what a difference $675k makes / 1 Hudson Street closes

a little off the top, please
The Manhattan loft on the 10th floor at 1 Hudson Street closed July 10 at $2.525mm. I hit it when it started in October at $3.2mm (back when I used to do such things; Oct 10: top of the bottom of Hudson is new / 1 Hudson St has top price), dropped to $2.9mm in November and to $2.8mm in February, with a contract as of April 23. A deed was filed on July 10 for $2.525mm — nearly 10% off the (sharply reduced) then-asking price.

how much are those views out the window?
As I said in that October post,

When I visited the loft it was clear that they were selling what was outside the windows, as the interior was nice — in a 1980s kind of way — but not what most $3mm buyers would leave untouched. Figure around $400k for a gut renovation.

As I noted then, that was a pretty big premium for views:

motivated enough to drop, and to sell

When a loft is listed at a price that is ‘too high’, one never knows (from the outside) what the discussion between sellers and agent was like. Did the agent take the listing at that price while warning the sellers that it was unrealistic and that they should expect to adjust? Did the agent encourage the sellers to believe their jewel was really worth more than The Market turned out to think?

In this case the ‘too high’ (to me, and to The Market) price was dropped 10% after a month — a pretty good indication that the sellers were motivated and not terribly invested in the original asking price. It then took 3 months for another drop (more modest, but still by a digit), where they held firm (as far as asking) until they got a contract 2 months later.

The interesting thing here is that the contract turns out to have been at another 10% off their already reduced asking price (not to mention, at more than 20% off the original ask). Turns out that these sellers were very motivated; it just took them a while to match The Market.

(very local) competition quickens the heart rate

After dropping the price in February to $2.8mm, the 10th floor sellers may have gotten a jolt when their 6th

floor neighbors put their loft for sale at $2.75mm on March 14 and then dropped their price to $2.5mm by April 9. Chances are, these numbers were pretty sobering to the 10th floor sellers, who reacted quickly enough to sign a contract by April 23.

Those 6th floor neighbors, by the way, may have taken advantage of the elevator competition, as they found a buyer and a contract only  a week later, by April 30. As it happens, that unit shows up this morning as Sold & Closed, but I don’t yet see the clearing price for the 6th floor. I will be very curious to see how much of a further discount (the last ask was 9% off the original) they took to make a deal.

Neither of these listings is up on their respective selling firms’ websites, but StreetEasy has some description, pix and text of both on the building’s page, here.