divorce + dollars / 111 Hudson Street loft sale is painful on several levels

got coffee?
I had some buyers who were almost-but-not-quite-interested in the renovation project that is the Manhattan loft on the 5th floor at 111 Hudson Street, so I was intrigued enough when it sold on June 28 to track back a little bit. You know I am a bit of a Manhattan real estate voyeur, so I was fascinated by what the (typically) dry title transfers reveal about real people. If you are interested in a story, be patient … this one will take a while….

a loft in unusual condition
It was obvious to anyone who saw this loft that something happened to the owners. The listing description provides a bit of preparation ("[t]hree separate loft apartments to be combined …"), as do the 4 (count ’em: four!) floor plans on the Corcoran website. While it is not unusual to see listings for to-be-combined spaces, nor to see alternative floor plans for renovation ‘projects’, the actual space when we saw it was one separate loft, very primitive but untouched by a renovator’s hand, and two other lofts that had been gutted and framed.

In other words, a full-floor renovation had been begun, with one of the three lofts left in a condition that someone could live in during the renovation. At a later point in the process, someone could live in (substantially) finished space on the other side of the wall, with those adjoining walls to come down when the project was nearly finished.

But something happened.

The front loft (Unit A in floor plan; click on #4) had the view and the east light across Hudson Street, and looked as though it had not been touched in 30 or more years. It is "1,142 sq ft" of classic old-school loft: an oddly shaped "sleeping room" opposite the windows, a huge (single) bathroom, with two big closets stuck at the back of the sleeping room and bathroom. I hope I don’t offend an AIA member by saying that this floor plan reeks of being drawn on a napkin.

The two back lofts, in contrast, have been completely gutted, with metal studs where new rooms were to be, all sheet rock, ceiling and plumbing removed, BX cable exposed. Obviously, they had (real architect!) plans approved by the city and the condo, but had only gotten a little of the way through the work sequence before stopping, and selling. Obviously, something happened.

from 2 names to 3
There is no reason to use their real names, but when these folks bought on July 3, 2008 (can you spell P E A K ??) the deed was recorded in the names of "John Smith" and "Mary Smith". When they sold on June 28, 2010, the sellers were named John Smith, Mary Smith and Mary Jones, and their notice address was an office suite on Wall Street.

The obvious inference is that sometime before July 2008, Mary Jones married John Smith and changed her name to Mary Smith, while sometimes between July 2008 and June 2010 John Smith and Mary Smith got divorced and she changed her name back to Mary Jones. Indeed, if we could access the work schedule for the 5th floor demolition and re-building, we could probably date the separation that led to divorce more precisely to the time between the stud guys and the electric guys. But that would be way too voyeuristic.

more pain
I don’t mean to come across as crass about the obvious pain involved in the break-up of a marriage, but those facts are clearly implied by the title history. There’s more pain evident from the history of the 5th floor.

Recall that the "Smiths" bought in July 2008. They bought the three then-separate lofts for $3,734,656 in what was termed by StreetEasy a Sponsor Sale. Very likely, all three lofts looked then more or less the way that #5A looked when we saw it this Spring: as if they hadn’t been touched in 30 or so years. Both the B and C units could have been "designed" on a napkin, with one bathroom in each (next to the kitchen) and one sleeping area (windowed in C, no window in B), with enough space that other arrays would be possible (they are "1,298 sq ft" and "1,354 sq ft").

The entire floor is said to be "4,002 sq ft". The "Smiths" paid $933/ft at The Peak (that contract was signed November 26, 2007) for primitive space that had to be demolished and built out. The good news is that they did not get too far into the renovation that was probably budgeted at $800,000+ (using $200/ft as a ballpark). The bad news (apart from the change in marital status) … they sold on June 28 for $2.9mm ($725/ft). Can you spell O U C H ??

tracking the Smiths
It is quite likely that the Smiths would have paid more than the ballpark $200/ft renovation. It is not hard to find that they (at least, he) have done this before, in a not restrained, no-detail-overlooked way.

