May. 20, 2008 - quick sale at 20 East 17 St

May. 19, 2008 - Manhattan loft inventory / setting a base line of 745

So I broke down the current inventory search into manageable bites that match my New Listings and Closed Sales reports, probably resulting in even more useful information. Here are the numbers, followed by a brief explanation.

Number of Manhattan lofts offered for sale as of Sunday night:

I am catching all listings carried in OLR as "lofts", which I think is dependent on the listing agent checking the "loft" box when they enter the listing. I know this will be under-inclusive because not all agents check the "loft" box even on listings that we would all agree are lofts. I suspect this will be somewhat over-inclusive for the same reason: some agents will identify an apartment as a "loft" that - to a loft-snob like myself - is really only "loft-like".

May. 18, 2008 - new Manhattan loft listings + closed sales in last 7 days

• there were 34 lofts reported as new to the market in the last 7 days and 25 as sold
• 20 of the 34 new ones are offered below $2mm, while 16 of the 25 closed sales were below $2mm
• 5 of the 34 new loft listings are in new development, but 9 of the 25 closed sales were in new development
  
  

  By price	New = 34	Sold = 25
  $500k to $999k	9	6
  $1mm to $1.99mm	11	10
  $2mm to $2.99mm	5	5
  $3mm to $3.99mm	5	1
  $4mm to $4.99mm	1	1
  $5mm+	3	2

  
  
  

  By neighborhood	New = 34	Sold = 25
  Battery Park City
  Chelsea	5	6
  Clinton
  East Village	2	3
  Financial District	7
  Flatiron	2	2
  Gramercy	2
  Greenwich Village	1	2
  Kips Bay
  Little Italy
  Lower East Side
  Murray Hill	1	1
  Midtown West
  SoHo	7	4
  Tribeca	3	6
  Turtle Bay		1
  Upper East Side
  Upper West Side	1
  West Village	3

  
  New loft listings in new developments

  122 Greenwich Av (Jackson Square)	1
  45 John Street	3

  
  Sold lofts in new developments 

  209 East 2 Street	1
  420 West 25 Street (Loft 25)	2
  52 West 22 Street (Paper Factory)	1
  127 Madison Av (m127)	1
  8-10 Warren Street	4

  
  For information about how I get this stuff and why I slice it as I do, see methodology for New + Sold in The Last Seven Days.
  

May. 17, 2008 - door or dollars? cost v. benefits for attended lobby

real numbers! (dated, but real)

As luck would have it, I used a NY Sun article in September 2006 in my post How much is that doorman in the doorway? What owners pay for staff , which found that full-time door shifts would cost a 20 unit building $665/mo in per-unit-common-charges. Less than full-time coverage costs less; larger buildings share the costs over more unit owners ... you get the idea. (And, yes, labor costs have increased since Fall 2006, but this gives you an idea of the ballpark.) 

So do the math to determine "cost" in purely dollar terms, and its impact on the buying power of a potential buyer.

whose value is it anyway?
One point I made to the reader who asked, is that having an attended lobby has a use value to current residents that is different from the re-sale value when an owner seeks a buyer for the unit. Both values depend on personal opinions about whether the dollar cost in increased common charges justifies whatever net benefits flow from having a door person, but use value for current owners depends only on the current owner's opinion whereas the re-sale value depends on whether potential buyers want an attended lobby at all, and then (if they do) on whether the dollars work.

Any idiosyncratic use value calculation will consider (1) deliveries, (2) convenience, and (3) safety issues, tempered by (4) privacy. In many loft buildings, there are various alternatives to having to have a door person to receive apackage, FedEx, dry cleaning, or even furniture -- from a regularly scheduled super being on premises to a corner store with a friendly staff to a neighbor who is home during the day. As I told the reader who asked, " [a]s for convenience (getting out of a cab with packages; residents juggling strollers or packages and keys from the sidewalk), your present door person may or may not help in that setting, depending on how well they see and whether they get off their butts". In other words, if the lobby attendant won't or can't see to open the door when it is raining or your hands are full or you have a baby in a stroller, there may not be much 'convenience' here. For many people concerned about convenience, having part-time door coverage during the day (when packages are being delivered, when children are coming home from school) can be worthwhile.

safety or nosy?
I find that it is pointless to 'argue' with people about safety. They either 'feel' that a given location is 'safe enough' for them, or they don't. But having an attended lobby might make the difference for some people. As I presented to the reader who asked, "‘Security’ is a vague and idiosyncratic ‘value’: (1) if your present door person cannot see much of the sidewalk, that’s not much help; (2) if your block is ‘desolate’ (as [parts of 'downtown'] can be at night), that may be more of a concern; (3) if your block has other ‘active’ buildings at night, the added safety from your door person is more limited. First time buyers and people not familiar with loft neighborhoods tend to value each these things more highly (i.e., want a door person) than others; but [larger] lofts don’t attract many first-time buyers, and people who don’t like downtown tend to not buy (d’oh!) in your area." For many people, an attended lobby contributes to feeling secure more at night (when people are coming home, in the dark) than in the daytime, which is probably why some buildings have part-time coverage only at night.

