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October 2006

Oct. 31, 2006 - will Zinc sink the nabe? / trembles & tribulations reported in Tribeca Trib

 
Pile driving driving cracks up walls, then neighbors
The Tribeca Trib carries the news about early construction work at the Zinc Building in the northern reaches of Tribeca (475 Greenwich St, between Canal and Watts). Developer Fabian Friedland, a partner on the project with Douglaston Development, had gotten neighborhood kudos earlier in the process by reducing the height and bulk of the project two years ago before winning a variance to go forward from the Board of Standards and Appeals and praise from Community Board 1. His level of esteem from his neighbors (he lives nearby) has fallen since then.
 
“This was not your garden variety annoyance,” said [a neighbor], who lives across from the site at 472 Greenwich St. “This was a threat to our building.”
Just the two days of pile driving caused cracks in three apartments, according to Noel Dennis, a lawyer representing a group of neighbors around the site. An engineering report commissioned by one of the buildings said that “excessive vibrations which could occur [from additional pile driving] will likely cause damage” to the building.
 
Pound the piles or screw 'em?
Now there is a dispute as to whether the developers promised to use auger (screw-in) piles for the whole project, which the Port Authority required for a part of the site above the Holland Tunnel. While Friedland still makes ‘nice’ noises, he may not control the project at this point.
 
“We have to lower their level of concern,” said Friedland …. “The appropriate way to do that is to have their professional talk to our professional because it is very technical stuff.”
“Any influence I have in construction practices is now limited,” he said, and referred questions about the construction to a Douglaston executive, who did not respond to a call for comment.
 
lovely lofts atop the Tunnel
The Zinc is slated to be 21 units in 8 stories (Corcoran is doing the marketing, using lots of CAPITAL LETTERS). I assume they are falling behind schedule.
 
© Sandy Mattingly 2006
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Oct. 31, 2006 - what’s with the witchcraft, and why does everyone want it? (market predictions)

 
Nice post on Jonathan Miller’s other blog, Soapbox (on appraisals) about the temptation to predict the future: we all have it, you all want it.
 
I try to tell people all the time that the best I can do is assess how This Loft in This Neighborhood is likely to do in comparison to the market as a whole going forward. If the whole market goes down, will this one? Umm, yup. But either right in line with the rest of the market (if in a ‘mature’ market) or possibly more than the rest of the market (if This loft poses greater risk and opportunity). Same thing going in the other direction, if the overall market improves.
 
Everything else is a form of witchcraft, no? (Hence the timing of today’s posts.)
 
But I get the feeling that people want to ‘know’ more. As if I had more. (If I had more, would I still be working??) BOO to all today! (Send me your extra chocolate.)
 
© Sandy Mattingly 2006
 
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Oct. 31, 2006 - Curbed means never having to say you're sorry

 
Curbed.com is at the top of the New York City blogosphere. Among its strengths is that it goes all over the place in content and breadth. And it certainly is an ... ummm ... unfiltered medium, as the occasional lewd threads are tolerated (presumably) as self-policing (or self-deleting) community generated content.
 
The editorial tone is wry, sharp and iconoclastic on a good day, and usually merely snarky on a bad day. But yesterday was a particularly bad day for Curbed, and I have been waiting for somebody on the Curbed Team to acknowledge that -- perhaps Joey the Author or Lock the Man. Still waiting.
 
They took a bizarre news bite (1990s Haitian strong man found to be Queens real estate agent) and went WAY over the top. Three or four civilians have chimed in to chide Curbed, and so far the only response has been more wiseass from Joey the Author. Nothing from Lock the Man.
 
I realize they have an image to maintain, but I wonder if they realize that they have an image to maintain. This ain't the PC police calling, but why can't they acknowledge even the slightest regret over a "joke" that went too far??
 
© Sandy Mattingly 2006
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Oct. 30, 2006 - where the (wild?) things are / the distribution of the ‘creative class’

 
Gothamist created a lovely map from 2000 census data reflecting the residence of people who claim to be in the arts, design, entertainment and sports businesses (sports?), which make up what urban theorist Richard Florida describes as the “creative class” (sports??). 150,000 New York City residents identified themselves in these groups, making up 4.3% of thee City’s total work force. (Enlarge the map by clicking on “This map”.) (THX to Curbed for the head’s up.)
 
