Manhattan Home Prices Hit a Record While Sales Frenzy Winds Down
Closed deals still show strength, with buyers paying a median of $1.25 million, but a timelier measure of contracts has been slipping for the past three months.
Manhattan home sales showed continued strength in the second quarter, though there are clear signs that fears of a recession are slowing down the market.
Purchases of condos and co-ops closed at a median of $1.25 million, a record high, appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and brokerage Douglas Elliman Real Estate said in a report Wednesday. The 3,834 transactions — a 12% increase from a year earlier — were the most for any second quarter since 2007. But deals going into contract fell throughout the period, signaling a decrease in buyer demand.
“This is a quick pivot from an overachieving market to a market that’s being challenged by an unprecedented amount of uncertainty,” said Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel. While some brokers and agents are depicting the shift as a return to pre-pandemic market dynamics, Miller said that to him, “this is not a normalization.”
Manhattan’s post-lockdown buying surge is cooling down fast. The drop in new contracts began in April, and in June, deals were down 29% year over year, to 932 from from 1,318. Miller pointed to “the spike in interest rates, inflation, economic uncertainty, the war in Ukraine” as parts of the “whole smorgasbord of things the consumer has been grappling with” that are influencing residential sales.