehman.

paging the CA gov
Sorry to hit and run, but I will be back.

© Sandy Mattingly 2010