Real estate listings in Manhattan plummet

[David Goldsmith]

Coronavirus Impact: How a Crisis Is Changing the U.S. (Published 2020)

The coronavirus is changing how we live our daily lives. Taking a look at how the global pandemic has affected various aspects of life in the United States reveals the unique nature of this crisis.

www.nytimes.com

In the first week since New York State announced a stay-at-home order to help fight coronavirus, real estate listings in Manhattan have plunged and the spring buying season has ground to a halt.

Since March 20, the day Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed the executive order, just 66 homes were listed for sale in Manhattan, an 85 percent drop compared to the same period last year, when 428 listings came to market, according to UrbanDigs, a real-estate data company.

Real estate agents, who have been deemed nonessential workers, have been unable to schedule showings and in many cases are barred from co-ops and condos, where the buildings have adopted strict entry policies.

The virus is not only keeping new sellers on the sidelines, but leading many to pull their listings from public view altogether, said Noah Rosenblatt, the chief executive and founder of UrbanDigs.
With just a few days left to the month, 1,074 listings had been taken off the market in Manhattan, compared to just 417 in all of March 2019. There were 5,882 active listings for sale in Manhattan on March 26, down 12.8 percent from the same time last year.
“If you look at 2009, the market did the same exact thing,” Mr. Rosenblatt said, referring to the high number of sellers who simply gave up when the Great Recession took hold.
“Everything came to a screeching halt last week,” said Barbara Fox, the president of Fox Residential, a New York brokerage. While measures have been taken by the state to ensure that closings can proceed — for instance, allowing virtual alternatives for typically in-person requirements, like appraisals and notarization — there are still several steps in the sales process without simple solutions.
“I just can’t imagine people are going to be buying apartments from a video,” Ms. Fox said, referring to virtual house tours via FaceTime and other apps.
Agents say the extent of the damage to the real estate industry will depend largely on how long the stay-at-home protocol is enforced, but added that the timing is terrible.
The real estate market, especially the high-end, has been softening since prices peaked around 2016. The first quarter of the year showed signs of improvement, before the virus arrived, said Jonathan Miller, a New York real estate appraiser. Many agents expect the second quarter, typically a bright spot for sellers, to erase those gains.
“It’s like a retail store losing Christmas,” said Mr. Miller. “That’s really what this is.”

 

[David Goldsmith]

Manhattan Listing Inventory Keeps Falling During Pandemic - The Real Deal

UrbanDigs founds says buyers “should expect fewer options” on listing portals as listing inventory continues to fall.

therealdeal.com

Manhattan resi listings continue nosedive: report
UrbanDigs founder says buyers “should expect fewer options”

The first full week of New York’s stay-home policy saw a massive drop in new residential listings in Manhattan.


An analysis by data firm UrbanDigs compared new listings, contract signings and withdrawals of homes from the market in the fourth week of March in Manhattan to the same period in 2019. The results show steep declines in residences going into contract and listing inventory, while the pace of de-listings rose.

The report found only 63 new listings last week, an 85 percent decline from the 411 in the year-earlier period. Just 67 contracts — down from 208 a year ago — were signed for deals in the borough, and only two were pricey enough to make the weekly Olshan Report, which tracks Manhattan home sales of $4 million or more.

Sellers also retreated, with 168 taking down their property listings last week, two-thirds more than the 111 removed in the same week last year. Still, that was an improvement over the nearly 450 properties delisted last week.

The report’s author, UrbanDigs founder and CEO Noah Rosenblatt, attributed the delistings slowdown to consumer-facing listing portals suspending the days on market calculation that show how long a seller has been trying to unload a property.

He said he expects few transactions as the pandemic continues and, based on anecdotal reports, that the discrepancy between buyers’ “opportunistic” offers and sellers’ asking prices to widen.

Rosenblatt also pointed out that if low levels of new inventory persist, it could have a lasting impact on the market.

“We average over 1,900 new listings coming to the market a month in March and April (based on data from the last three years), and we expect numbers to come in significantly lower,” he wrote in a statement. As a result, he said that buyers “should expect fewer options” to be available on listing portals.

Though some brokers and developers believe that millions of American staying at home may lead to increased web traffic on listings, a study of listing portal traffic by Mike DelPrete, a real estate technology strategist, found that traffic had dropped up to 40 percent globally.

Even before sweeping orders were introduced to combat the spread of the coronavirus in New York, appraiser Jonathan Miller reported a slowdown in listing inventory of condos and co-ops, which he attributed to the pandemic.