We know this because Mr. Smith bought a "5,000 sq ft" "sprawling open space in a classic vintage loft with two bedrooms [and] two new bathrooms" in June 2004 for $3.375mm and turned it into a 3 bedroom + 3.5 bath home that sold in February 2008 (once again: can you spell P E A K ??) for $5.1mm.

That listing description is so enthusiastic, so bubbly, so babbling that I am confident that Mr. Smith and Ms. Smith would have done the same thing (or better!) in their never-to-be-marital-abode at 111 Hudson Street:

I can almost guarantee that Mr. Smith spent more than $200/ft for that renovation. (I am going to gloss over the fact that Mr. Smith bought this unit with a partner (not Ms. Smith!), with whom he bought at least one other loft around this time, and that he and that partner apparently traded half-interests so that each owned a loft 100% before 2008; yeah … that is one digression too far, even for me.)

a digression I can’t resist
On this topic of renovation and (I really hope) without getting too creepy, it was not hard to find out that before Ms. "Smith" was married to Mr. Smith, she bought (in 2003) a Gramercy Park 1 BR that she sold (in 2007) after an "immaculate renovat[ion with] every luxury one could want", probably selling at twice what she’d paid for it. I guess it didn’t last, but it seems that the Smiths had similar luxury taste.

too much late night television
Once I started tracking the Smiths it was inevitable that I would peak at other people in this chain of transactions. So … wait, there’s more!!

There’s not a lot for me to say about the buyer of the never-to-be-a-Smith-marital-abode at 111 Hudson Street, except that he seems to still own a "1,600 sq ft" Soho loft that may have given him a taste for deluxe living (it was billed as "[q]uintessential Soho radiates throughout this truly Magnificent Loft … [a] Superb Renovation", for which he paid $1,000/ft in March 2005).

The buyers of Mr. Smith’s 5,000 sq ft "impeccable renovation" are another story.

It is not just that those buyers of that 5,000 sq ft "impeccable renovation" moved maybe 50 yards north in Noho, or that they moved from "2,600 sq ft" to "5,000 sq ft" that is of interest. Nor is it that they (probably) had experience doing a high-end renovation of their own when they bought Mr. Smith’s "every luxury" renovation. (Though to me, Manhattan loft voyeur that I am, all of these things are interesting.)

It is that these people sold a beautiful loft in one of the Manhattan Loft Guy all-time favorite buildings, and did so at a time (and price) that caused me then to speculate about The Future (something I rarely do), with a spectactular MLG link history.

With all that detail, I am going to have to out the loft they sold, though there’s no need to use their names either. The February 2008 buyers of Mr. Smith’s 5,000 impeccable (blah, blah, blah) sq ft sold the loft that I featured in a September 24, 2008 post [right after Lehman!!], one sobering data point / 684 Broadway loft sells slowly, reluctantly, that had gone to contract in June 2008 (just after The Peak!!!), that caused me to speculate (and to snark) about The State of The Market (and the pontification of agents):

bear with me here …
From my perspective, the twists and turns of this post show that the Manhattan loft world is a very small world indeed. The sellers in my September 24, 2008 sobering post were the February 2008 buyers from a guy I have dubbed Smith, who in 2010 sold a fascinating loft at 111 Hudson Street that (in its course of purchase, renovation begun, renovation halted, and sale) revealed some interesting things about the Manhattan loft market and some personal and painful things about the Smith family.

Those sellers in my September 24, 2008 sobering post had already been featured when they brought that loft to market (on October 4, 2007, 684 Broadway has a new one, way back when I used to talk about current listings). That post had a natural connection to (and linked to, of course) what is still one of my all-time favorite MLG posts, the May 15, 2007 Jagger’s Law of Imperfect Lofts / life is compromise (sigh). That post followed a family (clients of mine) pretty darn closely.

You are probably immune, but this is giving me chills.

paging James Franciscus
Eight million stories in the naked city. There’s evidence of at least three of them here.

If you have had the patience to read this far along … thanks for sticking with me!

© Sandy Mattingly 2010