http://www.ManhattanLoftGuy.com/

Manhattan Loft Guy, New York, NY (2026)

08/12/2019

Yeah, it’s NYC where “nothing stays the same”, but this closing got me muttering.

https://gothamist.com/2019/08/12/rip_green_bakery.php

Damn. Back in the day, we’d walk here from Tribeca to buy a box of sesame sticks for a dinner party. I hadn’t realized this hasn’t been Vesuvius for a while.

The charming old green bakery is closed.

11/12/2018

life's not fair, right? certainly not (too often) in the Manhattan loft world

Over on my Manhattan Loft Guy business page, I often condense *really* long posts from my blog into shorter bites. For you civilians, I can condense even that shorter treatment further.

Check the link to read about a seller who priced a loft "objectively" correctly, but closed off $625,000. http://ht.ly/x9zJ30mABz7

As an informed market observer, I hate when that happens. (Not as much as the seller did, but still....)

I have to agree, and sympathize When the owner of the “2,352 sq ft” second floor loft at 26 West 20 Street brought his “estate condition”, “[b]ring your architect and contractor” property to market in February 2017, he had a…Read more ›

11/12/2018

rational or efficient? nah ... Manhattan loft market is too often neither

I tend to notice Manhattan lofts that sell at what might be termed "objectively" wrong prices, when compared to relevant market data. I hit one such lofts sale on my Manhattan Loft Guy blog last week, about a Flatiron loft seller who could not get a price for an 'estate condition' loft that was very close to the market price loft immediately upstairs, achieved only 7 months earlier.

http://manhattanloftguy.com/loft-neighborhoods-flatiron/seller-flatiron-loft-believes-manhattan-loft-market-not-rational/

Life ain't fair.

When this sort of thing happens, I scratch my head, then scratch the data, then try to come up with an after-the-fact rationalization. That takes me *a lot* of words on the blog, but here is the executive summary: I'm guessing that the number of potential buyers of a to-be-gutted loft in this no-doorman no-frills small loft building was pretty limited; the first seller got the most motivated buyer in July 2016, while the seller who came to market in February 2017 had to wait 20 months to get a deal $625,000 less.

I have to agree, and sympathize When the owner of the “2,352 sq ft” second floor loft at 26 West 20 Street brought his “estate condition”, “[b]ring your architect and contractor” property to market in February 2017, he had a…Read more ›

11/07/2018

some 2nd floor lofts are pretty cool

A significant number of Manhattan loft buyers would never consider a loft one floor up from the street. Often, there's not much light down there. Sometimes, there's too much noise wafting off the street. And some folks just don't care to watch the street scene (no matter how vibrant) or want those passersby to get a view into their lives.

The Noho loft that I hit last week on the Manhattan Loft Guy blog might tempt some of the naysayers, particularly naysayers who appreciate a stark minimalist renovation.

http://manhattanloftguy.com/loft-neighborhoods-noho/noho-loft-sells-2077-ft-noho-street-scene/

The loft sits at the wide corner of Bond and Lafayette and features large windows that will compel all but Street Life haters to approach the windows to see what's going on in Noho at the moment. (There might be a lot here!) If there were windows only north, across Bond, there'd be a totally different sense of outside; but wide Lafayette and a west-facing Bond Street view are *right there*.

The interior is so minimal as to be another love-it-or-hate-it element. (I couldn't live with a kitchen that would be 'ruined' if I left a pot out, or that demands multiple pulls to access an oven.) The loft just sold over $2,000/ft in a no-frills condo, so Team Love turned out!

second floor lofts can bring the outdoors indoors Not everyone wants to live right above the street. The “1,367 sq ft” Manhattan loft at 17-19 Bond Street appeals to that subset of downtown Manhattan loft buyers for whom being…Read more ›

11/05/2018

when is a “garden” not a garden?

A: when it is made of pavers, doesn’t get much sun, and features 3 trees in planters.

At least, that’s my answer for one particular Chelsea loft that sold last month with over-the-top broker babble about a garden.

I hit that sale in my October 25 post over on the Manhattan Loft Guy blog. http://manhattanloftguy.com/loft-neighborhoods-chelsea/prefer-chelsea-loft-light-patio/

Babbling misdemeanor aside, the ground floor loft with the outdoor space outperformed an upstairs neighbor with great light but no outdoor space, likely because outdoor space is more rare than great light and some folks just have to have outdoor space. Even if, in this case, the outdoor space is surrounded by windows of *many* neighbors.

The neighbors may know what you’re cooking, and who you’re entertaining, but so long as you use your subway vision (don’t make eye contact!) you can pretend that they’re not there, and you’re not on stage. I guess ....