The map’s largest increment is “greater than 20%”, and the purple goes to….
 
SoHo
Greenwich Village
Tribeca
DUMBO
Chelsea
the Financial District
Williamsburg and
Long IslandCity (Long IslandCity?)
 
loft nabes score
This list is your basic who’s who of loft neighborhoods. Interesting that LIC made the group at the top of the list, which perhaps is an indication that this nabe really is poised to become the next hip loft area.
 
Gothamist was a little surprised that the EastVillage did not make this concentration level, and did not even match the Upper West Side.
 
a personal anomaly
Not me. I was surprised by those few blocks around 58th and Park. Who lives over there??
 
© Sandy Mattingly 2006
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Oct. 30, 2006 - Manhattan as “fundamentally” different / supply, demand and superstars

 
I post lasted week about “economic rent” and how “the fundamentals” must be different in Manhattan compared to most places in America, my theory being that coop and condo prices in Manhattan are driven more by demand-side issues than supply-side issues.
 
limits on building increase volatility?
Jonathan Miller on Matrix today links to a Business Week article that suggests that ‘the answer’ may still be on the supply side, because cities that place limitations on supply (through zoning, principally) have both greater upside swings and greater downside swings. BW suggests that these markets (New York among them) will swing up from the current ‘bust’ more quickly than other cities.
 
How do you know if your own local market is the kind that will snap back or the kind that will languish indefinitely? One key factor is the ease or difficulty of building new homes. Places where new home construction is a long and expensive process, such as Boston and San Francisco, tend to experience big price movements, both up and down. "Restricted supply leads to more volatility in prices," says Edward L. Glaeser, a Harvard University economist who has studied big-city housing markets.

Glaeser isn't ready to predict where prices are headed market by market, but the cities with tight housing do usually boom again after a bust. In places such as Atlanta and Houston, by contrast, price cycles are usually mild, because the supply of housing is flexible. Traditionally, flexible markets have gone through booms and busts only when there was a wrenching change in demand, such as during the oil-patch roller-coaster of the 1980s.
 
Houston vs. Manhattan – my cost-to-build hypothesis supported
My hypothesis last week specifically mentioned Houston as a market in which the cost of building a new house would more directly limit the cost of resale homes, in contrast to Manhattan, so I take this as support for my supposition.
 
In fact, BW then goes on to support my demand-side supposition, talking about “superstar cities” that have unusual demand for housing:
 
With apologies to the mainstream, the truth is that supply considerations can cause markets to diverge from what seem to be the fundamentals for a long time, perhaps permanently. One explanation for this is the "superstar cities" concept developed by economists Joseph E. Gyourko and Todd M. Sinai of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and Christopher J. Mayer of Columbia Business School. They argue that certain cities -- Boston and San Francisco, say -- benefit from a winner-take-all phenomenon that separates them from also-rans. People all over the world want to own homes in Boston and San Francisco, and the supply is limited. As worldwide wealth rises, there is a bidding war for homes there. No such luck for, say, St. Louis. In fact, according to the authors, the gap between prices in San Francisco and the national average doubled between 1970 and 2000
 
Part of this may be an analysis of which cities are ‘fashionable’ at a given time, with the ability to “create” demand by being “unique” tempered by (in some places – Miami, Las Vegas??) the ease of building more housing.
 
In an era of globalization, cities with international reputations can get an edge over blander neighbors if they're perceived as scarce commodities. For example, Nashville, as the capital of country music, has at least the potential to convert its fame into wealth, says Gleb L. Nechayev, an economist at Boston-based Torto Wheaton Research, a unit of CB Richard Ellis. Miami developers have parlayed the city's international fame into booming sales of condos to Latin Americans and Europeans. But while the uniqueness phenomenon may help growth in those cities, it won't necessarily keep prices up, because it's easy to build: Witness the current glut of Miami condos.
 
we are so special (really)
Of course, we in Manhattan view Manhattan as inherently and perpetually unique – so we are so special that we are immune from normal economics ;-)
 
THX to Jonathan for the link.
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Oct. 26, 2006 - on average, up, way up and down doesn’t trend / price per foot volatility

 
The Miller Samuel quarterly report that just came out about coop and condo sales in Manhattan shows how volatile key numbers can be with such a small sample as the subset of Manhattan LOFT sales in any three-month period. Applying such numbers to determine trends can be dangerous in real time.
 
