The sale of Evan Williams’ old Heublien Building Penthouse loft (601 4th Street #3P) closed escrow yesterday with a reported contract price of $1,250,000 ($697 per square).
Purchased for $1,500,000 in October 2006 and then remodeled, some might recall Mr. Williams’ “It’s a steal!” tweet when the loft was first listed for $1,498,000 ($835 per square). We aren’t aware of any real estate related follow-up tweets.
As we wrote when the adjacent penthouse (#2P) sold for $663 per square foot in February, “perhaps not a great comp for…penthouse number three directly next door.” The asking price for number three was reduced to $780 per square foot a week later.
∙ The Heublien Building Lofts (601 4th Street) [SocketSite]
∙ Hitting For The Heublien Building Penthouse Cycle (#PH3) [SocketSite]
∙ Year 2000-esque Penthouse Comp Atop The Heublien Building [SocketSite]
∙ Another Chance To Buy “Steal” It For Even Less… [SocketSite]
But, but, he was “a man of industry”. Doesn’t that mean I should have bought when he did?
If I had, I would have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars! Just like this man of industry.
$1.5M in 2006 is $1.616M adjusted for inflation in 2010, so figure a 22% real loss, even without including the remodel.
(standard blurb that it’s from usinflationcalculator.com, which is subject to CPI and all its quirks)
He can afford it – you might as well deride a “highly paid” lawyer for buying a Mercedes. He’s spending his time building (for better or worse) a “billion dollar company”, not trying to time the real estate market.
I assume no taxpayers were harmed in this incident, otherwise my feathers would be ruffled 🙂
Well, I think he could declare a Capital Loss on his Schedule D. Though it won’t go very far (1500 or 3000).
Disclaimer: Not a tax accountant.
Nope, no capital loss allowed. That’s one of the reasons homes are generally a poor investment choice (there are pluses as well, of course).
Wait dub dub, is there an alternative to BUYING that Mercedes (assuming you keep it 5+ years)? The lease is actually more expensive over time (if you go from lease to lease perpetually), so no. If the objective was a Mercedes, what other alternative do you have to get one?
In the case of the objective being PENTHOUSE, he should have just rented.
The objective is to get the utility you wish at the cheapest ‘rate’. Your marginal utility needs to be maximized. You just made an economically inaccurate argument regarding efficient marginal utility. One should always seek the cheapest way to get the same utility.
You should have made an argument regarding a need to own during a period of likely depreciation because he needed to pretend it was a good idea to own – so as to dupe his clients – the role of a such an ‘industry man’.
Why do we care about Evan Williams? He obviously is just a sucker who purchased a generic loft at a bubble value and lost when he had to sell, just like anyone who’s investing in Twitter now, they will lose their shirt once people realize that finding out instantly what Ashton Kutcher had for breakfast really isn’t that interesting.
call me an optimist but i’m just glad something closed for over a million in soma that wasn’t a house. it’s been suicide to try for years!!!!