whose renovation is it anyway? the resale question

CW vs. MLG
I had an off-line dialog with a Manhattan Loft Guy reader about his renovation plans. His question was whether using privacy glass that can be shaded at the push of a button (as used in the Manhattan loft at 315 West 36 Street that recently sold) instead of conventional walls in the 2d bedroom and 3rd bedroom / office might negatively impact resale value if they look to sell in four or five years. The general question is a common one, particularly for loft owners who want to upgrade and who have particular taste.

I told him that my personal view goes against the Conventional Wisdom. CW is that renovations should be done with re-sale in mind, and in a way that will appeal to the broadest category of Future Potential Buyers. The MLG view is that you should live in a space that gives YOU the most pleasure.

Obviously, there are various questions of degree. The longer you will be there the more idiosyncratic you can be; and idiosyncrasy that can quickly / easily / cheaply reversed is different from love-it-or-gut-it space.

who would not like Magic Walls?
In his case, replacing sheet-rocked walls with privacy glass would open up a loft that gets a lot of light in the the bedrooms that otherwise does not reach the main living area — a huge improvement to their enjoyment of the space. Is there a significant downside to making this change?

I don’t know about the engineering in these walls, but the loft owner does not feel that the glass walls will make noise in the lofty more of an issue for his family. I assume that this might be an issue for some families, but I really don’t know if these walls are more porous for sound than sheet-rocked walls. If they are, there are probably low-cost work-around for that problem that don’t interfere with the benefits (drapes should absorb sound, be portable, and cost relatively little, for example; there are probably other solutions).

Are his hypothetical-2014 buyers going to be turned off by these sometimes-clear-sometimes-opaque walls? Darned if I know … but my guess is that enough people will appreciate both the light and the aesthetic of these walls for resale issues not to be a serious impediment. If I am wrong, and these walls dramatically increase the difficulty of a sale in 2014, the cost of replacing them with conventional walls should not be large.

how reversible are the idiosyncratic renovations?
Projects that are more expensive or more difficult to un-do might present a more difficult quandary. For example, the matched set of lofts that I discussed in a July 1 post ((too rich, too thin) too stylish to sell (well)?) probably include an example of a very cool renovation (to the owners, and to me) that appears to have impacted market value rather dramatically. Whether it is ‘worth it’ or not for the still-owners-but-want-to-be-sellers, I have no idea. (When that does sell I will talk about that renovation specifically, so you can see what I am talking about.)

I described those two lofts in ice cream terms, one being an expensive vanilla, the other a very exotic spicy flavor:

 No disrespect intended to the loft that sold (to the contrary, it sold), but that one has a conventional layout to carve 3 bedrooms (plus additional space) out of a Long-and-Narrow with good light at each end, and is done in entirely neutral tones (white walls, white kitchen, light finish on the hardwood floors, light stone in the bathrooms). It is something of a poster child for being in "sale-able" condition — using a palette that all buyers could easily envision to base their own lifestyle on if they bought that space. The degree to which this one is neutral is perhaps best appreciated by reference to the other one (The One That Has Not Sold [yet]).

The One That Has Not Sold (yet) gives one entire end of the loft to the master suite and squeezes a (proportionately) tiny guest room into the other end. Like the one that sold, this one has a white ceiling — but otherwise is a (comparative) riot of color and texture, with many vertical surfaces in dark shades, a dark finish on the floor, and rather dramatic design elements (oh that bathroom!). Plus, there are curves and arcs where the other one had straight lines and right angles. The color, layout and ‘design’ differences between the two are so dramatic that there are probably few people who would be conflicted in choosing one or the other, assuming rough dollar parity.

I’d say that the most ‘dangerous’ style choice that those sellers made in their renovation was creating a very dramatic bathroom. I hope they still love it, but there will certainly be many people who will not bid because they don’t want to take on a complete bathroom renovation after buying a perfectly usable bathroom; other people will use that ‘defect’ to chip, chip, chip away at the value of an offer.

My point is that loft owners should not be cowed by the Conventional Wisdom into using only neutral colors and materials. They should consider the joy and utility for them as owners for however many years they will be in the space, instead of simply predicting what future fashion will be (as if that were simple!). After all, there are still lofts that sell with glass brick walls, which was ‘fashionable’ from about June 1982 though October 1986.

You are, of course, free to disagree, especially if you are a loft owner contemplating renovation.

[update July 25: Tomorrow’s New York Times Real Estate section feature ‘On The Market‘ includes a pretty awesome modern loft, noting as a "con" that "the customized design might not suit some buyers".  While I think that is true, it is about the same as saying about a "classic" loft, "the classic features might not appeal to some buyers". From the perspective of this post, the more interesting design choice — and one that really limits the resale market — was converting to a 1 bedroom.

To me, it is a spectacular 1 bedroom, but it seems to have some trouble finding a buyer. And the 1 BR decision is not so easily reversed. My quick glance suggests that anyone wanting to make a ‘real’ 2 bedroom out of this space would have to make such radical changes in the layout as to make it impractical. You’d be changing some of essential items that make this loft as cool as it is.

As always, YMMV. But I could not resist the urge to use this very timely NYT example of the issue in this post: whose renovation is it anyway? / the resale question.]

© Sandy Mattingly 2009