NY Post “Just Sold” loft at 7 Worth Street was a Manhattan Loft Guy hit on December 21

anybody read The Post?
Yesterday’s typical “Just sold!” Thursday feature in the Real Estate section of the New York Post (a feature with this promising sub-head: “The latest info about recent sales — in your back yard and beyond”) included a Manhattan loft sale that hardly counts as recent (or, the “latest info”), even for dead tree media. Here’s the “news” report:

TRIBECA $1,600,000

7 Worth St.

Two-bedroom, two-bath loft co-op, 2,300 square feet, with dishwasher, washer/dryer, walk-in closets, exposed brick, central AC and 500-square-foot basement; building features elevator and garage. Maintenance $2,319. Asking price $1,650,000, on market 80 weeks. Brokers: Doug Eichman, Victoria Terri-Cote and Cristina Cote, The Corcoran Group

Looks interesting, right? 80 weeks on the market, and only a $50k discount from the ask … hmmmm. Maybe there is a blog post in there about how bad the market was in 2009 (80 weeks ago) compared to 2010, or on what it is like to be on the market for 80 weeks.

been there, read that
Really close readers of Manhattan Loft Guy know where this is going, and most of the rest of you know something is up. What’s up is that you knew about this sale, and about what it said about The State of The Market, Circa 2009 and about The State of The Market, Circa 2010, way back when I hit it on December 21 (you know, when it had “just sold” 😉 in my ground floor loft at 7 Worth St proves how bad 2009 was.

The money quote touches on two common Manhattan Loft Guy themes (1) how dangerous the 2009 thin market was for sellers, and (2) the tough choices that disappointed sellers are faced with.

I would have thought that the nuclear winter for Manhattan residential real estate began to thaw, in general on this island, by Summer 2009 and was well under way by that Fall. But that is not how it worked out on Worth Street near Hudson:

Clearly, The Market rejected this loft from June 2009 through January 2010 at prices below where it embraced this loft 9 months later. The sellers earn props for having correctly gamed the fight or flight question conundrum for disappointed sellers (in my November 15 post). They did not like the prices The Market was signalling in 2009, so they waited off the market; when they came back, they came back higher, and patient. They were so patient, they sat at $1.65mm for six months before getting that contract at $1.6mm.

Well played, people, well played!

is a word to the wise sufficient? (a curiously shilling experience)
If you really want to keep up with “The latest info about recent sales — in your back yard and beyond”, and if “your backyard and beyond” has room for Manhattan lofts, read this blog and check the Master List of Manhattan Lofts Sold Since November 2008 from time to time. You’d have seen this February 24 “news” on December 21, with a lot more context than you find in The Post.

© Sandy Mattingly 2011