New York City’s post-lockdown real estate bonanza seems to be over. Pick a category, and contract signings were down last month.
Miller Samuel CEO Jonathan Miller lays out the news in his monthly report, but the data merely show what they have all felt on the ground. “I think the real problem right now is that we have boatloads of uncertainty,” Miller said, listing several factors, including the war in Ukraine, high gas prices, high inflation, rising interest rates, and commodity shortages.
The number of Manhattan home sales overall, and the prices of those sales, were strong for the second quarter, but those closings reflect contracts signed last winter and early this spring. Signed contracts do not always turn into sales, but their numbers reflect a more current market snapshot.
Newly signed contracts for Manhattan co-ops fell across all price points to 524 last month from 748 in June 2021. The condo market also saw pronounced decreases in the number of new contracts signed, the 29 percent drop in June’s signed contracts — to 388 from 548 a year ago — included declines for all price points; meanwhile, the number of new listings rose 14 percent to 808 from a year ago.
For the Manhattan home sale market as a whole, while prices are higher than they were before Covid, activity is lower. “Newly signed contracts and new listings for June were less than the same period pre-pandemic,” said Miller.
According to Coldwell Banker Warburg President Frederick Warburg Peters, buyers and sellers in Manhattan find themselves in a standoff as the market cools. He said sellers still think they can get top dollar for their property, and buyers are more reluctant to buy, given market uncertainty and rising interest rates, and overestimate how low they can bid.
With that said, the New York markets reflect what’s happening elsewhere in the country, according to data firm Black Knight, which published a report that found that 97 of the 100 most significant real estate markets experienced a slowing of price growth in the past six months.
(source: therealdeal.com, millersamuel.com)
