stubborn loft seller at 44 Laight Street takes a year to get right (great!) price

another one that fractures (proves?) Conventional Wisdom
The Manhattan loft #2A at 44 Laight Street sold on May 9 without a price drop despite taking 11 months to find that contract. Let’s repeat what we know about Conventional Wisdom and a listing that has been on the market for 3 … 4 … 6 … 9 … months without a contract or a price drop: The Market has rejected that price, so to get a contract the price needs to be dropped. Right? Right??

But not this time (omitting one week off the market in September):

That is 11 months to get a contract at a 5.3% discount. You’d think that a deal at 95% of the ask could be had at any time over the course of that near-year, if it could be had at all. But you’d have been wrong, in this case, no matter how Conventional your Wisdom.

stunning, huge
#2A is said to be “4,021 sq ft” and to have been “stunningly renovated”. I can’t call it a Long-and-Narrow because of the scale: no loft that is 40+ feet “wide” should ever be called “narrow”, even if the shape is a rectangle. Instead, let’s call this the first Long-and-Wide. The room sizes match the overall scale to such a degree that it is hard to pick a favorite over-sized room; my best guess is probably the kitchen, at 20’ 7” x 13’ 8”. Impressive ‘volume’, indeed, but I do have one quibble about the floor plan: with the pantry on the opposite long wall from the kitchen, there is a long walk to the stove to get another can of diced tomatoes.

must be pretty stunning
How nice must that renovation be? The same footprint on the 5th floor was available at $4.38mm for seven months before #2A went to contract. That baby was no slouch, at least in the broker babble department: that kitchen is “stunning”, the bar “inviting[,] sleek[,] ivory[, and] marble”, the living room has “artisan mahogany built ins”, two en suite baths are “beautifully tiled and designed for true relaxation”, while my favorite feature (you don’t see this babbled every day) is the “double I-Tunes account access with eight zone audio/video through out the home”.

Look again at how long #2A took to sell with no price drop, and the clearing price. Now look at the #5A listing history:

Both #2A and #5A were available from March through November last year, one at $4.7mm and $4.3mm, the other at $5.25mm. only the one offered at $5.25mm sold, though it took two-and-a-half months after #5A left the market for #2A to find that contract.

a strange and wonderful place
… is The Market. (I don’t remember that locution as a Laurie Anderson quote, but that’s the first result that comes up on The Google.) That must be one stunning renovation in the 2nd floor. And one stubborn seller.

© Sandy Mattingly 2011