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Manhattan Loft Guy

May. 20, 2009 - price discovery is (still) a female dog / flailing in Flatiron


not finding buyers at that level, or that one
There's a lovely classic Manhattan loft for sale (nearly all of) the last 9 months. It has always been difficult to value lofts in small buildings that don't have a lot of turnover, but this one proved particularly challenging for the seller and agent.

When they started in the glow of the embers of Lehman, they were asking $3.6mm for the mints, renovation and light typical of "very nice" lofts in this area. I can't imagine there was much activity (given the history as it unfolded), but it took about five months for them to drop the price to a place there might be some buyers. Given that they dropped $650,000, I'd say they were (finally) convinced there were no buyers near $3.6mm.
 

million dollar hit
As it happens, there were no buyers in the range of $2.95mm either, as the price is now about 30% south of where they started.

I ruminated about the problems of price discovery a month ago (April 11, the problem of price discovery (hint: you have to pay attention)), expressing the hope that that post would get me closer to doing:

 
a long-ish post on price discovery for quite a while (not writing it, obviously; just mulling). Pulling together some interesting riffs by other bloggers and news articles and market activity (and market inactivity), all in service of the idea that one of the problems with The (current) Market is that it is so thin that it is hard to know where the right price is for a particular Manhattan loft.

This ain't that long-ish post, but it is illustrative of the problem. The seller of the (so far) 30% off loft is represented by an experienced and successful agent. Yet they have burned nine critical months in a weakening (for sellers) market not finding the price range at which buyers will take their hands out of their pockets. That makes this loft a candidate for the too pushy ...? thread.
 
They're still above $1,000/ft. They're still selling. Stay tuned (but be patient).

© Sandy Mattingly 2009
 
 
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May. 22, 2009 - RE: price discovery is (still) a female dog / flailing in Flatiron

Posted by Anonymous

can you provide an address to the above mentioned loft?  thanks

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May. 22, 2009 - RE: price discovery is (still) a female dog / flailing in Flatiron

Posted by Sandy Mattingly

Anon  --  Happy to give you the address, but have to do it privately (off-line). Email me at Sandy.Mattingly@cbhk.com

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Nov. 11, 2009 - RE: price discovery is (still) a female dog / flailing in Flatiron

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