In the first three quarters of 2006, the reported average price per square foot for lofts has been $1,043, $1,170 and $1,081; while the Fourth Quarter of last year was $941. I did not study enough statistics in college to do a better job of analyzing the sample size here, but with “only” 153 closed loft sales (coops and condos) reported in the Third Quarter by Miller Samuel, it would not take a very large shift in the mix of lofts sold (high end + new vs. classic, un-renovated) to shift the average price per foot. (They report over one thousand coop sales in Manhattan overall in this period, and another thousand condo sales – providing *much* larger “n” for those stats.)
 
In a different context, $1,043 per foot seems like a perfectly healthy number – unless compared to $1,170/ft. This illustrated the problems of trend-spotting from the middle – during a trend. It will take a couple of quarters or more to see which way thee trend is going on this metric.
 
© Sandy Mattingly 2006
 
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Oct. 24, 2006 - Days and Confused / comparing coop and condo Days on Market

 
Parsing the most recent Miller Samuel report for the Manhattan coop and condo apartment market, one comparison caught my eye as unusual.
 
In Q3 06, the average Days on Market for coop apartments was 145; for condos, 155. (Miller Samuel uses “from last list date” to –presumably – publicly reported sale as its definition.)
 
Having struggled with enough coop Board packages, I know that coops generally (should) take a lot longer to close (from time of contract) than condos, because “all” that a condo application has to do is to persuade the condo to waive its right of first refusal. In my experience, condo closings should take at least 30 days less than coop closings, again measured from time of contract to closing.
 
So a ten-day spread for coops and condos in Miller Samuel for the last quarter struck me as odd, since the spread ran the ‘wrong’ way.
 
Miller Samuel did not break out DoM for coops separately from condos in its ten year market report (darn that Jonathan Miller) but I was able to cobble together eight quarters of data from the cache on the PruDE site.
 
Turns out that this ‘backwards spread’ is still (to me) anomalous, but it is also consistent: in every one of these quarters, condos were on the market 8 to 12 days longer than coops.
 
 
Coop DoM
Condo DoM
Q3 06
145
155
Q2
138
149
Q1
132
144
Q4 05
133
141
Q3
129
137
Q2
98
107
Q1
90
99
Q4 04
91
102
 
 
I can’t for the life of me figure out why – unless the condo segment includes new developments that don’t close until the Certificate of Occupancy is issued, which can be a year after contract. Weird….
 
© Sandy Mattingly 2006
 
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Oct. 24, 2006 - loft market trended with overall market in Q3 06 / Miller Samuel finally stands up

Appraiser Jonathan Miller cops to being the reason his Q3 Manhattan Market Overview has been so long delayed in release, but at least it is now out. The short story for Manhattan lofts is that (1) the loft market behaved like the overall market and (2) all price indicators were down this last quarter over the 2d quarter of 2006 (a record setting quarter), but up year-over-year.
 
More analysis when I can apply more brain power to the data. Great stuff (thank you Jonathan!) so take a look for yourself.
 
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Oct. 19, 2006 - Manhattan apartment prices / more like Tom Cruise than a truck

“economic rent” explained (it is not what you think)
UC Berkeley prof Hal Varian is an occasional contributor (I think) to the Economic Scene column in the NY Times business section; today’s column is provocatively entitled “Why Old Media and Tom Cruise Should Worry About Cheaper Technology”. Which got me to thinking about the Manhattan coop and condo real estate market.
 
Varian talks about the notion of “economic rent”, using Tom Cruise’s movie salaries as an example (quoted below). Which reminded me of the insistence of some real estate commentators to talk about the “fundamentals” in the New York City apartment market (as in “the recent price run up could not be sustained because prices outstripped the fundamentals”).
 
cost vs. demand
Here is what Varian said about The Couch Raver’s salary:
 
David Ricardo, who lived from 1772 to 1823, developed the theory of economic rent in his essays opposing the 19th-century English Corn Laws. These were tariffs ostensibly intended to protect British farmers from cheap foreign grain.
 
Ricardo observed that the tariffs had two effects: the obvious effect of raising the price of grain and the more subtle effect of pushing up the rent of land suitable for growing grain.
 
