The Real Deal New York

From the February issue: Slowly, Manhattan’s residential real estate market is coming back to
life. When the city’s major brokerages released their fourth-quarter
market reports last month, they revealed a clear jump in activity. The
number of sales in the fourth quarter grew 8 percent from the same
period in 2008 and almost 11 percent from the previous quarter,
according to Prudential Douglas Elliman’s report.
But thanks to the lingering grip of the credit crunch, the vast
majority of those sales were resales in established buildings, not new
developments.
Only 19 percent of closed sales in the fourth quarter were in new
condos, according to Elliman, down from 38 percent in the fourth
quarter of 2008. By contrast, some 58 percent of closed sales in 2006
were in new developments. Meanwhile, Elliman estimated that the “shadow
inventory,” or not-yet-released new development units, may total more
than 6,000.  [more]