another big developer haircut as 246 West 17 Street closes at 25% discount (again)

cutting to deal
I hit some new developments that closed after significant discounts from their last asking prices on June 20 (developer haircuts at 15 East 26 Street, 333 West 14 Street, 50 West 15 Street + 246 West 17 Street) and on July 6 (last sponsor sale at 59 John Street / folding tent + closing wallet). When I saw a recent closing in another new loft development, I checked the numbers. Sure enough, there seems to be only one unit left in this 30 story development, with 2 in contract. The barber has been working hard here, for months.

The new development at 246 West 17 St poses a bit of a description conundrum for true Manhattan loft snobs, as it is both a conversion of a 3-story loft building into true "lofts" and the addition of 7 floors of ("loft-like") new construction on top of that 80 year old base. The developers were actually remarkably sensitive to this issue, as the building was (awkwardly) marketed as "Apartments and Lofts".

real loft, apartment plan
The unit that just sold (#2E) is in that base, so truly a "loft" (for those of you who care about such things). This "1,488 sq ft" loft has 12 foot ceilings but a very apartment-like layout. It was first offered in February 2008 at $1.825mm, where it sat for nearly a year. One price drop in January brought it to $1.645mm but the drop in May to $1.595mm did the trick: a contract was signed by July 1. That deal closed on July 20 at $1.2mm, a cool 25% off the last asking price and a full third off the original February 2008 price.

hard working barber
The StreetEasy page for this building shows four closings between February and June at discounts from last asking prices from 20.4% to 27.5%, so there is nothing unusual about the #2E discount on July 20. Two other sales around Memorial Day require a little clicking to see the discounts. The combination of #7A-8B* (huh??) closed on May 26 at $4mm; the units had been last offered individually at $$1.55mm and $3.25mm, so that’s a 20% discount. #1C closed on June 4 at $1.35mm, which looks like only a small discount from the asking price of $1.375mm, but that was sufficiently anomalous to click through and see that the last rel price change for #1C was to $1.995mm on May 13 and that the "$1.375mm" price was adjusted on June 5 (the day after the closing) — clearly some kind of mistake. From $1.995mm to closing at $1.3mm was a 35% discount.

A busy barber, indeed.

The first closings in this development were in September 2008 and show some discounts even then — just from higher numbers and net-net nothing like the 2009 final sales.

COUNTDOWN: 10 …

© Sandy Mattingly 2009