REBNY: Prices Up Across the Board in Q2
The Real Estate Board of New York’s quarterly residential market report was released yesterday. The bottom line? Almost every type of residence in every borough of the city rose in price in the second quarter of 2007 versus the same period in the prior year. Not surprisingly, according to REBNY, Brooklyn had the highest median…
The Real Estate Board of New York’s quarterly residential market report was released yesterday. The bottom line? Almost every type of residence in every borough of the city rose in price in the second quarter of 2007 versus the same period in the prior year. Not surprisingly, according to REBNY, Brooklyn had the highest median and average prices of the four outer boroughs. The median price of one- to three-family houses in Brooklyn rose from $562,000 to $605,000 while the average price was up from $612,000 to $671,000; median price per square foot increased from $313 to $346. The median price of a condo jumped from $467,000 to $545,000 while the median price per square foot went from $454 to $572. Co-ops had the weakest relative performance: The median price of a co-op rose modestly from $255,000 to $260,000 while the median price per square foot increased from $372 to $398. Do these numbers sound about right to you?
NYC Co-op, Condo sales prices rose 8% [Crain’s]
City Proving Immune to National Housing Slump [NY1]
First, the market started to drop in NJ, LI and Westchester and we heard “NYC is different than the suburbs.”
Now the market is dropping in Queens and Staten Island and we hear “Manhattan and Brooklyn are different because X,Y,Z.”
Next it’ll be “Below 96th and Park Slope/BH are different from rest of Manhattan and Brooklyn because…”
People are stupid.
you forgot one important point about why nyc continues to do well compared to the rest of the country.
because people still want to, aspire to and are moving here!!!
this is not the case with middle america. unless you’re portlant, seattle, san francisco etc…the young professionals in this country want to live in new york.
as long as nyc stays on track with crime, quality of life, etc this will continue to be the case. and these young professionals will also continue to procreate here instead of moving to the burbs like they did 10 years ago.
combine that with the fact that to even buy a co-op in this city (which still makes up like 90% of the housing stock) one must have quite a bit of money in the bank. the fact that nyc continues to do well means that a lot of new yorkers have some bucks.
the people who say that nyc is no different from the rest of the country either a. have no bucks or 2. are completely oblivious to the fact that a lot of people here have a ton of bucks.
Re: 11:04 —
your thoughts on why Manhattan is different than Queens (foreign buyers and land constraints) make sense… but I don’t think that Brooklyn is all that different from Queens. there may be some trickle-down from the luxury market into certain parts of Bklyn (same way LIC condos are holding up when the rest of Queens is not), but there will be a drop in the further out sections of Bklyn. And have you notice how much stuff has either been built or converted into residential in Bklyn over the last few years? Tons of new supply…
There are a few differences between NY and the national market. The foreign investors is one of them. Currently the dollar is very weak making investment here very attractive to those in Europe and Asia. If these people are going to buy real estate in the US they are going to do it in NY and more specifically Manhattan. These people are not buying in other parts of the country or at least not at the same level.
The other one is that it takes a long time to build here. Land is scarce, large projects need years of approvals before they can be built, etc. In other parts of the country that are getting hit hard it is due to over building. When you can just buy more farmland and throw up homes over night it’s much easier to let supply get out of whack with demand. This can still happen in NY but it takes a lot longer.
Over supply is the main reason that places like Vegas and Florida are doing poorly and bringing down the national numbers.
I think the above reasons are also why we see that Queens is not doing as well. It’s easier to build there and the foreign investors are not helping to support that market.
The REBNY numbers are incomplete. From today’s NYPost:
“While residential real-estate sales in Manhattan continue to hit record levels, the numbers in Queens appear to be mirroring the rest of the nation’s housing slump.”
http://www.nypost.com/seven/07242007/news/regionalnews/harsh_realty_in_qns__regionalnews_braden_keil.htm
personally, i see things sitting for longer at ridiculously high prices because sellers are reluctant to readjust their expectations. as for the sales, these generally seem to be at or below ask. it’s hard to know what that means (as the sale price may still be relatively high), but there’s definitely not the same frenzy as there was a few years ago.
aside from the wealthy foreigners buying in the luxury market, i don’t see any reason why NYC should be immune to national trends. nor do the banks foreclosing on houses in outer Bklyn and Queens. and given that NYS’s bankruptcy laws are very protective of homeowners, it’s only going to get worse as we catch up to where the rest of the country is.
yes 9:34, I understand it exactly. These are statistics, they never tell the whole picture, it’s always possible to find properties rising and properties falling.
So gather all the data points that you can and draw your own conclusions.
What I’m seeing is that prices are continuing to go up in most areas. If you have some meaningful data to point to the scenario that you describe then please share it.
I have not seen the scenario you describe happening in Brooklyn. I’m not saying it isn’t happening or that it can’t happen, I’m just not seeing it.
Would also help if they mentioned # of sales in each of the categories. That is also indicator of a strong/weak market.
Also, the median price of a 1-3 family house in Brooklyn at $605k shows that there is big part of Brooklyn outside Brownstoner area that we easily forget about. And demand for that housing is just as strong if not stronger than Brownstone Brooklyn (or Manhattan for that matter).
And when you look at citywide figures, NYC doesn’t end up sounding so much more expensive than other major cities.
Unfortunately, the media likes to only compare Manhattan prices (and often Manhattan prices they quote are below 96th St) to other cities (SF, Boston) – sounds so much more sensational. But they wouldn’t take most expensive part of SF or Boston and use as comparison – as in comparing Pacific Hts to Manhattan or Beacon Hill.
What’s your basis for saying that only high-end properties are selling now?