from raw to mints, 14 Jay Street loft doubles in value

old market news, newly closed

The recently sold “1,620 sq ft” Manhattan loft on the 3rd floor at 14 Jay Street is a rather recent sale (July 15) but it does not reflect the recent market: the deal that just closed was entered into last Fall (contract date is October 24). Well, it is kinda sorta like the current market, as it was a very quick contract (to market October 4) and it went above ask ($2.5mm, though asked $2.4mm), which is very much like the current market. But you can’t blame the current market for this one. This one is from the famously Sellers Market of late last year.

Indeed, this loft was so beloved by that market that the seller could get away with insisting (as in the listing description) on a “June closing” (which turned out to be July 15; but still). Just think about the change in interest rates from last year, through the first half of this year, to the current environment. (Don’t make me find a cite, but the historically low rates that had been stable until the last few months have been creeping up; if this buyer waited too long to lock in a rate, or was charged a market fee to lock in a favorable rate, the buyer paid heavily for the honor of waiting an extra 8 months to close.)

I will get to the obvious quality of the loft in a moment, but here’s another indication 

about that quality, obviously

They weren’t kidding in 2010 about nothing being salvageable. The new place has new windows, and a bunch of other goodies:

Triple Mint 2 bedroom 2 bath on one of Tribeca’s most sought after cobble stone blocks. This gut renovation includes new oversized windows, exposed brick and a keyed elevator that opens directly into the loft. The open living and dining room offers oak floors and French doors opening out onto quiet Jay Street. The large custom kitchen features wooden accents from the original Coney Island boardwalk, a one-of-a-kind sealed metal counter, and top of the line stainless appliances (Liebherr, Bertazzoni, Bosch, Miele, Marvel). The master bedroom offers an abundance of walk-in closet space as well as an ensuite bath outfitted with Ann Sacks tiles. Extra storage throughout, full sized washer/dryer, central AC/heat.

Even if they spent $350/ft for all these goodies, that’s only $567,000 of the $1.25mm spread between January 2010 (November 2009 contract) and July 2013 (really, October 2012). Nice work, nicely worked.

The floor plan is a classic in a Long-and-Narrow: 2 bedrooms in the stuttered rear and plumbing in the middle for the back-to-back bathrooms behind the kitchen. Another floor plan in the building shows the width as just under 21 feet, which looks right from the photos and permits 2 reasonably sized bedrooms side-by-side and a square-ish front room, 3 windows wide over Jay Street. As with many Long-and-Narrow lofts, the entry splits the kitchen and dining areas, which some buyers don’t like, but which makes it easy to put a basket of keys on the kitchen counter.

The photos show that at least one long length of brick wall was, in fact, salvageable (I guess they were kidding, a little), and that they dropped the ceilings a bit for recessed lighting but not so much as to enclose the sprinkler lines. The exposed main water (waste?) line (see pic #3) may not be to everyone’s tastes, but it is to that of the three most important folks (the sellers, the buyers, and Manhattan Loft Guy). Nice touch, either restored, or preserved, or opened up. (The “wooden accents from the original Coney Island boardwalk” are not so easily identified, or necessarily so loft-y, but that’s cool.)

The result of all this nice work was that a modest-sized unit in a no-frills coop just sold without bragging about light or views for $1,543/ft. Yes, prime Tribeca, and yes, a nice build-out, but Fifteen Hundred Dollars a foot. Three years after buying at $750/ft and then building it out on an unknown budget.

Nice work, nicely worked, indeed.

© Sandy Mattingly 2013