revisiting Trouble in Tribeca, while stopping in Soho

a promise, kept (rare!)
When I hit the Manhattan loft #3S at 155 Franklin Street (the Sugar Loaf) as a June 2009 sale 16% off the 2006 clearing price (August 5, 155 Franklin Street crashes past 2006 to close up 28% (since 2000)) I made a note-to-self to revisit The Real Deal July 31 article Trouble in Tribeca that noted that this was one of only five lofts in Tribeca that closed in June. So let’s go visiting….

tweaking TRD data
The article relied on data from StreetEasy and OLR and noted that "[t]he number of closings may not be completely inclusive because there is sometimes a lag period when closings are reported". In fact, one of the 5 "June" closings they cite was a deed dated May 29 (#19A at 270 Broadway), and there were 3 other Tribeca loft closings in June that they did not catch for this July 31 article: 161 Hudson Street #2B, which closed on June 30 at $2.41mm;  28 Laight Street #1 [Cobblestone Loft], which closed on June 24 at $2.845mm; and 100 Reade Street #5A, which closed for $1.545mm on June 23. (You can find these closings on the handy dandy spreadsheet of Manhattan loft closings that I posted about on August 23, which can be found in the cloud here.)

These adjustments hardly change the overall tenor of the article: there was much less sales activity in Tribeca in June 2009 compared to June 2008.

I don’t personally have enough comparative data to fully explore Tribeca sales trends (come back to the spreadsheet in a year or two ;-), but two thoughts in the real Deal article about Tribeca make sense:
 

Although I am not quite sure if that first factor is meant to address employment prospects (are there more Wall Streeters worried about their job prospects in Tribeca than elsewhere?) or general wealth (did rich people take a bigger hit in the recession?), both factors would seem to disproportionately impact Tribeca because not only does Tribeca have very many very expensive lofts but it has very few relatively inexpensive lofts. This is one highly concentrated pocket of real estate wealth.

June was actually a bigger month for Tribeca closings than July. I count (only) another 5 Tribeca loft closings in July (see the spreadsheet) and (so far) only 3 in August.

whither Soho?
While Soho has a broader range of property values than Tribeca, the wealth-and-jumbo factors should also apply there. I count 3 Soho loft closings in June, 9 in July, and (so far) 4 in August.
 

(The two at 459 West Broadway were actually by a single seller to a single buyer.) Still not enough here to draw solid conclusions, other than to note that Soho ain’t cheap (though it does have a few more [relatively] low-end sales) and to wonder why does everyone want to live on Greene Street during a recession?