From the viewpoint of an individual tenant farmer, the rent he paid to the aristocratic landlord was a cost of production. But for the system as a whole, the land rent did not really determine the price of grain. It was the other way around: the price of grain determined land rent. So the real beneficiaries of the Corn Laws were not the tenant farmers, but the aristocrats who owned the land.
 
And so it is with Mr. Cruise. His salary, as that of other Hollywood stars, depends on the fact that large numbers of people will pay to see his movies. If, in the future, these people spend more time on YouTube and less time going to movies, Mr. Cruise’s compensation will probably fall.
 
This is not true for other sorts of goods used to produce films. The movie business uses a lot of trucks — but the price of trucks won’t change if people go to movies less. Why? Because the price of trucks is determined primarily by their cost of production — the labor, steel, rubber and other materials that go into making them.
 
It’s quite different with star salaries. It’s not the cost of production that determines actors’ wages but the demand for the product that they produce.
 
What does this have to do with Manhattan apartment prices? Here is how I would turn Varian around to face my market:
 
Manhattan apartment prices depend on the fact that large numbers of people will pay to live in Manhattan. If, in the future, these people prefer to spend their money on suburban houses Manhattan apartment prices will probably fall.
 
Seems pretty simple and obvious, right?
 
I have often wondered about what fundamentals people are talking about when they talk about real estate. But here is why Real Estate Fundamentals don’t apply in Manhattan they way they may apply in, say, Houston.
 
My guess is that real estate prices in Houston – and in much of America -- are much more directly related to costs of production (buying land and building materials and paying someone to assemble those materials on that land) than here. If a buyer in Houston has a real opportunity to buy-and-build within a reasonable commuting distance to a job, the relative values of resale homes is limited in some significant way by that choice.
 
But in Manhattan, there is essentially no equivalent build-or-buy choice.
 
I wonder if there is any data that would help rank different US cities on the degree to which Costs Of Production are relevant to market prices.
 
Probably, Manhattan and San Francisco are examples of consistent demand being the market driver; “frothy” markets with a lot of investors (Las Vegas, south Florida?) probably swing in the degree to which demand is the driver; most of America is probably more weighted to costs of production. Not sure what the data would be, but I wonder if it is out there…
 
© Sandy Mattingly 2006
 
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Oct. 17, 2006 - do loft owners have cars? / beating parking tickets

 
Coincidence? You decide
Two pieces by very different media came across my desk today, with no reference to each other. Is October the unofficial New York City Parking Ticket Month?
 
The Manhattan Users Guide lead article today talks about a service that will fight for you on a no-win-no-fee basis.
 
The NY Post today has a piece about a new book to come out by a former traffic judge that advises you to “fight every ticket” and to bring documents, but leave the ticket at home.
 
© Sandy Mattingly 2006
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Oct. 16, 2006 - how many Days on the Market? no simple math in the Manhattan loft market

 
fuzzy math makes things less clear
It seems as though there should be a simple answer to the question “how long has this loft been on the market?” But not in this town.
 
Rumor has it that out there in America there are standard definitions for “Days On Market” and that this information is broadly available to real estate licensees (and perhaps to buyers). As a result, in most real estate markets there are wonderful and historical data about how long it takes something to sell, which can be very useful macro data.
 
Manhattan data are weak, skewed and suspect
Not so in Manhattan, for at least two reasons. First, what data exist are not widely shared (about when a loft or apartment was first offered for sale, when it went into contract and when it sold). Second, the time lag between a binding contract and eventual closing ranges anywhere from easily 90 days for a coop apartment purchase to as long as 150 days if the Board approval process is difficult, and can be anywhere from 30 to 60 days for a simple condo purchase. This post-contact skew makes it very hard to compare the data we do have.
 
And there is a third problem – agents can manipulate the data. Or – just make mistakes.
 
when does 92 = 150? (should be ‘never’)
The latest Halstead Q3 report illustrated the problem of standardization. Halstead says the average Days On Market for Manhattan coops and condos was 92 days, compared to 68 days a year ago. Halstead does not define Days On Market (page 3 of the report) except to exclude new development (which makes sense) and units listed over 9 months (which does not make sense).
 
