130 Fulton Street loft with incomparable light comps out 3% above 2006 after 13 months of a boring price

stubborn is as stubborn does
The last time I hit the near-Gehry Manhattan loft building 130 Fulton Street, I talked about a stubborn seller (in my August 11, 2011, stubborn seller of 130 Fulton Street loft takes 10% haircut). That July 2011 seller was a piker compared to the seller of the “1,900 sq ft” loft #12A, who held at $1.795mm for 13 months and recently closed at $1.67mm.

This 17-month listing history has only three entries, only two numbers, and appears to be missing 2011*:

(I left out the December 2, 2011 “no longer available” status as a nothing-is-happening distraction; it appears as though the listing expired on its one year anniversary but that it took another 6 weeks for someone who had seen it while ‘active’ to sign the contract.)

From beginning to contract is 412 days, nearly 59 weeks. From ask to clearing price is only a 7% discount. That’s some stubborn.

I can’t see the views
Sometimes they do this on purpose, sometimes they don’t. For a loft marketed as having “incomparable light, views and a perfect layout”, the pictures don’t carry the same message of “incomparable light, views”. Perhaps they were taken on a grey winter day (note the Christmas tree), but there is little visual evidence of brag-worthy light or brag-worthy views. And note again the syntax: “incomparable light, views” means “incomparable light, [and] views [of some sort, perhaps easily compared to other views]”.

As I said in that August 11 post, “[i]n Lower Manhattan, views are all about the angles, what you see between to get to what you see.” From #12A, the “views” are north and west, “with partial Hudson River and World Trade Center site views”. Note that both the river and the WTC site are to the west of 130 Fulton, and that the only west windows are the two in the kitchen and the one in the dining area. The dominant exposure is from those very wide north windows, but the pictures show only building facades and water towers. (Perhaps you can peek at the top of Gehry from close to the windows.)

I suspect the light from #12A, though incomparable in a broker babble sense, is very similar to the light from #11B, the loft featured in that August 11 post. That “2,280 sq ft” loft is larger and has greater utility (a 3rd bedroom), but they were valued on a price-per-foot basis at par: $879/ft for #12A and $882/ft for #11B. That’s even though #11B bragged about upgrades over the original-in-2006 finishes and about iconic views (Brooklyn Bridge, Woolworth Building, and the Municipal Building).

That parity is a surprise. Especially considering that #12A is essentially still at 2006 values (the 2012 seller paid $1,624,108 on July 19, 2006). That is a gain of 3% if you are scoring at home.

© Sandy Mattingly 2012