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Sure, there are worries about the credit market and subprime mortgage situation, but real estate brokerages around the city are basking in good news: Third-quarter Manhattan apartment closings were at the highest average price ever and home inventory tightened as well.
The average price for a Manhattan apartment was $1.37 million and the average price for a condo is $1.6 million, with the different brokerage saying that it's anywhere from 16-38% higher than the previous average. Radar Logic's Jonathan Miller, who crunched data for Prudential Douglas Elliman, said, "The upswing is coming from the upper end of the market, the top 6 percent, namely 3- and 4-bedroom units." And the NY Times reports that Brown Harris Stevens and Halstead Property said prices for "nearly every type of apartment in almost every neighborhood of Manhattan, from bare-bones studios in the borough’s northernmost reaches to luxurious four-bedroom apartments on the Upper East Side" had risen. Even Brooklyn brownstone prices rose 11%.
Still, the firms warned that the effects of the credit crisis would not show up until later, especially if Wall Street suffers. But one significant way the NYC housing market differs from others is that the inventory is not as "insanely high" (as Brown Harris Stevens analyst Greg Heym put it) as other parts of the country. And Donald Trump explained the madness to the Post: "The difference is that it's a small island and there's not a lot of land."
Photograph of a crane at a Times Square condominium construction site by phrenologist on Flickr
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Another reason to end rent control - to create more inventory. When an 8 room apartment rents for $1500 and a studio rents for $2000, the system is broken. And it's the young people who who weren't raised in New York, and grandfathered into rent control/stabilization that are screwed.
Where did Trump go to school? He has such great insight to pass on to others.
You really think rent prices are going to go down if they end stabilization? All that will do is kick even more locals out of their apartments in favor of rich kids from suburban land and foreigners.
isn't this like last week's news?
When housing prices went down all over the Nation except for Manhattan?
this is “good news” for whom exactly? not for those of us who pay rent or might one day like to be able to afford to buy something.
Before ending rent control I would do the following:
1: Conduct a thorough investigation of everyone in a rent controlled apartment to see if they own property elsewhere. If they do, kick them out. If the don't own property but otherwise do not claim New York City as their primary residence, kick them out.
2: End tax breaks to corporations to locate or remain in the city. Seriously. Dare them to leave. The executives don't want their letterhead to read "Jersey City" and they have already moved most of the back office jobs out of the city anyway. Plus, only the hedge funds have really moved to Connecticut aside from UBS and even they still have offices here.
3: End the tax abatements on luxury condos. The builders claim they could never get the projects done without them. Bullshit. With Wall Street bonuses rising at double digit rates the bankers can afford to pay up. Again, where are they going to go?
4: End this bullshit "carried interest" crap and make the hedge funds and private equity firms pay their fair share. One of the problems with rent control is it keeps people in the city who aren't paying taxes i.e. the elderly and the poor. The poor have no incentive to work so let's offset them by getting more revenue from rich.
I don't believe in rent control, but I don't think ending it would free up enough apartments to make any appreciable difference.
I remember the good, old days when an average Manhattan apartment only went for $1 million even...
GRAVE DANCING
The war in Iraq, the mound of corpses,
Continue to haunt the nation,
While in Manhattan, real estate
Advances to a fixation.