late bidding war for another forever loft, as 714 Broadway goes for $613/ft, or more

what’s the story?
The best single way to sum up the March 17 sale of the Manhattan loft on the 2nd floor at 714 Broadway is to say that it is rich in angles. Or that it will take many hands. Start with the fact that the clearing price of $2.05mm exceeded the asking price of $1.995mm, and you will think that this was a great marketing campaign, successfully concluded in the best way The Market knows to show favor: a bidding war.

But you will think twice about that conclusion after I tell you that, on the other hand, as recently as September 24 the loft was on the market at $2.225mm, and that it had been offered for $2.595mm for 2 months before that. On yet another hand (bring a friend!), this loft had a long listing history before coming (back) to market at that $2.595mm in July. Follow me into the weeds on this history, and you can draw your own conclusion, or conclusions.

“endless possibilities” + “limitless options” = $613/ft, or some other number
Start from the broker-babble, which is so conspicuously lacking in description of finishes as to be a do-over loft. Aside from having such features as “endless possibilities” and ”limitless options”, there is a skeleton with 14 foot ceilings, no load-bearing walls, 10 foot windows, hardwood floors and (hardly the coup de grace) crown moldings.

While there are said to be “3,350 sq ft”, they will be hard to find unless you look up, and even then may be hard to find. If “3,350 sq ft”, the clearing price comes to $613/ft. But if the footprint is “3,050 sq ft”, as claimed when the 9th floor sold in 2009, the price/ft vaults to $672.

Taking the interior dimensions on the 2nd floor floor plan for more than they are worth, you have a 21’ 5” wide space in a Long-and-Narrow layout of “2,329 sq ft” that includes the stairway and elevators. With that base, the price/ft could be as high as $880/ft. But there are two levels under this loft’s 14 foot ceilings, with an upper level of perhaps 800 sq ft in a necklace of spaces in the center of the loft that weave around some full-height spaces. Count them, and we are back up to about 3,100 sq ft, or $661/ft. Still, nothing to write home about, and it is difficult to imagine someone buying this loft for its limitless options and leaving this exact tiered arrangement even if they did choose to use (ruin?) the ceiling height in at least part of the space.

Chances are, this do-over loft was bought by someone who will do it over. The result may well be a lovely loft with 14 foot ceilings throughout, in which case the loft will have shrunk to something under 2,400 sq ft. And will have cost (with renovation) something more than another $450,000+. But let’s return to the history.

2010 and 2009 and 2008, oh my!
When I added this loft sale to the Master List of Manhattan Lofts Sold Since November 2008 I used July 24, 2010 as the “on market” date, but that is not the complete history. (For purposes of the Master List I re-start the market period if a listing has been off the market for 90 days; a value judgment I made in order to have a consistency in the list, but one that is as arbitrary as any convention would have to be to deal with lofts that come on and off the market over a long period, as some unfortunate lofts do.) The full listing history is reconstructed from what StreetEasy considers to be prior listings that “ended” in 2010, in 2009, and in 2008; you are invited to speculate what different pricing strategies might have done in these earlier periods, as that is what makes Manhattan real estate the exciting spectator sport that it is:

Of course, that original marketing was almost exactly when Peak prices were being recorded in Manhattan; of course, that first break from the market ended just after the Lehman bankruptcy filing plunged the market into nuclear winter; of course, you now that when the second market break was over, the overall market was thawing (though not for this loft); and you see that in the last quarter of 2010 there was enough demand for this loft (even as a do-over) to generate a bidding war.

This is why I started up top by referring to this loft as “rich in angles”.

where was The Peak in this building?
If you applied a crude metric such as The Market is down 20% since The Peak, you would guess that this loft was about $1mm over-priced at the only chance it ever had to get a really good price: in May and June of 2008, when it might have sold (should have sold??) around $2.5mm.

You can see that they realized (correctly) that The Market was in nuclear winter in early 2009, so puling back on June 3, 2009 was a rational response to the disappointed seller’s conundrum of ‘fight or flight?’. Yet they came back too high when they recognized (correctly) that The Market was deeper in Fall 2009 than it had been. You also see that they over-shot The Market on the high side when they returned to market last July with a price increase, then had to scramble over the Fall to catch up by dropping the price.

This is another reason why I started up top by referring to this loft as “rich in angles”.

There is another way to look at the question where The Peak was for primitive 714 Broadway lofts, as the 4th floor was offered in the first quarter, and sold quickly. That one was billed as “3,100 sq ft’ that was “full of charm”, a “true loft” with 13 foot ceilings, but the babble is also conspicuously missing quality modifiers. With a loft that size but only one bathroom, it is fair to assume that was also a do-over loft.

Before you look at this listing history of the 4th floor, look again at when and at what price the 2nd floor came to market, above … (I will wait) … now look at this: 

You could use this 4th floor sale as establishing The Peak Value for a do-over loft at 714 Broadway. In which case, the spread between Peak-to-now is demonstrably 9.3%. But I think that is giving too much credit to these two data points. While it is true that 2 do-over lofts sold with 10% of each other two weeks and three years ago, I believe you would make a mistake by arguing that these prove a 10% slide since the Peak.

This is yet another another reason why I started up top by referring to this loft as “rich in angles”. One last angle (rectangle, actually), then I will stop….

about your feet
An aside about measuring square feet. With buildings of this age, it is likely that even the most exacting measurement standards would come up with different widths along the same length of wall, perhaps with variances greater than an inch or two. Just having exposed brick on both sides compared to sheet-rocked walls would “add” 1.5” or more to a measure. As I noted, estimated width of the 2nd floor loft at its widest point was 21’ 5”. The 9th floor, however, used 22’ 4”, obviously in the same footprint as it is the same building. In a loft that is at least 100 feet long, that 9” variance alone would add/subtract 75 sq ft to what was built as identical footprints.

I can’t find “3,050 sq ft” on the 9th floor floor plan using the dimensions given. Nor can I find “3,350 sq ft” on the 2nd floor floor plans using those different dimensions before considering the two levels; and with the upstairs dimensions for the 2nd floor the issue becomes even more cloudy, as there is a lot more space up there than 300 sq ft, using the room dimensions as given.

I really will stop here, as to go on would begin another post about feet.

© Sandy Mattingly 2011