hard data are hard to find … here's some on 30 days of actual loft sales

first of a series? maybe
A week ago I set up a spreadsheet on Google Docs as a way to retain and order data that I look at periodically — namely, recent actual sales of Manhattan lofts. Since then I have been toying with how to share it with MLG readers in a way that will be both timely and useful. Problem is, every time I have an idea about making it more useful, it threatens to get more complicated and less timely. And I have stopped waiting for some closed-without-a-public-price sales to flower into a clearing price. So I will just present some data here, with some nasty limitations highlighted, and save extended commentary for the kinds of tomorrow that never seems to come for some very good-but-executed MLG ideas….

I am also not sure how the Google Docs links will work, so that may require updating and tweaking. It should be obvious that I have always chosen to send my MLG time on content rather than graphics, formatting or any (not even very) fancy stuff. Indeed, it is almost a point of perverse pride that MLG is a more primitive site than anything I look at regularly on the web. Until I get to a point of being able to learn something easily that will make MLG look better, I will putter along in this old jalopy.

top line numbers
For the 30 days prior to December 11, 2008 our inter-firm data base reported as Sold and Closed "lofts" 24 resales and 19 developer/sponsor sales in new developments. I am reluctant to do too much parsing of such limited data, but the median price-per-foot for the 16 resales I have enough data to compute was either $935/ft, $1,045/ft or mid-way between them ($990/ft), depending on whether the "median" of 16 points is point #8, #9 or the average of points #8 and #9. On the other hand the average was $1,170/ft for the 16 resales. For new developments, I can compute median and average per-foot numbers (for 17 sales) as $1,272/ft and $1,269/ft, respectively.

I think the most interesting current "days on market" number is the spread between when an apartment came to market and when it got into a contract that (later) actually transferred title. I can understand why Miller Samuel uses days between the contract and the last price change, but I am more interested in total time on market in our current market conditions. I get a median Days Until Contract for resales of 100 days or 121 days (or their average, darn those even numbers of data points) with a range of 15 days to 756 days, and an average for resales of 179. For new developments, the spread is from the ridiculous (655 days to contract) to the sublime (zero days; must be signed contracts on lofts released just for that buyer), with an average of 147 days.

Full data will be on Google Docs: address, "sq ft" (quoted by agents), date deed was filed or dated, clearing (closing) price, price-per-foot, date it came to market, last asking price, date reported as in contract, number of days between original listing and contract, and original asking price. I am sure there are other interesting facts to compute (like listing discount), but the more I play the longer it takes to publish (the data get more stale).

major limitations on data
The universe of data is limited by whether a given apartment is labeled a "loft" by the listing firm when they enter the listing data. This results in some over-counting of "apartments" that are not really lofts being marketed as "lofts", but the worse problem is under-counting when lofts are described as (e.g.,) "3-bedrooms" rather than as "lofts". I know it is a problem, but I cannot easily control for it. So be it.

I can count only sales that are updated as Sold & Closed in our system, at which point I can see when they really sold. The listings that sell through agents who take days, weeks, or months to update the system get lost, as happened to 2 or 3 "30 day sales" that had deeds recorded before November 11. I figure that the utility of this information is heavily dependent on it being timely, so sales outside the 30 day period will not be included. (Since I don’t cross-check my weekly sales-in-last-7-days data, that data will be different from this 30 day data.)

Anything dependent on agents’ measuring tapes is … well … dependent on agents’ measuring tapes: most critically, the reported size of the unit and its obvious impact on price-per-foot calculations.

I suspect that more limitations will occur to me, but let’s not further delay the data.

the goods, on line
If those Google Guys are as smart as they say they are, my spreadsheet is available on-line here, for all the world to see. (Crossing fingers and toes.) Would one person please confirm for me that it is there?

I will have some other things to say about this information in the days ahead. I really hope this is useful. If it is useful to you and not unduly painful to me, we will do it again in January, as the more there is, the more useful it will be.

© Sandy Mattingly 2008