Is It a Buyer's or Seller's Market in Townhouses?
Here’s an email we received from a reader this week: I was hoping you could foment some sort of discussion on the summer brooklyn townhouse market. I can’t really figure out what’s going on. It seems like a lot of stuff is left over from the spring, but then some great stuff just flies off…
Here’s an email we received from a reader this week:
I was hoping you could foment some sort of discussion on the summer brooklyn townhouse market. I can’t really figure out what’s going on. It seems like a lot of stuff is left over from the spring, but then some great stuff just flies off the shelf. I’ve been to dozens of open houses the past few weeks, some are empty, some are thronged. I can’t tell if it’s a buyer’s market or a seller’s market. It seems like a lot of people are waiting for the fall to see what comes on the market. What’s your sense?
Seems to us like there’s not a lot of good inventory and that buyers aren’t desperate enough to go for the crap. Your thoughts?
Photo by Da Nator
We just closed on a great house off PPW. It was close to 3.2mm. We got a great and very creative mortgage from a guy we met at the dog run! (Don’t you love NYC?!) Problem is, my husband and I make about 95k a year when we’re both working and right now, I’m at home with my 1yo (we NEED to pay Stay at Home Moms like they do in Europe!!!).
I can’t help thinking it’s a great investment, but yes, if things don’t change financially soon for us our payments are going to be hard to make and REALLY hard to make when rate increases in December.
But we can sell if things get too bad. Fingers crossed!!!
Yeh, 11:47 AM is dead right. I bought a tiny West Village coop in 1987 and 18 mos later started enjoying several years of negative equity. Sales in our bldg ground to almost a halt but actual prices only came down about 10-15%. Then by ’95-96 the worst was over and prices starting heading up again. I sold in ’99 for twice what I paid in the eighties and bought a PH brownstone for under half a mil.
I also keep looking at property prices in London (my hometown). The rate of increase there is far beyond anything we’ve seen here and yet it shows few signs of cooling. NYC is certainly not immune but so long as the city’s economy stays strong and people with six figure salaries continue to want to live in brownstones, prices should remain reasonably robust. At the end of the day, there are fewer good (meaning condition + location) brownstones on the market than qualified buyers.
that is one STUPID mortgage company for lending 1.15 million minus downpayment to a single income freelancer.
REALLY stupid.
A buyer’s market is when people can buy in neighborhoods where people with their occupational/educational backgrounds have typically lived for LESS THAN the traditional three times income.
The rest of the country is in a transition, with buyers no longer willing or able to overpay and sellers not yet willing to sell at market. NYC is approaching that transition.
But any seller willing to cut their price can still sell to a greater fool for more than the unit will be worth three years from now. And buyers who absolutely want to buy have to accept that deal. That’s a seller’s market.
OK – anyone looking for a brownstone in a PRIME area that thinks it is BUYER’s market????
(I didn’t think so).
Absolutely it could happen again, 12:10. We didn’t have a negative national savings rate then. Home price appreciation wasn’t driving the economy then. I’m putting money on it – opportunity cost of not buying if the market goes up.
anyone who would joke about going into foreclosure when it’s all over the news about people suffering from it, is a total sicko.
sorry 10:44/12:09: I’m not buying it. Please don’t troll…
the great depression comment was not about price declines. it was about foreclosures so you can’t stop taking that out of context. some of us do read the papers also, you realize.
and in terms of nyc housing, all you need to do is listen to all those who say that there is little out there to buy.
the market is based on supply and demand. our supply is quite limited. you are hearing it from poster after poster.
do you think suddenly everyone, upon hearing news of a possibly shakey real estate market in nyc are going to put their homes up for sale this fall?
don’t think so.
we’ve had time here to see what happened across the rest of the country and as long as everyone stays calm, waits it out and don’t move unless they really have to, life will go on without too much worry.
the word apocalypctic being used in an earlier post sums up how completely absurd some people can be about all this stuff.
overracting is the WORST thing everyone could do at this point in time.