Miller Samuel’s latest Q1 2009 Manhattan market overview makes interesting reading, although it is easy to jump to the wrong conclusions. The Manhattan luxury real estate market (top 10% by prices) saw a massive increase in median sales prices compared to the same quarter last year – up 32.2% to $6,595,000 and both average sales prices and price per square foot saw modest increases.
How exciting, I hear you cry – we are back to boom times. Until you look at the rest of the figures in more detail -
- Listing inventory – up 25.9% to 1,610
- Days on market – up 13.3% to 153
- Listing discount – more than 3 times higher at 7.8%
- New development sales - more than doubled to 68.3% from 26.8% of market share
- Median sales price of new developments – down 27.7% to $6,595,000
So, before jumpping to any conclusions, it is worth bearing in mind that median house prices continued to rise across Manhattan last year – for the simple reason that the only inventory selling was at the higher ends of the market – albeit at substantial discounts, causing median prices to rise. At the same time, sales volumes are considerably depressed. The glut of new developments are moving at substantial discounts and very few resales occured.
When one takes into consideration the amount of people simply choosing not to sell into this market, these figures paint a different picture to the median sales price increase. And an almost 50% drop in sales volumes also skews the figures – it is far harder to produce any valid statistics on a dwindling amount of sales. The full report is available here:
Miller Samuel Manhattan Market Report Q1 2009 (PDF Download)
