Manhattan residential sales have held flat in the face of a precipitous fall in inventory in the third quarter of 2012.
Inventory in Manhattan is down 24.3 percent year-over-year — its lowest level since 2005 —
And while those numbers may not bode well for the market in the immediate-term, they leave open the possibility of a brighter 2013,
The drop in inventory is “becoming a chronic problem, “sales are in a holding pattern,” despite the drop, which in a healthier market would cause a rise in pricing. ”Now we are at this seven-year low and we’ve already worked off ‘the fat’ so to speak — the shadow inventory, the older listings — now we’re lean,”
However, if the outcome of the
presidential election,
QE3, the ever-worsening
European debt situation and the expiration of George Bush’s capital gains taxes don’t disrupt the American housing market, 2013 could look considerably better, “The next step is some sort of price appreciation, assuming nothing changes in 2013,”
Still, with
lending as tight as it is, there is no dramatic improvement on the horizon, experts warned. “If lending was a little better, you’d have close to a boom again, because you have plenty of foreign money, interest rates like they are giving money away, and rising rents that I don’t see going down” .
I believe home prices could reach levels seen prior to the Lehman Brothers collapse as soon as next year, which would indicate an estimated rise of 12 to 15 percent.
The median sales price for Manhattan co-ops and condominiums in the third quarter was $890,000, down 2.3 percent year-over-year. Those numbers differed only slightly from the estimate from other firms, which showed a median sales price of $865,525, reflecting a 2 percent rise from them third quarter 2011 numbers.
The average price per square foot was $1,103, down 2.4 percent, and sales volume was down 5 percent. It could qualified those numbers, pointing to the unusually deceptive statistical practice of looking at year-over-year numbers.
“Even though metrics show a drop in median price, it’s really stable and flat,” just low compared with last year, when the market abruptly picked up in the third quarter.
Sales price and volume will likely remain steady in 2012 compared with 2011 overall, but this year saw the strongest numbers near the beginning of the year, while in 2011 the market picked up at the end of the year.
The weakest segment of the market is the lower high-end, experts said. “Certain price points are not selling as much as … in other quarters,” “But it’s lack of inventory causing it; the inventory level [in the] below $5 million [range] is very low.” Activity at the bottom of the luxury market, homes in the $3 million to $5 million range, was slowing.
However, the one-bedroom market heated up, as
record-low interest rates in combination with
record-high rents spurred entry-level home seekers to take the plunge. The median price for a Manhattan one-bedroom was $665,000, representing almost 38 percent of the market,
Reasonable pricing was key. “We are advising sellers to well price their apartments and if an apartment is in relatively good selling condition, they are selling quick and with multiple bids often,”
Your Broker and friend,
Bruna Costa
