you price it high, you pay the price / 105 East 29 St #11 closes, finally

from September 2005 to now
Manifestly, the sellers of the beautiful 11th floor loft at 105 East 29 Street (with "3,000 sq ft" that have room for 2 fireplaces, 4 exposures and 19 windows) mis-perceived the Manhattan loft market when they came to market in September 2005 for $3.5mm, as it did not sell then. Nor did it sell for the $3.75mm asking price from March 2006,the September 2006 price of $3.8mm, nor — after a 6 month hiatus and a change in firms — for the $3.495mm beginning in March 2008 (essentially re-starting at the September 2005 [unsuccessful] price). But the May 2008 price reduction to $3.295mm go the ball rolling to a contract in July and a closing at $3.15mm with a deed dated December 12.

whose bitch?
Might they have gotten more than $3.15mm if they had been quicker to get down in the low-3s? Probbaly. Hindsight is a bitch, no?

I hit the 9^th floor unit both when it came to market at $3.75mm (September 23, 2007: 105 E 29 9th fl is new this weekend + going for it) and after a drop a year ago to $3.495mm (does that price sound familiar??) (on January 17, 2008). In both posts I reviewed building sales (and listing) activity, including the 11th floor extended listing activity; this is from a year ago:

I relayed some inside

information

about the 11

th

floor in that January 17, 2008 post, which ameliorated the view that I took about that 11

th

floor (non-sale) history as a negative comp for the 9

th

floor (the bold is new):

the distraction of almost deals

There is a reason that people (agents, lawyers; less often sellers) say "you don’t have a deal until you have a deal", meaning that nothing counts until a contract is effective. For the 11

th

floor sellers, they probably felt pretty good about their pricing strategy when they took it off the market after getting offers above the asking price, and (likely) persuaded themselves that it did not much matter that those offers never

really

counted. (Of course, I have no idea if the offers came from people who were qualified, or well-informed about the market, or kooks; how much stock to reasonably put in those offers would vary greatly, depending on the circumstances.)

Oops…

$3.15mm in December 2008 is a

very

long way from anywhere near $3.8mm a year or more earlier. Hindsight = (nasty, nasty) bitch, indeed. (For the 9th floor, as well, as it is now offered with a "2">)

© Sandy Mattingly 2009