master list of Manhattan loft closings since November

this is The Big One
It has been quite a while since I posted loft-closings-in-last-30-days, but I have not stopped keeping track of Manhattan residential lofts as they close. While there are many limitations in the data (discussed below), the collection is worthwhile enough to post as is, without giving in to my temptation to wait until it is more complete or more useful.

Without further ado … click here for a Google Docs spreadsheet with 229 resales of Manhattan lofts since November  [sheet 1], and another 164 deeds filed for new developments [sheet 2].

I am not going to offer much commentary on the data at this point, but will do so in the coming days and weeks. The major improvement over the 30-day sets is that I have included prior sale information for the third of the resale set that have now sold twice in the last five years or so. That is a potentially very rich source of trend analysis.

need a geek
I am not a wizard at spreadsheets (d’oh). If there is a Manhattan Loft Guy reader out there who wants to play with the data in more sophisticated ways than I have done, I would love to hear from you. In the current state, this is pretty much a data dump, with the only calculations for price-per-foot and days-until-contract, and the only sorting being by deed date. There’s much more that can be done, but I don’t have the talent or time to do more at this point.

Anyone interested??

limitations
The major limiting factor in this data collection is that it is based on my ability to recognize "loft" closings when I periodically scan the list of deeds filed in Manhattan. My former weekly data collections were automatic in the sense that my data source at the time (OLR) was search-able for "lofts" as designated by listing agents. Since I don’t have that source since changing firms I have made a choice to only sift through Downtown deeds on StreetEasy, meaning that I am ignoring lofts in the (relatively) few true loft buildings on the Upper East Side or Hell’s Kitchen, to use two examples. Call me lazy, but I don’t want to sift through every damn closing in Manhattan….

If any of you note a loft closing that I have overlooked (uptown or downtown), let me know and I will track it down and add it.

The data is based on StreetEasy’s links to deeds and listing histories. If no "square feet" are in the deed information or the listing, then that field is blank on my spreadsheet and there’s no price-per-foot calculation. If there is incomplete information on StreetEasy for listing date or contract date, those fields are blank, and there’s no days-to-contract calculation. In a few cases I have made judgments to ignore the reported data on contract date or last listing price because the information just looks wrong to me. For example, a listing history may show a price reduction days before a contract is signed, at a price suspiciously close to the closing price; that looks to me as though a listing agent is manipulating data to suggest that there was only a small discount from asking price.

With that caveat, the data on the spreadsheet should all be verifiable through publicly filed deeds and the inter-firm data base that Corcoran uses. There are probably typos resulting from careless keyboarding when I enter data; I know I have caught a few so it is very likely that I did not catch all. Feel free to let me know of any errors.

At some point I may segregate it by date, or create subsets by date, so that the prime spreadsheet doesn’t get more unwieldy. Any suggestions for how to improve this spreadsheets will be considered.

Much more to follow!

COUNTDOWN: 10 … 9 … 8 … 7 … 6 … 5 [oops] … 4 … 3 … 2 … 1 … 0 !!!!!

© Sandy Mattingly 2009