Campiello Collection loft pair says The Market wants the patio The “1,524 sq ft” ground floor loft at 151 West 17th St (in the Campiello Collection) that sold last week for $3.2mm did so for one reason: the “789…Read more ›

11/04/2018

it takes a brave Manhattan loft seller to drop by $500k, twice

No matter what you think about a seller with an overly optimistic sense of The Market, you must admire a seller who can face the music. (And by “you”, I certainly mean me, and maybe you.) I admired one seller of a Tribeca loft over on my Manhattan Loft Guy blog on October 24.

http://manhattanloftguy.com/loft-neighborhoods-tribeca/tribeca-penthouse-loft-seller-takes-30-off-sell/

As usual, there’s lots of detail over there, but the big picture math is simple: guy started near $4 million in April, then dropped by half-a-million after 6 weeks, then another half after 6 more weeks, and was rewarded with a contract that closed 3 weeks ago.

The clearing price was $2.75mm, but the key word is it *closed*. Because the seller really wanted to be a seller, and not just an owner. Props!

two half-million dollar price drops get it done The owner of the “2,015 sq ft” loft at 25 Murray Street (Tribeca Space) that sold on October 16 had a rather optimistic but decidedly disciplined approach to pricing this duplex…Read more ›

10/12/2018

Price Discovery is hard, and Trophy Pricing can be ... er ... fanciful

Those are two of my takeaways to this report that a Manhattan townhouse finally sold for $12 million rather than the $22.5 million originally asked, numbers that grabbed my attention. The sale took a while:

Feb 19, 2016 new to market at $22.5 million
March 9 $21.5 million
April 18 $20 million
March 2, 2017 $18 million
September 20 off market
October 2 change firms
October 3 $15.25 million
January 22, 2018 $14 million
March 14 contract

The seller behaved (briefly) like a motivated seller two and a half years ago, with quick price drops of a million and a million and a half. Nowhere near the market clearing price, another drop (two million!) took 11 months and then ... crickets.

A change in firms (after 18 months, 4 prices) and two more fairly quick, rather large price drops brought the townhouse within negotiating range (in this case 14%) and the recent sale, 30 months and 8-figures from where they started. Phew!

The difficulty in price discovery is obvious, even if the seller’s response was delayed.

The difficulty in trophy pricing should also be obvious, as neither the seller nor the first firm intentionally picked a price well beyond the actual market value. (The townhouse was definitely marketed as a trophy: “the ultimate representation of Old World history, architecture and charm”.) This happens, I am convinced, far more often than you’d think, with properties marketed professionally by highly competent agents, on behalf of sellers who claim to want to sell. More “art” than “science”, if you will.

Finally, the townhouse is now 5 units over 10,000+ square feet, so the new buyer will put another few millions (or more!) into a gut renovation. First world problem for the one-tenth of one percent.

The former Upper East Side mansion of Oscar-winning composer Franz Waxman was sold for nearly half of the asking price. The 10,300-square-foot prop

02/23/2018

are all old painted ads "ghosts"?

I'm not going to buy this guy's book before I get a look at the photos he's taken, but the NY Times piece from Wednesday is interesting.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/21/nyregion/new-york-today-ghost-signs.html

The pictorial examples in the Times are *not* from the book, and are from a small geographic slice of Manhattan. Each is a sign (or collection of signs) painted long ago on the side of a building to advertise nearby businesses. They fade as they age, of course, and maybe that gives them a "ghostly" aura.

But I thought true "ghost" signs were signs that have been restored to view because an adjoining building that had blocked the signs has been demolished (the new view is usually temporary, until a new building replaces the demolished one, again covering the sign). These are "ghosts" because they are back from the dead.

But I quibble .... I love all these signs, as they point to the past with specific examples of what used to be nearby. In areas that have maintained a certain business focus (like the fur district), there's a natural link, past to present. But in areas that have dramatically changed, the link is more exciting. (I recall electronics firm ads south of the World Trade Center, for example).

My all-time favorite example has been gone for much longer than I thought, before clicking The Google. For a history (and Civil War) buff, seeing a sign advertising Mathew Brady's photography studio was a thrill every time I remembered to look up.

The Wiki confirms that the Brady sign was exactly where I thought it was (south side of a Broadway building between Leonard and Franklin Streets) on the edge of Tribeca but reminds me that it was gone by 1992. I used to walk by this sign very often in the 1980s. Then it was gone. As I recall, simply painted over. Gratuitously. Negligently. Damn.

