60 Thomas sells +21%, but that's above 2004 purchase

some good news, and some other news
If you were the seller of the Manhattan loft on the 6th floor of 60 Thomas Street you are pleased to sell at a 21% gain, even if that gain is measured from 2004. You are also pleased to sell at a mild (4%) discount from asking price, getting $2.3mm for your “1,844 sq ft” condo on March 18. And, there’s got to be some relief that your strategy of holding at $2.395mm for more than 4 months paid off with a March 3 contract (per our data-base; StreetEasy has March 4). Of course, you started at $2.695mm on August 4, so there must be some pangs.

a beauty, indeed
The loft has a classic Long-and-Narrow footprint that might be 21’3” wide at the front and 22’ wide in the back (the perils of floor plan dimensions!), with plumbing on both sides in the middle, and the bonus of one window on each long side. The east window permits a real second bedroom, leaving the entire back wall for the master suite. With 11 foot ceilings and windows that are 8 feet tall, there is a great sense of ‘volume’.

Although the loft has “original tin and brick”, the sellers must have gone to the Neutral School of loft design, as any brick or tin visible in the photos has been painted white, the floors have a very light finish, and even the kitchen is white (except for the stainless Sub-Zero). Personally, I love it, and the Neutral School is very popular, but it is interesting how the eye is drawn to the flowers (same ones in pic #1, #3, and in pic #6; I guess they took Staging 101 at the Neutral School) and the orange and green chess pieces in pic #2.

My guess is that these sellers added relatively little to the loft in the 7 years they owned it, as our data-base describes the condition in 2004 as “Immaculate mint designer home…. Top of the line everything….” (You’d hate to think they plunked a lot of money into a renovation since 2004 and still netted only $400,000.)

2004 as a popular baseline
Of course it is difficult to comp in a small building like this (6 units), among other reasons because there have been few transactions. The last sale before the 6th floor was the 4th floor in March 2007, which is interesting here because — like the 6th floor — the prior sale of that floor was in 2004. The 4th floor pair of 2004-2007 is at least an interesting insight into the 6th floor pair of 2004-2011.

The 4th floor sold on March 14, 2007 for $1.795mm (3 weeks to get a full price contract), with only 1 bathroom, those tin ceilings and brick walls, proper proper names, and floors that were mahogany and slate (!). I have no information about the condition when the 4th floor sold on January 28, 2004 at $1.255mm, but my calculator told me that there was a 43% gain from 2004 to 2007. That same base year, of course, yielded the 6th floor a 21% gain a month ago. (Another pang.)

those darn feet
The StreetEasy record of the deed claims this condo is “1,844 sq ft”, which is usually sourced from the Condo Declaration (I am not going to check this one, but you can through ACRIS via Property Shark). The listing page on StreetEasy, however, claims “2,000 sq ft”, which presumably came from the Sothebys listing (no longer on their website). Not to single out Sothebys, as our data-base claims “2,000 sq ft” for this listing, and “2,100 sq ft” the last time it sold, in 2004. Sigh.

© Sandy Mattingly 2011