shorn but sold at 109 Greene Street

doing what you have to do
The Manhattan loft #2B at 109 Greene Street has sold three times since it was brand spanking new in 2005. This is going to get bumpy, but let’s get out some facts (closing dates and clearing prices), then chew:

facts, just facts, Ma’am
More factual material: from the most recent listing, the "1,808 sq ft" loft has a classic Long-and-Narrow floor plan, with windows only front and back, but with the proportions for the rooms you are only ever far from a window in the bathrooms (the floor plan is easier to see from the StreetEasy listing page, here). The list of kitchen appliances is one proper proper name after another, with one jaw-dropping kitchen amenity: a sushi bar. The large windows and 13-and-a-half foot ceilings provide serious loft cred.

I did not know that (or I forgot)
[update 7.8.09: I am scratching my head this morning as the building info that follows seems to be for the WRONG condo. I have crossed it out as I don’t have time now to figure out how I got to the development website for Lofts on Greene for this address, as there is (still) a (different) condo at 103 Greene Street, The Milan. The info about the individual loft sales seems to be good, but my building info is …. garbled. I will try to figure out later …]
(If I knew this back in 2005, I have forgotten that I knew it….) According to the development’s website (still active!), this condo is a hybrid of conversion of one commercial loft building from 1879 (f/k/a 103 Greene St) and the combination with a new building to replace the twin of 103 (101 was destroyed in a 1950 fire) by, among other things, using a mold of the 103 facade to cast (in iron!) the facade of 101’s replacement. That is so cool that I am pretty sure I would remember it today if I had been aware of it then.

The website says 12 units were to be offered, including penthouses, but I count 13 units sold in quick order, 11 in May 2005 and 2 penthouses in June 2005 (StreetEasy is my friend, and yours). How well-received were The Lofts on Greene? They were so well received (and thanks for asking) that #5B was flipped on September 14, 2005 for $525k more than the original price of $2mm paid on May 16, 2005.

not messing around
This recent sale of #2B was quick, if painful: new to market on February 6 at $2.8mm (note the price these sellers paid in July 2006) with one trivial price drop (to $2.75mm, a mere 2% at this level) on April 12 that must have lead immediately (somehow) to a negotiation, as they were in contract as of April 28 — $435k from where they’d started in February (a healthy 15.5% off). They assuredly did not like it (note again the price these sellers paid in July 2006), but they did what they had to do in this environment to actually sell.

other flips worked better
You’d guess that the three-part price history of #2B is a simple function of The Market (at any given time) being The Market (at any given time). But the experience of the upstairs neighbors in #4B has been quite different: that unit was bought in the initial offering in May 2005 at $2.5mm (it is "2,448 sq ft" — fully one-third bigger than #2B) and then flipped almost exactly four years later for $3.695mm. That sale overlapped substantially with #2B; it even took a bit longer. #4B was offered on December 18 at $4.25mm, dropped (ever so slightly) into the 3s on March 31 ($3.995mm) and entered contract just days before #2B did, at only an 8% discount from last ask and a 48% premium over the 2005 purchase.

victors, meet spoils
All that gain went to the #4B sellers, as they had been the original buyers; in contrast the recent #2B sellers sold at a loss compared to their 2006 purchase (they were down $345k, before expenses). The still puzzling comparison between #2B and #4B is from May 2005 to 2009: #4B gained 48% when it sold in May 2009; #2B gained only 25% from May 2005 to June 2009. Weird.

#5A has a flipping history (so to speak) that ends just before Lehman hit the fan. #5A sold on August 25, 2008 for $2.875mm, after being bought in the initial offering in May 2005 at $1.81mm — a flipping gain of 59% in 39 months. Also weird, compared to #2B, but less weird than the #4B comparison to #2B because the #4B sale in May 2009 was well into The Changing Market. Other flips were earlier, and showed smaller gains than #5A and #4B.

#3B has also flipped once. #3B is "2,469 sq ft" (almost-but-not-quite the same size as #4B) and sold in May 2005 for $2.9mm and then in December 2007 (near The Peak, no?) for $3.65mm. That’s only a gain of 26%, before expenses.

One more flip: PHB was originally $3mm in June 2005 and sold for $3.835mm in February 2007 — a 28% gain, before expenses.

using closing dates, not contract dates can be confusing
I can’t see contract dates for the initial offering sales, but it is possible that there is a significant spread between the dates the first initial contracts were signed, and that some of the gain for #4B is the result of an early (pre-price-raising amendments?) contract, compared to other units that have since flipped at lesser gains. That’s just speculation, of course, but that #4B gain of 48% in May 2009 sticks out even more than the gain of 59% for #5A cashed in in August 2008.

another "explanation"?
Or this history and set of comparisons (terribly convoluted, I know, but it just grew on me like Topsy) can be "explained" by a not-so-simple aphorism: The Market is not always efficient. Certainly, I can’t find any efficiency in this messy set of data.