Dec. 17, 2008 - was the 708 Greenwich seller a yogi? the buyer was inflexible

2004 + 17% = 2008, with an asterisk, not a bullet

When I first looked at the listing history for the Manhattan loft #4F at 708 Greenwich Street (a rare West Village loft), I wondered if they had picked the right year in which to offer it for sale at $2.35mm, with it last changing hands in 2004 off an ask of $1.95mm. I noted the update to Sold & Closed on December 5 and drafted a blog post, then checked periodically to see when the clearing price hit the public record. 

a bit drafty

That original draft started with the first sentence, above (it still works), then continued:

Seems they were quite right in pricing this as they did, as it fairly flew off the shelf: it came to market on October 7 and was in contract by October 22 -- pretty good velocity in any market conditions. Props to the seller and to Halstead's Judith Kleinman. The deed was filed December 5 at ____. The old listing is preserved, in part, on StreetEasy, here.

that's a big but you have

It finally showed up today with a closed price on StreetEasy, with a price that set me off in another direction: $1,999,999 -- not so very different from the 2004 asking price from which it last traded, but (BUT!) rather different from the asking price. Forgive me StreetEasy, but I doubted the data -- doubted that someone who wanted $2.35mm on October 7 would have folded by 15% so quickly.

Of course StreetEasy was right, as confirmed on the city's Department of Finance ACRIS on-line data, here. The Real Property Transfer tax documents were dated December 4 (nice to see that the inter-firm data-base was updated promptly on December 5) and filed on December 15. So my first sub-heading should have been "2004 + 17% - 15% = 2008, with a bullet", but I did not want to give the ending away so soon.

Perhaps as interesting as the ... err ... flexibility of the seller is that the buyer immediately went at the asking price with a meat axe. I'd love to know how those negotiations started, and proceeded, to contract in 15 days that far from the asking price. It is so dramatic (to me) that I wonder if something happened to the seller's World (or world view) in the middle of October. While it is possible that the seller went into that negotiation intending to be rather flexible rather early, the fact that I started the draft of this post as I did (in blue, above) reveals how surprised I am by such a parley.

Indeed, I think it almost probable that -- at some point when the seller and agent saw how firm the buyer was about chopping the heck off the asking price -- the seller said something like: the first number HAS to be a two. Weird that they ended up one lousy dollar under $2mm. How hard was that last dollar??

Enough about me ... what about the loft?

combo?

Can't be sure, but the duplex layout looks to me like a combination, with the downstairs (former) full bath having been converted into a half-bath plus laundry closet and the upstairs bath having been expanded (into old kitchen space?), with a right angle staircase cut through and separating the two rather extravagantly sized bedrooms in the upper level (22 and 29 feet long). Doesn't that run of closets in the upper floor look like an old entry?

All the bragging about woodwork, built-ins, chef's kitchen and fireplace aside, you'd think the piece-de-resistance would be the large terrace that stretches across both bedrooms, as this would be a huge differentiator in the West Village market.

loft or apartment?

I don't know the history of this building, apart from the report in our database that it was built in 1920 and converted to a coop in 1981. I wonder about it's usage prior to being residential. On the one hand, our database calls it a loft building, and four units sold there in the last four years were marketed as lofts. Plus, the ceilings are high (11 feet), throughout (except perhaps the top floor) and the floor plan for #4F shows no interior load-bearing elements, though there may be some in that stairway structure.

On the other hand, my sole niggling doubt is that the building just does not look like a loft (former industrial or commercial) building. The front windows look very much like "apartment" windows. Perhaps back in the day, this far west, this was a warehouse of some sort, with the front windows added later.

Indulge me a bit .... I got to this point in drafting, but was curious.... So I googled. (In doing this update with the actual sales price, I had forgotten that I already had a while-I-was-drafting segue in this post ... weird; "indulge me", indeed!)

loft! (Google is my friend)

It took a few clicks, but I found the page for this block on The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, which has some spare but very informative history. This residential coop is made up of two buildings that were combined into a multiple dwelling unit in 1978 (rental, presumably, since our database says it went coop in 1981; but our database was wrong about the date it was built, so maybe it converted as a coop). The southernmost building (formerly 704-706 Greenwich Street) was a 4-story stable built in 1893 that had a brief life as a disco (!) back in the day (1975-1978). The main building (formerly 708 - 712 Greenwich) was built in 1909 as a 4-story warehouse that was soon expanded north and up, extending it 25 feet along Greenwich Street and adding two floors in 1912 (must have been an immediate success as a warehouse).

full circle

On reflection, I was not wrong in my original draft about "pretty good velocity in any market conditions [and] Props to the seller and to Halstead's Judith Kleinman". But now it is props to the seller and to Ms. Kleinman for getting the deal done (by definition, at a level the seller wanted) and I must add props to the buyer (and agent) for seizing an opportunity I am not sure I would have guessed was there. (A learning experience for me, that.)

© Sandy Mattingly 2008