Miller Samuel, on the other hand, has been reporting Days On Market for many years. They use “from last list date” to – presumably – closing, which the press reports as 150 days for the same quarter that Halstead counted as 92 days on market. At that magnitude of difference, that’s a difference in definition not a rounding error.
 
different data from different sources
I suspect that this difference has to do with Miller Samuel being an appraiser (with easy access to public information such as when an apartment closes) while Halstead probably uses agent reports of when things go to contract I can’t think of another reason the two reports should be so radically different.
 
Miller Samuel has the benefit of using a data point with a long history, so it is especially interesting from a macro perspective to see that the 150 days for Q3 06 compares with the “historical low” described by Miller Samuel about five quarters ago of (I recall) 98 Days On Market.
 
Halstead reported Days On Market for the first time in this last report --though they provide one year’s historical comparison (as noted, they counted 68 Days On Market as rolling 5-quarter low).
 
Miller Samuel won’t have “official” information about contract dates, but Halstead would through the Real Estate Board of New York for agents self-reporting about their transactions. This is probably the same source that the NY Times uses for its “Residential Sales” section each Thursday and Sunday (“most recent listing to the dales agreement”). But that date can be pretty squishy.
 
squishy data in the NY Times
199 Bowery #11D was featured in the NY Times Residential Sales 10.8 as selling after 10 weeks on market at full ask BUT it was really listed on Jan 19 at $960k, then dropped on February 17 to $925k, then went into contract on April 25 (the ten weeks being from Feb 17 to April 25), and then closed July 7. In this case, the $35k price change re-set the clock the Times uses by dropping four weeks.
 
Similarly, NY Times Residential Sales for last Sunday shows that loft #5B at 257 W 17 St sold in 6 weeks at $1,232,500 (off the $1.265mm ask) BUT it actually had been on the market since January 15 (starting at $1.595mm, then reduced on March 2 to $1.395mm, and then finally on June 6 to $1.265mm) before going into contract on June 28 and closing on August 23. So the Times reported that this property took “only” six weeks to sell – which is a time period that does not make sense from any of the price changes. This contract took 24 weeks from the first offering, 16 weeks from the first price change, but only three weeks from the last price change. Since it is usually the listing agent that provides the information to the NY Times, I assume the listing agent just made a mistake. (Cynical people might have another hypothesis.)
 
Here’s a mistake in the other direction. NY Times Residential Sales for last Sunday reports that loft #4 at 40 White St sold above ask in 15 weeks (at $1.027mm; ask was $995k) BUT it really took only four weeks to go into contract. According to our inter-broker data sharing network it was first offered for sale on May 10 and went into contract on June 6, and closed no August 24. So in this case, the agent must have reported the time between the first offering and the closing date.
 
what’s the point?
That the data are messy.
That only Miller Samuel uses a standard that permits long historical comparisons.
And that the data are messy.
 
© Sandy Mattingly 2006
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Oct. 15, 2006 - unique ain't what it used to be / more than 100 "unique" lofts in Manhattan??

Manhattan real estate metaphysics / how many unique lofts can fit on the head of a pin?
I happen to believe that lofts are wonderful; many are unusual. Part of their charm (for those so charmed) is that they are so different from "cookie cutter" layouts in standard "apartments", and so different from each other - even within the same line in the same building.
Real estate marketing being the excessive endeavor that it is, it should not surprise that the word "unique" is bandied about a lot with lofts.
bandy, bandy, bandy
But I was surprised at how much bandying there is. NYTimes.com has more than 100 hits for listings for lofts that contain the word "unique". That's just too many to fit, but which ones are not unique enough? Which ones are "really unique" or "truly unique"??
I guess that is a matter of personal taste, but here is a selection.
"a unique portfolio of extraordinary loft homes" at 135 W 4 St for $5.96mm
this "unique prewar loft" is also a "special duplex" from Halstead for $3.995mm
"This unique home offers a perfect layout" 95 Greene for $3.5mm
in contrast, this one has "a unique, flexible floor plan" at 105 E 29 St for $2.995mm
"patina of the original walls and tin framed windows give a unique warmth that balances the clean lines of the conversion" on W 17 St for $2.7mm
"renovated to add all the modern day luxuries while preserving the unique original 1910 architectural details" at 684 Broadway for $2.595mm
here's one on Christopher St "WESTVILLAGE'S PRIME LOCATION OFFERS A UNIQUE AND LUXURIOUS LOFT!" for $2.135mm
This one is both "unique and desirable" at 128 E 7 St for $1.85mm
At 416 Washington St there is "exceptional" and "offers a unique balance of history and modern design in one of the most glamorous and cosmopolitan areas of the city" for $1.45mm
354 Bowery contains a loft that is both "unique and rare" for $1.35mm
111 Barrow has a "unique and special" loft that is so unique and so special that "Pictures cannot capture the space and light" for $1.298mm
this one may be the most unique, because of its price ($685k) and location at 310 E 46 St in TurtleBayTowers, a prewar high rise in a non-loft area (but it is legit, as a former factory building), but here goes: "loft in space" (nice, eh?) "Welcome home to this unique sprawling lofty space with 13' ceilings and a large standing sleeping loft" Bellmarc (actually, the "standing sleeping loft" does sound unique)
© Sandy Mattingly 2006
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Oct. 6, 2006 - whatever happened to "Supply" & Demand? carping at Halstead #s quarterly

