1 year, 2 contracts to resell 90 William Street loft unfairly, off slightly since 2008

sticking with the odysseys
Have I mentioned recently that The Market is not fair? You’d have to have read between the lines of yesterday’s post (December 12, 6 prices, 13 months to contract for 107 West 25 Street loft) about a Chelsea loft that required many prices to sell, most of which should have generated a bid, to have drawn that sad conclusion about The Market. But no reading between the lines is necessary to get that point using the November 27 sale of the “1,080 sq ft” Manhattan loft #10G at 90 Williams Street. This resale in the 2007 conversion with the unfortunate and precious name be@William needed two contracts to finally sell, though it probably did not need the price drop, given the small discount from first ask:

Aside from the mystery of why that first contract failed, the big mystery in this sequence is why it took almost 9 months of active marketing to get that first contract. 365 days after coming out at $895,000 (remember, it was a leap year), the seller got a contract (one that finally stuck) less than 6% below the initial asking price. And, obviously, got it very quickly on coming back to market.

Let’s add one more data point, suggesting that the seller was not greedy, but might still be disappointed:

• July 17, 2008 sold $878,000

That sponsor sale was not quite a Peak sale, not because it closed after the Peak (First Quarter of 2008 for the overall Manhattan residential real estate market), but because the contract was signed August 2, 2007.

is this a more-or-less-efficient market?
The #10G odyssey, featuring the long wait at $895,000, must have been all the more frustrating because of what a downstairs neighbor was doing. The identical loft #7G had this history, more nimble and more successful:

Overlay this with the #10G odyssey and you see that #7G started higher, later, but presented as more negotiable with those 2 quick price drops. This history really makes more curious about the price in that failed #10G contract, because by then (June 14), #7G had been in contract since March 28 and had closed at $860,000. Certainly, the #10G seller had then a very credible argument that the market price for #10G was at least $860,000. But a rational and credible argument will not move a stubborn buyer, so the obvious conclusion to draw is that no qualified buyer was ready to buy #10G at #7G’s price.

I count this as a hyper-local market that is more-or-less efficient, because the $15,000 spread between #7G in June and #10G in November is a rounding error, easily explained by market noise. (#10G sold at 98% of the #7G price.) It should have gone the other way, with #10G being valued slightly more than #7G because it is on a higher floor, but … (wait for it) … have I mentioned recently that The Market is not fair?

© Sandy Mattingly 2012