NYC Housing - A Brief Update
I am sure very few of the NY real estate cognoscenti out there missed the Wall Street Journal Online's "They'll Take Manhattan -- For Less" article on Friday. For those who did, the article quotes the Corcoran Group real estate brokerage firm saying that inventory in the NYC market is rising and that prices are flattening. It cites third quarter data from Radar Logic, Noah's friend Jonathan Miller's firm indicating that the median Manhattan apartment price fell 3.4% quarter-to-quarter in Q3, but was still up 2.3% year-over-year. Sales volume reportedly declined 11.2% compared with the prior quarter, but was still up year-over-year. Properties were lingering on the market for 123 days, up from 94 days during the 2005 boom period. If you have been reading Urban Digs, this is probably not a surprise. Christine Toes broke the story of proliferating developer incentives - a leading indicator - here a few weeks back, which is also highlighted in the Wall Street Journal Online article. Of course you have heard Noah and me ramble on about the strong and insidious macro headwinds that are proliferating and seem destined to at least dent, if not break, the unstoppable NYC housing boom. So what about activity thus far in Q4? Now that Urban Digs has real time data to look at, I thought I would bring it to everyone's attention......in hopes of keeping some content flowing while Noah is getting some R&R in Jamaica. The data have been available here for a few weeks due to Noah's recent re-design of the site and collaboration with Street Easy, who has cleaned up the data to Noah's exacting standards (once a trader, always a trader). We will eventually have a regular piece highlighting the data as the set gets longer and we learn a little more by tracking it over time relative to other indicators. Understand, this is only a couple of weeks worth of data. This piece is not intended to be an indication of how we will utilize or feature this data in the future, just a reminder that it's already here on the site for your use.
As is evident from the graph, there was a spike up in activity in late November, but we have seen a steady decline since. My guess is that people wanted to get their apartments listed and or get contracts signed before the holidays and we are now in hibernation mode through the holidays....it will be much more interesting to see how the market starts coming back after the New Year's holiday. By then we will have a data series that actually could reflect a trend. As you can see from the second chart however, it would be hard to characterize Manhattan apartment inventory as busting out.
The price cuts, notable in our final chart, coincide pretty well with the increase in both listings and closings...again I would speculate it was due to attempts to move apartments before the holidays...and it looks like it worked.
Posted by uwsider
Mon Dec 3rd, 2007 10:55 AM
From my personal observations, I've been looking at Manhattan listings all year for 600k to 900k range. I have noticed that the pricing for new listing are still less 'INSANE'... and maybe this mean more 'serious' sellers are on the market now.
The real test will be early next year, last year prices jumped after the bonus news.. it was insane.
Posted by JT
Mon Dec 3rd, 2007 09:15 PM
I think the market is pretty much at a standstill now. Buyers are holding their prices, and most buyers think the market will come down. I believe that the new year will jump start the market. Buyers and buyers have been waiting on the sidelines for too long. Interest rates have come down significantly, so prices are more reasonable due lower cost of a mortgage.
Posted by MM
Tue Dec 4th, 2007 09:16 AM
The Fall quarter is ALWAYS quieter than other quarters in this city. In fact you would expect a slight drop in prices historically in that quarter. As several readers mentioned, it's the Spring quarter '08 results which will be important to watch this year.
My (limited) experience in our own UES co-op is that apartments that were put on that market this summer (at prices significantly higher than last year) sold in just a few weeks, whereas apartments which were listed in October or later, are still active, as far as I can tell. Again, that is almost expected.
Posted by Sell your Property
Fri Sep 3rd, 2010 01:22 AM
Has anyone done a short sale in Real estate? Let me know what the lenders are looking for. Anyway thanks for this great post.
Posted by Sell your Property
Fri Sep 3rd, 2010 01:23 AM
Has anyone done a short sale in Real estate? Let me know what the lenders are looking for. Anyway thanks for this great post.