That sign made it simple to imagine Mathew Brady in his studio, and a stream of prominent New Yorkers walking up the stairs to sit for him, 130 years earlier, RIGHT THERE, in that specific (still surviving) building. Kewl.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/359_Broadway

Wednesday: Fading advertisements, record temperatures expected, and the murder of Malcolm X.

02/08/2018

Canal Street gets ... worse???

Wonderful (and comprehensive) review of the streetscape that separates Soho from Tribeca, and extends much farther east, in Curbed by the wonderful (and comprehensive) Nathan Kensinger. Spoiler alert: vacant retail space after vacant retail space.

Remarkable that a single building owner is responsible for as many as ten vacant spaces, many of which have been vacant for a very long time. (Note to NYC: more heavily taxing vacant sites is a good idea.)

I lived a block from Canal Street (on the Tribeca side) in the 1980s, and remember some of the still surviving nearby stores. We bought foam for window seats from the featured Canal Rubber ("cut to size", indeed), but I can't remember what (or why) we bought at Canal Plastics Center. I know we bought a *lovely* custom rocking chair from a long-gone business at or adjoining 499 Canal, a chair that is still in the family.

More recently, I've been on the street when cops raided some of the counterfeit handbag warehouses / rabbit warrens, and I've never understood why folks from (say) Iowa so much enjoy the experience of buying clearly fake stuff in a very sketchy transaction. Whatever ....

Personally, I've always thought "upgrading" Canal Street has been an iffy proposition. It's more like 14th St than 57th St, and (uniquely in Manhattan, I believe) will always feel like a moat, with ridiculous traffic at one end for the tunnel and at the other end for the bridge.

Note that I don't think this is a gentrification issue as much as it is a conglomerate issue. Too many properties are vacant because too many owners don't feel enough of a financial squeeze to forgo *years* of rental income, so refuse to rent at the market. Zoning rules that don't require street-level retail don't help. Nor does a centuries-old landowner who things very long-term (Trinity Church), apparently.

Great work,

Every single block of Canal Street is now undergoing some change, be it a new tower rising, a decades-old old business closing, or an empty shop rotting away.

01/16/2018

weird numbers are not unusual in the Manhattan loft market

A lovely (if low floor, no view) loft sold last week in the Phillip Glass "Urban Glass House" at 330 Spring Street (in the Greater Ear Area, per my landmarks). It sold at the $2.885mm asking price, which might not be so weird, given its attributes. But here's a weird number: 346.

The loft came to market in December 2016 and (without a price change!) went to contract in November 2017, 346 days later. Needless to say, 346 is a great many days on the market.

Patience can be confused with stubbornness, and a very long marketing campaign is universally interpreted by The Market as the latter rather than the former. Yet in this case a Very Patient Seller got exactly it wanted. The buyer was likely aware of Market Truisms and was therefore surprised that the VPS didn't budge in negotiations, not one penny. But the deal happened because, manifestly, the buyer couldn't find a loft that suited his needs better at a better price so, eventually acquiesced to the VPS.

Hey kids ... Market Truisms, and market stats, are guides, not rules.

The loft is here https://streeteasy.com/sale/1280525

and as in my Master List of Downtown Manhattan Loft Sales, closed on January 10 (not the January 15 that StreetEasy has), per the interfirm database. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14LPnNPpkqk3ciXh2Mb-r-iQqVUkUbF9nSpjM3Ug2nQQ/edit =0

330 SPRING STREET is a sale unit in Hudson Square, Manhattan priced at $2,885,000.

01/15/2018

"the last great artist loft in New York"? the broker babble might not lie

You see fewer and fewer True Artist Lofts marketed, for two simple (related) reasons: there haven't been all that many in the last 25 years (let alone how many offered for sale), and each time one gets sold in that condition it gets improved ... er ... renovated (so that the next time it is offered for sale it no longer earns the label.

You do see a lot of broker babble ... er ... listing descriptions that exaggerate. Sometimes to LOL levels.

The broker babble for this huge Tribeca loft that recently sold does not lie about it being a "great artist loft", though it may take some liberties in asserting it is the last one in town.

At this scale ("4,300 sq ft"), with authentic / classic elements (high ceilings, exposed mechanicals, beams and columns), and name-checking a Pop Art sculptor as resident, I can forgive some hyperbole about last-of-its-kind.

It is a beauty, for those who can handle concrete floors and *wide* open spaces. And the walls include working sketches!
https://streeteasy.com/sale/1294435

I have to figure there's a multi-million dollar renovation coming. Not much gutting required, but an awful lot of building, to trick out "4,300 sq ft". On top of the $5.795mm purchase price, of course.

427 Washington St. #7 is a sale unit in Tribeca, Manhattan priced at $5,795,000.

Manhattan Loft Guy

08/12/2019

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