Manhattan apartment prices held steady in the first quarter of 2013, while inventory continued to plunge rapidly during the same period, according to a quarterly market report released today by Douglas Elliman.
There was a 26.8 percent rise in the numbers of homes sold after price increases in the first quarter of 2013 compared to last year. There were 41.3 percent fewer price cuts for the quarter, according to a Manhattan real estate report released Tuesday by StreetEasy.com.
The average sales price in the quarter was $1.35 million, rising just 1 percent year-over-year, the report says. Overall, 2,457 units were sold in the first quarter of 2013, up 6.3 percent from the first quarter of 2012 when 2,311 units sold, according to the report.
The median sales price increased 5.9 percent year-over-year, to $820,555, marking the highest such increase since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, with the exception of two quarters in 2010 that were skewed by the federal home buyer tax credit, said Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel and the author of the Elliman report.
"Inventory has been falling for a couple of years but in the last six months it's gotten chronic," said Jonathan Miller, the real estate expert who wrote the Elliman report.
"This is what happens when you take both hands and choke off supply by the throat," Miller said in the report.
Would-be sellers are stuck because they can't qualify for credit or because there aren't enough new apartments for them to choose from, Miller explained. He said that new developments opening their doors this year will likely bring little relief since they focus more on the high-end market, rather than "the other 90 percent," he said.