Of course, the downside to having someone who can watch you and your guests come and go is that you have someone who can watch you and your guests come and go. There is certainly a market segment of people who so value their privacy that they view having an attended lobby as a negative at any price. My sense is that this segment is much larger among people who prefer, all in all, to live downtown than to live on either the Upper East or Upper West Sides.

what is a buyer to think?
The answer about re-sale value used to be easier and simpler: there was a large segment of downtown loft buyers for whom not having an attended lobby was not a deal-breaker and there was a large enough segment of downtown loft properties without door folk that there was little or nocompetitive disadvantage of re-selling in a no-door building. In other words, there'd be 'enough' buyer interest in a (say) $3mm no-door loft that a seller would get a true market price, without a big discount.

tastes change, markets change
While I still believe that is true, the proliferation of uber-loft developments (including small 'boutique' buildings with amenities such as concierges) changes the property mix a bit, and attracts more of an uptown crowd with tastes that include an attended lobby. I still believe that there are 'enough' loft buyers to have a healthy market for no-door lofts.

appraisers know what they know
I don't know the formula or framework for analysis that appraisal firms use when the value lofts for mortgage purposes, but I know they assign added value for an attended lobby. Whether they have data specific to the loft markets that controls for door vs no-door, I don't know. Giventhe relatively small sample size, I suspect it is very hard to get straight comps that isolate the door vs. no-door additional value.

Your thoughts?

© Sandy Mattingly 2008

 

May. 12, 2008 - new Manhattan loft listings + closed sales in last 7 days

• there were 28 lofts reported as new to the market in the last 7 days and also 28 as sold
• the 28 new ones are offered pretty evenly through the price segments, while 18 of the 28 closed sales were from $1mm to $3mm
  
• only 1 of the 28 new loft listings is in new development, and 6 of the 28 closed sales were in new development
  
  

  By price	New = 28	Sold = 28
  $500k to $999k	6	4
  $1mm to $1.99mm	7	12
  $2mm to $2.99mm	4	6
  $3mm to $3.99mm	5	3
  $4mm to $4.99mm	4	1
  $5mm+	2	2

  
  
  

  By neighborhood	New = 28	Sold = 28
  Battery Park City
  Chelsea	4	7
  Clinton
  East Village		3
  Financial District	2	4
  Flatiron	1	1
  Gramercy	2
  Greenwich Village	6	3
  Kips Bay	1
  Little Italy
  Lower East Side
  Murray Hill
  Midtown West
  SoHo	2	2
  Tribeca	6	6
  Turtle Bay		1
  Upper East Side
  Upper West Side	1	1
  West Village	3

  
  New loft listings in new developments

  5 Franklin Place

  1

  
  Sold lofts in new developments 

  6 East 1 Street (Brick House Lofts)	1
  209 East 2 Street	1
  420 West 25 Street (Loft 25)	2
  8-10 Warren Street	2

  
  For information about how I get this stuff and why I slice it as I do, see methodology for New + Sold in The Last Seven Days.
  

May. 4, 2008 - new Manhattan loft listings + closed sales in last 7 days

• there were 32 lofts reported as new to the market in the last 7 days and only 21 as sold
• 27 of the 32 new ones are offered between $1mm and $4mm, while 10 of the 21 closed sales were from $2mm to $3mm
  
• 7 of the 32 new loft listings are in new development, and 5 of the 21 closed sales were in new development
  
  

  By price	New = 32	Sold = 21
  $500k to $999k	3	4
  $1mm to $1.99mm	12	5
  $2mm to $2.99mm	8	10
  $3mm to $3.99mm	7	1
  $4mm to $4.99mm	1
  $5mm+	1	1

  
  
  

  By neighborhood	New = 32	Sold = 21
  Battery Park City
  Chelsea	5	3
  Clinton	1	2
  East Village
  Financial District	1
  Flatiron	3	1
  Gramercy	1
  Greenwich Village	2	5
  Kips Bay
  Little Italy
  Lower East Side
  Murray Hill
  Midtown West		3
  SoHo	6	6
  Tribeca	6
  Turtle Bay
  Upper East Side	1
  Upper West Side	2	1
  West Village	4

  
  New loft listings in new developments

  151 Wooster Street	1
  5 Franklin Place	3
  122 Greenwich Avenue (Jackson Square)	3

  
  Sold lofts in new developments 

  137 Duane Street	1
  8-10 Warren Street	3
  120 West 72 Street (Harsen House)	1

  
  For information about how I get this stuff and why I slice it as I do, see methodology for New + Sold in The Last Seven Days.
  
  I have to retool Loft Inventory; Reader Larry is right (see comments from last week's report) that my consistent "500" represents the upper limit of the search on the data system we use (d'oh). When I originally checked his source (Street Easy) -- months ago -- I found definitional problems that dissuaded me from using that source for inventory; I need to check back.