It's gonna be fun watching all those folks all rushing to the door at the same time, trying to sell their homes. Gee, I wonder what's going to happen to the prices?
It's also going to be interesting to watch them begging for a new refi, when the bank doors are slammed in their faces. So many folks just assume that easy refis at low rates are some kind of naturally occurring phenomenon!
http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/60941.htm
we are at the plateau and heading down in some major markets including Vegas, Phoenix and NYC.
APTS. IN FAST FALL
By BRADEN KEIL
Want to buy an apartment? There's plenty available.
Sales of Manhattan apartments have dropped more than 20 percent, according to fourth-quarter reports compiled by four of the city's largest real-estate firms, while inventories of properties for sale have jumped.
"We've seen a significant drop in residential sales in the last quarter," said Jonathan Miller, of Miller Samuel appraisers, who produced the Prudential Douglas Elliman report.
"It's further evidence of a shift of gears in the market."
While fourth-quarter sales quotas have traditionally been lower than third-quarter numbers — with an average decline of 6.7 percent — Miller's 21 percent drop represents an eye-popping number.
His findings are also mirrored in a 23 percent decline by Realtor Brown Harris Stevens.
The overall sales price numbers have remained mostly flat from a disappointing third quarter. The average price of co-op apartments has dipped below the $1 million mark for the first time this year, and the price of a condo in the Big Apple has dropped a mere 0.6 percent, from $1.391 million in the third quarter to $1.382 million for the fourth quarter.
The bad news for what was a steamrolling market began in the third quarter, when the average price of a Manhattan apartment — including co-ops and condos — dropped 12.7 percent, from a record high of $1.32 million in the second quarter to $1.15 million.
Meanwhile, the two-bedroom apartment market, long considered the staple of a bullish market, dipped 3.4 percent to $1.49 million from $1.54 million. Miller attributes the nervousness in the market to unfavorable market news that includes hurricanes, nonstop talk of a real-estate bubble and interest rates rising.
In the Brown Harris Stevens report, the average sales price for a Manhattan co-op apartment dropped nearly 12 percent from $1.044 million in the third quarter to $921,791 in the fourth quarter.
But company chief economist Greg Heym blames the downswing, in part, on lesser-priced apartments that are still moving.
"Our numbers show that studios and one-bedroom apartments are what's accounting for 64 percent of the co-op sales," he said.
Brokers still show signs of optimism.
"It could get dangerous, but it can be managed," said Prudential Douglas Elliman broker Dolly Lenz.
And not all the news is bad — the Manhattan residential real-estate market is still up 4 percent from a year ago, said one expert.
"The real-estate market in both Manhattan and Brooklyn remains strong, with growth continuing to return to more historical levels," said Brown Harris Stevens President Hall F. Willkie.
"While the overall rate has moderated in the residential market, some sectors continue to appreciate sharply. As demand for smaller units has increased, the prices for these units have escalated greatly," added Heym.
On a per-square-foot basis, the average sale price was also up over the past year, from $780 the last quarter of 2004 to $1,002 this year.
Losing Las Vegas
Last week we reported on George Clooney's and Ivana Trump's troubled Las Vegas condo projects. And now it looks like those developments were just the tip of the iffy iceberg.
According to the detailed market report released on PR Web on Thursday, several developments in Sin City have either crapped out or are in jeopardy. Earlier this year, Michael Jordan's multi-complex condo building Aqua Blue fouled out.
One developer throwing in the towel is Victor Altomare, who announced he was shuttering operations on his planned Liberty Towers high-rise condo, even though it was 85 percent sold. The report says buyers who have already put deposits down on failed projects are "angry that they have lost huge potential profits waiting on projects that were well-advertised but under-funded."
Meanwhile, a staggering 23 projects, comprising more than 20,000 units, are close to completion. Another 11 planned places (including George Clooney's) are on respirators, and another six are already dead.
Why do we care so much about Vegas? Experts say that it could become the first major city to experience a true real-estate bubble burst, which, in turn, could fuel a panic across the nation.
If that's the case, we hope what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.