Townhouse for sale! These days, that sign is a common sight on West 11th Street in Manhattan.
In 2017, the quaint West Village block between Fifth and Sixth Avenues — in a tony area long known as the Gold Coast — had no townhouses for sale. Currently, seven are on the market, according to StreetEasy data provided to The Post.
The rise in the number of listings has been steady. Coincidence? Maybe not.
“From zero to seven is a trend line — not an idiosyncrasy,” said Jonathan Miller, president of the appraisal firm Miller Samuel. And he suspects the increase results from macroeconomic forces: goings-on in the financial markets, changes to the Fed’s monetary policy and uncertainty about the November presidential election.
The numbers are small — and “the townhouse market is a very distinct luxury subset,” Miller said — but after the pandemic, when interest rates started to rise, listings started piling up.
Manhattan’s townhouses are hardly aimed toward the typical buyer. Overall, prices of the West 11th Street townhouses currently listed are in the $10 million to $20 million range.
Do the wealthy buyers of such high-end properties care about interest rates? Yes and no. It’s not about affording the mortgage, Miller said — but “for many people in the wealth strata that can buy these, their income or occupation has a lot to do with the health of the financial markets. They are concerned about future economic headwinds.”
What’s more, Miller said, these properties may be overpriced.
“They are priced as if it’s 2021 when we had a frenzy, and as a result these properties are sticking around and the inventory is rising. This inventory is not priced for current conditions.”
Among the current options for sale: No. 21, which the New School university listed early this year for $20 million amid a budget deficit. The months since have seen three subsequent price cuts for the 4,038-square-foot property, according to its StreetEasy listing page, with its ask standing at $12 million as of July 10. No. 38, meanwhile, relisted in July 2021 for $19 million; after three rounds of discounts, StreetEasy also shows, it’s now listed for $12.95 million.
There is nothing about West 11th Street itself that is causing these homes not to sell.
“It’s not like someone opened a nightclub or there is some adverse eternal locational element that impairs the marketability,” Miller said. “This seems like a macroeconomic condition. The Village has a high concentration of townhouses, and so the odds are that it would be more likely to occur in a neighborhood like this.”
A similar phenomenon is occurring in Park Slope, Brooklyn, with a cluster of nine townhouses currently on the market. The priciest — a British Regency-style mansion — would set a record for the prime neighborhood if it sells for its asking price, $18 million, according to the Wall Street Journal. (A few townhouses in Brooklyn Heights — a neighborhood much closer to Manhattan — have recently sold for more.)
If the $18 million Park Slope house were in the West Village, “it would be a $30 million to $35 million house,” the listing agent, David Feldman of Brown Harris Stevens, told the Journal.
Last winter, a double-wide townhouse at 138-140 W. 11th St. — standing just one block west of Sixth Avenue — set a record for the priciest downtown townhouse sale, at $72.5 million. It was once a rental building in terrible shape. The Journal reported that the buyer is a retired couple from out of state planning to use the 12,000-square-foot home as a pied-à-terre.
“That is a unique piece of real estate – that’s how you justify even a $72 million price tag,” said Matthew Pravda, a senior real estate advisor at the brokerage Leslie J. Garfield, which specializes in townhouses. He wasn’t involved in that deal.
He noted that some of the West 11th Street properties were in bad condition, requiring gut renovation.
A recent market analysis by the company showed that, of 25 townhouses with West 11th Street addresses that were sold or listed since early 2022, nine were in poor condition. One of those, 230 W. 11th St., which sold a year ago for $20 million, was listed as a “vacant shell.”
And not every buyer is up for such a project.
“It used to be six months of planning and a year of work,” Pravda said. “Now planning and permitting is taking a year, and construction is taking three years plus.” There have also been supply-chain issues.
“It’s not that everything is at a standstill,” he said. “There are certainly people out there shopping, but it’s not a great market.”
When it comes to townhouses, the West Village still holds the most expensive real estate in the city, Pravda said. “As you move farther west, it gets more expensive, especially on price per square foot. As you go west, the houses get smaller.”
For affluent buyers preferring condominium living in the neighborhood, the competition includes 150 Charles St., just half a block from the Hudson River Greenway, and the more centrally located Greenwich Lane, built on the St. Vincent’s Hospital site.
The infamous Weather Underground house at 18 W. 11th St. — a blip in the landmarked neighborhood, with its angled front — has bounced on and off the market without selling. It was last listed at $18 million and is currently off the market.
One of the least expensive townhouses for sale is 35 W. 11th St. The $10 million property, in the classic Greek Revival style, has been on the market for more than two years.
That townhouse is filled with original detail and has been meticulously maintained, said the listing agent, Stuart Moss of the Corcoran Group. It can be delivered vacant or with four market-rate tenants in place. A buyer could convert it to a single-family home or not; doing so “would require a substantial investment,” Moss said.
The home has been owned by the same family for nearly 70 years. “They are planning to sell because of normal life changes,” Moss said.