 
“inventory” still mis-defined
I will pick on Halstead (whose latest quarterly market report from Halstead is out this week) a bit because (a) they are first, (b) they left some easy targets in front of me, and (c) it is easier to notice the problems than to digest quickly the rich content. I started with some of the loft data yesterday. With luck, I will get to more of the rich content as digested, in bite-sized pieces as well. And to Miller Samuel next week....
 
It really burns me that Halstead continues to report and compare only “new” listings as "Inventory". The market over-hang is not only from new listings but from all available properties for sale.
 
What makes it worse is that they obviously know this. Their very fancy, very expensive and very heavy "Homes” book -- the one that fell out of my NY Times home delivery this week -- refers to the number of apartments for sale downtown at the end of Q2 06 as being slightly less than at Q2 05. They didn’t provide details, but clearly they were making a (positive) point about (real) “inventory”.
 
Yet the web report about "Inventory" still talks exclusively about the number of new units offered for sale in a quarter. Burn, burn, burn.
 
Compared to the prior quarterly report (addressed by me here), Halstead has shown some improvement I think, but not for the loft segment. (They added a very-flawed Days on Market table and a sale vs. asking price table.)
 
© Sandy Mattingly 2006
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Oct. 5, 2006 - Halstead’s Q3 was flat-to-mixed; lofts too

 
some loft areas up year-over-year, some down, all slightly
The latest quarterly market report from Halstead is out this week and I will try to deal with the various market reports in more bite-sized chunks. (Miller Samuel’s report for PruDE should be on the .net in the next few days; Corcoran can’t be far behind.)
 
The Halstead data shows that on a dollar-per-foot basis the overall loft market was alt compared to Q3 05, and traded within a narrow range for the last five quarters (from a low of $1,002 a foot in Q4 05 to a high of $1,077 a floor in Q1 06). See page 3 of the report.
 
They assess the overall market as similarly flat YOY, based on an overall decline in average rice of 4% and an overall decline in the size apartments sold of 3%. See page 2 of the report.
 
curious loft numbers in Tribeca and the Village
Since they don’t give any indication of the number of transactions in any market segment (just that there were 2,413 sales overall), It is impossible to know how significant some of the data slicing and dicing is. But two loft numbers struck me as particularly curious on page 6 of the report:
 
(1) the median price-per-foot for Tribeca lofts fell YOY from $1,036 to $895, and
(2) the median sale price for Village lofts remains substantially lower than for the other three loft neighborhoods they use ($975k compared to $1.65mm in Chelsea/Flatiron, $1.68mm bracketing Houston Street, and $2.3mm in Tribeca.
 
On the first number, I wonder if that change has to do with the mix of lofts sold in Tribeca in Q3 06. My guess is that there were relatively more lofts sold that were “classic” (or primitive) that needed a lot of work.
 
On the second number, it is clear that the “lofts” in the Village are much smaller than the lofts elsewhere (since dollars-per-foot are roughly similar in each region).
 
© Sandy Mattingly 2006
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on matters of interest to Manhattan coop or condo loft apartment dwellers, buyers, sellers, and others, especially about New York City real estate

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will Zinc sink the nabe? / trembles & tribulations reported in Tribeca Trib
what’s with the witchcraft, and why does everyone want it? (market predictions)
Curbed means never having to say you're sorry
where the (wild?) things are / the distribution of the ‘creative class’
Manhattan as “fundamentally” different / supply, demand and superstars


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