Gansevoort loft at 321 West 13 Street sells for a very high price, but not a record (alas)

it’s been that kind of season
Whether driven by fear of the 2013 tax man or just by a collection of macro economic factors (ha! January 4, in which Manhattan Loft Guy bravely calls BS on the Market Trend Meme Of The Day) the Fourth Quarter of 2012 was filled with sales (volume, I mean). While the overall Manhattan residential real estate market showed more or less flat pricing, there were a variety of bright shiny objects that caught my attention, including the November 29 sale of the “1,200 sq ft” Manhattan loft #2A at 321 West 13 Street in the Gansevoort Condominium, which sold above ask at $1.925mm, near a new building record for a loft of its size of $1,604/ft. Other bright shiny objects recently profiled on this blog include Saturday’s (surprisingly low, but still a) building record in a pioneering coop in the Financial District canyons (January 5, 3 Hanover Square seller of small loft puts her design name on the line, comes up big), a Tribeca neighborly sale athat all but set a building record (December 29, love the neighbor on neighbor action, as expensive 55 Hudson Street loft wall should come down soon), and an ice-breaking (ouch) sale in Tribeca (December 19, 27 N. Moore Street loft at (the other) Ice House cracks $1,800/ft).

Let’s get the building record out of the way first in this Meatpacking corner of the West Village. At that $1,604/ft, #2A did not quite equal the very Peak-y sale of #6B on June at $1,639/ft, though the 1.6% spread between #2A just over 5 weeks ago and #6B just over 5 years ago is pretty slight, especially considering that #6B boasted Empire State Building views. But the building record on a dollar per foot basis appears to go to the much smaller #6C, which sold at a remarkable $1,913/ft for its “610 sq ft” in December 2010. (I said “remarkable”, but I probably should have said “irrational”, as this mini-loft sold needing an update for both the kitchen and the bath.)

Not that #2A is not without its challenges. Much as I like the raspberry wall behind the living room bookshelves, there is no real bedroom: a sort of large irregularly shaped interior office plus a sorta small interior “bedroom” (compare the scale of that room to the bathroom!), and the most enthusiastic babbling was about the kitchen and that (single) bath (“twelve foot beamed ceilings, wood-burning fireplace, a spa like bathroom and a real chef’s kitchen”). Obviously, there is no view to brag about from the second floor.

more jealous neighbors
The folks who sold #7A less than 5 months ago at $1.852mm may be cursing the green-eyed goddess over the #2A sale. There was no bragging about the kitchen or the bath in that listing, but it did have “views north over the brownstone rooftops”. Those views, and much more light five floors up, yet #7A sold at a $72,000 discount to #2A.

Nice work by the #2A sellers and agents to get the buyers to pay that premium over #7A. But there was even fancier dancing at this ball, as #2A sold shortly after the “1,220 sq ft” loft #3B. Loft #3B was a bit of an odd duck, having been offered for sale from October 2011 at $1.75mm until it was rented in March; it sold at $1.75mm on December 7 (a week after #2A), apparently without publicly coming back to market (to the rental tenants, most likely). No #2A suitor would likely have known about the pending #3B sale price, but (again) it is the spread between #2A at $1.925mm and #3B at $1.75mm 9 days apart that is most impressive.

I wonder how the #3B seller felt when he found out about #2A. That seller had been seemingly desperate to sell 3 years ago, but didn’t, after having missed his best chance. So there is some comfort in $1.75mm after this sequence back in those very exciting market days:

With this more complete look at history, the #3B seller was probably less jealous about #2A in 2012 than regretful about the money he left on the table in 2008.

© Sandy Mattingly 2013