Manhattan loft inventory / setting a base line of 745

half-hearted (half-assed?) no more
I always knew it would be interesting to know how many lofts are for sale in Manhattan — something that nobody tracks (that I am aware of). My earlier efforts to track this were quick, simple … and wrong, as it took 4 times getting the same wrong number (and a final hint from Reader Larry) to realize that my first efforts were bumping up against a search-result-limit in the form of inter-firm data base we use. (See thehistory from March 30 new Manhattan loft listings + closed sales + inventory in last 7 days and May 4.)

So I broke down the current inventory search into manageable bites that match my New Listings and Closed Sales reports, probably resulting in even more useful information. Here are the numbers, followed by a brief explanation.

Number of Manhattan lofts offered for sale as of Sunday night:

As noted in my original (October 21, 2007) explanation for what and how I count for the New Listings and Closed Sale reports (methodology for New + Sold in The Last Seven Days), I have been counting lofts from the Battery up to the Upper East Side and Upper West Side as defined in the inter-firm data base that we use, OLR, starting at $500,000 and going up to $10,000,000.

As I said then, there is a …

I am catching all listings carried in OLR as "lofts", which I think is dependent on the listing agent checking the "loft" box when they enter the listing. I know this will be under-inclusive because not all agents check the "loft" box even on listings that we would all agree are lofts. I suspect this will be somewhat over-inclusive for the same reason: some agents will identify an apartment as a "loft" that – to a loft-snob like myself – is really only "loft-like".

Now that I have actually done this, it seems so obvious that this is useful data, in so many different ways. I will add commentary later, I am sure, but for now it should suffice to note that lofts in the $1 to $2 million range comprise more than one-third of the inventory and that lofts under $3 million about 70% of the listings market. That is useful context for reviewing the weekly reports on New Listings and Closed Sales.

Again, THX to Reader Larry for the nudge to do this right.


© Sandy Mattingly 2008