Example of an interesting townhouse datapoint

That listing is worth the price of admission just to see an artist studio virtually "upgraded" to a suburban TV room.

Such a lovely gracious home. And might still need to go lower, I suspect.

I wonder whose idea it was to start at almost $19M and what data they used to support that price?

Where is the garden?

Or elevator at this price? While the house is in good shape with central ac etc, garage is very appealing, reno is fairly old (20 plus years) and square footage clearly includes overbuilt ground floor without much light.

300 - I completely agree with you that it certainly isn't the perfect house. Should have an elevator, someone needs to build out the roof, most people would want to convert that studio space into something, the top bedrooms look strange from the floorplan, etc.

However, it is 25 feet wide on UES and is quite livable, and I think that the price makes a lot of other listings look rather out of touch. It wouldn't surprise me to see the price drop further on this one before it actually sells, in the same way I expect to see the price drop on many others before they sell, but I think this one is getting closer than many of the other listings.

Look at the monthly taxes. It is no better deal relative to others at this price. It is east of Lex as well and you have to live with mere mortals.

Not a townhouse block is what I mean by mere mortals.

Neither does it face other townhouses at the back. I would just value this as a hypothetical 3-5th floor top end 4000 sq ft condo with 1500 sq ft outdoor space in this location with perhaps a 10-15 percent premium for garage and privacy, less 20 percent for reno.

I didn't realize you could get your cars resized to custom fit your garage.

300 - I think you are even tougher on townhouse prices than I am.
I see a 25 ft wide townhouse with incredible potential, that I think would be a vastly superior house to others around (that are similarly priced) if you are willing to put in about $2mm of work. While I do agree that east of Park (which I see as the real dividing line) makes a big difference on pricing, I still see this as a much better deal than a lot of other properties on the market because of its unique features.
You may ultimately be right about where prices are going. I wouldn't buy this property so I'm just speculating. There's another UES townhouse that just want into contract that's an even better example of the prices coming down for some of the nicer townhouses.

It may be garage houses are "out of fashion" or just rare enough that people don't understand them. I was surprised how long this one took to sell and how big a price drop at the peak of the market in prime location:
https://streeteasy.com/sale/1000056

TeamM, I adjust for several factors in townhouse including if the townhouse is over built as in built 75 foot deep on 100 foot lot. If you have to get a real premium in UES, it has to be prime park block, mostly townhouses on the block, built less than 65 foot deep (to leave enough light and garden at the back) in a 100 foot deep lot, at least 20 foot wide and a beautiful facade. Square footage shouldn’t count below ground space as that just comes for free with the townhouse. If these conditions are not met, it is just a condo or suitable adjustments should be made to premium valuation.

I think the problem you will have with tying to impose all of those constraints is that a lot of the extra wide houses between 5th and Madison were built in the style of not having rear gardens. My guess is that if you look at the top Upper East Side townhouse sales (let's say over $30 million?) you will have a hard time finding ones which meet all those criteria.

How about using this as a benchmark for premium price per square foot?

https://streeteasy.com/sale/1401840
https://streeteasy.com/sale/1381215

This one a little overbuilt in terms of depth but they addressed the issue by blowing out the back facade.

https://streeteasy.com/sale/1393360

300 - very nice houses, although I note that both sold before July 1 and one of them was back in March. I believe the market is worse now than it was then and even if the market is otherwise level then each would presumably sell for somewhat less now due to the increased tax burden associated with transactions.

Re: East 74th St, personally I don't think it's that great a house + it's more like 2 lesser houses pasted together. In my opinion the buyers overpaid vis-a-vis the current market by virtue of it being be the "Kip's Bay Decorator Show House" (which I guess is the ultimate in staging).

So prime location and prime renovated house on UES are 2000-2500 per square ft appx (always exceptions to this) after taking 10-15 percent haircut on stated square footage. You come close to Lex or cross it, I would think the price drops 30 percent minimum vs park blocks.

I think it might be hard to differentiate between what part of the premium is for location and which part is for getting the type of houses architecturally you only get in that location.