out of range, out of mind … setting records or delaying sale?

pay the price if they don’t pay attention
The risk in pricing a Manhattan loft above where anything in a building has sold is that potential buyers will be turned off by the price before considering the plus factors you tout to justify a record price. In this market, that is a risky approach — anything that shrinks your potential buyer pool will make a sale take more time, or not occur at all.

Nothing controversial about that paragraph is there? Depends on where the rubber meets the road, I guess.

pricier than Whole Foods
This hard rubber is meeting the road somewhere in the Greater Whole Foods Meets Trader Joe’s area sometimes known as Union Square. There’s a lovely Manhattan loft new to market this month with much bragging: proper proper names, classy materials, thoughtful details; all in all a myriad of ways that this loft exceeds in quality (byimplication, at least) anything that has ever sold in the building. The risk they run is that this thing is priced about $250/ft higher than anything else that I see that has sold in the building — and those sales were in much better than estate condition.

not a Filene’s Basement price
This hard rubber also meets the road near where Chelsea and Flatiron intersect, or overlap. There’s another lovely loft newly for sale in that area that was purchased in 2005 under $1,100/ft but is nowoffered nearly $400/ft higher. Yes, 2009 is not 2005 ( doesn’t that cut both ways!), but $400 should have paid for a deluxe plus ultra renovation. I am not sure that even very good marketing will draw enough eyeballs into this space.

I wonder how many people will even go visit these lofts to be dazzled into paying a large premium over building norms. Looks like two candidates for the too pushy …? thread to add to the Manhattan Loft Guy watchlist.

© Sandy Mattingly 2009