Manhattan housing prices edge up, but sales slow
It's hard to believe New York City is in a slump when Manhattan real estate prices continue to climb, reaching record-breaking numbers. But the drop in the volume of sales makes the whole picture look grimmer.
In the second quarter, today's report prepared by Miller Samuel for Prudential Douglas Elliman indicated the median sale price in Manhattan hit a record $1.025 million. The average price per square foot of a co-op reached a record $1,146 and the median condo sales price topped out at $1.267 million.
Furthermore, all price categories for the co-op, condo, luxury and loft markets increased quarter-over-quarter, except for the average sales price of a loft, the data show.
While prices jumped, sales volume dropped and inventory grew. According to Miller Samuel, in the second quarter the number of sales dropped a sharp 21.8 percent from the prior year quarter to 3,081, and listing inventory surged 31.2 percent to 6,869 units over the same period last year.
Many real estate experts attribute the price growth to the strength of the high-end sales market, especially the new trophy properties at 15 Central Park West and the Plaza Hotel.
"The limited supply of high end properties is fueling the strong demand for luxury apartments," said Hall Willkie, president of Brown Harris Stevens, which released a report with another Terra Holdings firm, Halstead Property. At the same time, he noted, more new developments are coming online.
Reports from Terra Holdings and also the Corcoran Group, which partnered with PropertyShark for the first time for its data crunching, generally show similar pricing trends in Manhattan.
Corcoran-PropertyShark found the number of sales dropped a greater 38 percent. [NYT]
Comments
Anonymous
No surprises here.
1. Reflects closings of condos that actually went into contract a long time ago (preconstruction sales)
2. As the article notes, skewed by monster 15 CPW and Plaza data
3. Add to that falling sales of studios and 1BRs, and how in god's name could the average do anything but go up?
Which is why anyone who has a cerebral cortex (apparently this excludes the NYT and real estate brokers) pays no attention to averages.
Perhaps we should look at the massive jump in inventory, time-on-market and dead open houses as leading indicators?
Comment #1 Posted By: Anonymous 07/02/08
Anonymous
As a broker with a working cerebral cortex, I and I'd say a huge majority of my colleagues would agree with reasons 1,2 and 3 offered by Anonymous The First. And, if the aformentioned Anonymous read the post completely, he/she'd notice that at least points one and two in his comment are covered in the post. We with working cerebral cortices see that Manhattan has become a buyer's market. We know that some of our colleagues are having their sellers drop the prices of their listings three, four and more times because instead of being honest with sellers as to what their properties are worth, they came up with pie in the sky asking prices just to get the listing. An apartment priced and marketed correctly - with the interest of the seller and NOT the listing broker in mind - will sell quickly. As for 15 CPW and its ilk...spare change???
Comment #2 Posted By: Anonymous 07/02/08
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