Lake Wobegon lofts sell for more than $1,246/ft
crunch, crunch Miller, crunch, crunch Samuel
I have finally gotten to spend a little time staring at the fourth page of the Miller Samuel Second Quarter Manhattan Market Overview, the page with the loft synopsis.
As per usual, kudos to Jonathan Miller for presenting a lot of data in a condensed format with precision and historical context. It can’t be easy writing so many sentences dripping with facts and numbers, while retaining a sense of style and flow.
attention Greg Heym
I wish everyone who reports on Manhattan data was as clear and precise about what they had, and how it compared to what we have seen before.
The ho-hum of the loft segment data is that the loft market performed from April through June 2007 kinda like the overall market: there were more sales, more quickly, and at higher average prices per foot with lofts, as with the Manhattan market overall.
But the increase in sales activity in lofts (233 compared to 218 last year and 183 last quarter) was not as pronounced as with the general market (up 100+% in a year, and up 13.6% in a quarter), and lofts still take longer to sell than the average apartment on the market (123 days for lofts, 117 days overall).
Most curiously, loft inventory increased over both the prior year and the prior quarter, while one of the Big Points about the Manhattan market overall is that listing inventory is down over the prior year (dramatically) and quarter (31.5% year-over-year, and 11.6% quarter-over-quarter). As Miller said in media reports I quoted last week, the drop in inventory plus the increase in sales plus the increase in price show how different Manhattan’s local real estate world is from many local markets in the country.
but Manhattan loft inventory is up
Provisionally, Miller seems to accept the increase in loft inventory as mere anomaly, with the prior year quarter being unusually low and the general recent trend being downward since then, which seems reasonable to me. (As the report says “it would be expected that inventory would move in the opposite direction as the number of sales”.)
That provisional conclusion seems especially reasonable since the leading indicators of demand trend in support of increased demand continuing near-term (sales increase in number, sale prices increase, days on market decline). On balance, there seems to be enough demand for lofts at current prices to eat into inventory for the near term.
the loft niche
With 233 loft sales in a quarter in which 3,939 coops and condos changed hands, loft sales represent about 6% of the Manhattan sales market, but loft inventory is about 10% of the total apartment inventory (527 of 5,237).
Garrison Keilor would know
By the way, the average price per square foot for a Manhattan loft in the second quarter was $1,246/ft, up moderately over both the prior year (up 6.5%) and prior quarter (up 2.6%).
© Sandy Mattingly 2007
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