remarkable patience! 23 months to close 10 White Street loft

sweaters during the nuclear winter?
The listing history for the Manhattan loft on the 3rd floor at 10 White Street is unusual because most sellers who came to market when Lehman fell did not stay on the market continuously if they failed to sell after 3, 6 or 9 months. But these folks stuck it out.

The new listing date of September 5, 2008 was the Friday before the Labor Day weekend, about two quarters past The Peak (but still in an active market), and 10 days before Lehman’s bankruptcy filing precipitated a virtual freeze of the Manhattan real estate market. In retrospect, they had about 3 weeks to find a contract that they could hope to close on, but they were probably well off the market price from the start. By the time they did close on August 4, 2010 at $2,554,500 it was almost 23 months since they started.

potential costs, but not that much
The full floor “3,000 sq ft” loft was all about the bones and the potential. The bragging is very specific and very limited: 12.5 foot columns, huge new windows, “light splashed”, with “hardwood floors and the walls and ceilings [that] have been newly restored” and “plumbing options [that] make for flexible layout choices”. The floor plan shows one rather small bedroom for a 3,000 sq ft loft, two other window-less rooms, and a single bathroom. In short, a “gut me” floor plan.

Granted, this little corner of Tribeca is such a small micro-nabe that it is difficult to find true comps, but starting at $3.1mm for a gut job was a stretch, even pre-Lehman, even for a coop with no underlying mortgage (and a maintenance under $0.60/ft). But the sellers wanted to sell, and they persisted:

evenmnore persistence than patience??
Note the hang time on that oh-so-chilly $2.85mm asking price. Nearly matched by the hang time on the $2.7mm. Then consider how tough that final negotiation must have been to end up with a “$500” instead of a “$,000” at the end. And I wonder why it took this coop so long to close … 5 months is an awfully long time, especially for a 5-unit coop.

© Sandy Mattingly 2010