Home sales are down

The fourth quarter of 2011 was a dismal one for the New York City residential real estate sector, per a study released today by New York University’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy.

The volume of home sales — single-family, co-op and condominium — in the five boroughs was down 15 percent quarter-over-quarter and 11 percent year-over-year, the report says. The sales volume is the lowest recorded since the second quarter of 2009. And there is little hope of sales increasing soon, as the number of new residential building permits citywide was down 60 percent quarter-over-quarter, according to the report. [more]

There is no evidence to support the idea that an increase in the number of housing voucher holders, or federal rental housing assistance for low-income households, in a community leads to increases in crime, according to a study by New York University’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy which examined crime and housing data over 12 years in 10 U.S. cities, released today. Instead, voucher holders are more likely to move into areas where crime rates are increasing.

“We find that crime tends to be higher in neighborhoods with more voucher holders. However, we found no evidence that an increase in the number of voucher holders leads to more crime,” said Ingrid Gould Ellen, faculty co-director of the Furman Center and a professor at NYU’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. — Katherine Clarke [more]

The New York City home sales volume declined 20 percent between the first and second quarters of the year, and is down 40 percent compared to March through June of 2010, according to a report released today by New York University’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy.

Though the sales volume declined, home prices increased citywide by about 6 percent from the first quarter to the second quarter of 2011, but remained 21 percent below their peak in the fourth quarter of 2006. – Miranda Neubauer [more]

The rate of foreclosures in New York City grew in the first quarter of the year, according to the Wall Street Journal, with new data from the New York University’s Furman Center for Real Estate suggesting that the foreclosure crisis may still be taking its toll on the five boroughs. New York City saw 16.3 percent more foreclosures in the first quarter of the year than in the same quarter a year earlier, according to the Furman Center, with 4,226 foreclosures recorded. Foreclosure activity was largely localized in Queens and Brooklyn, with the two boroughs accounting for 70 percent of the foreclosures in the city. Queens saw 1,556 foreclosures during the first quarter, while Brooklyn saw 1,546. Manhattan saw the least amount of activity in the city, with just 164 foreclosures recorded during the quarter. [WSJ]

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The city’s building boom resulted in 170,000 new housing units between 2000 and 2008, according to a new report from NYU’s Furman Center for Real Estate. Of those, 46 percent were apartments in multi-family buildings, while 40 percent were either single-family or two-to-four-family homes. Condominiums accounted for 14 percent of all new units. Building activity rose by an average of 7 percent each year between 2000 and 2003, and 17 percent each year between 2003 and 2006, the report says. In 2007 alone, 25,659 new units were added — the largest single-year housing spurt in two decades. Staten Island saw the most growth during that time: the borough’s housing supply grew by 12 percent between 2000 and 2008. Meanwhile, housing stock rose by 7 percent in Manhattan, 5 percent in the Bronx and 4 percent each in Brooklyn and Queens. Still, the city’s limited supply of vacant real estate stifled what could have been. In Washington, D.C., Miami and Las Vegas, for example, the housing boom was even more pronounced. But that may have been to the city’s advantage: building has fallen off dramatically since the downturn, the report says. New building permits fell by 90 percent during 2009, to 3,275, from 30,947 in 2008, indicating that activity in the near future will be all but stagnant. TRD
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From the February issue: Major residential brokerages may still snub their noses at the listings, but a growing number of firms, particularly in the outer boroughs, are fighting for a share of the foreclosed homes market. Lenders took back thousands of homes in New York State last year and thousands more face foreclosure this year. Take Staten Island-based Wonica Realtors and Appraisers. Last year, according to founder and president George Wonica, the firm’s REO division, which specializes in marketing and selling foreclosed residential properties in Staten Island and Brooklyn, accounted for almost 80 percent of his firm’s revenue. “It carried the office,” Wonica told The Real Deal. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” The marketplace for REOs — or “Real Estate Owned” by the bank because they did not successfully sell at a foreclosure auction — is thriving in places hit hard by the housing downturn. In New York City that usually means in the outer boroughs, although Manhattan is not impervious.  [more] [more]

1861 Bronxdale Avenue

From the January issue: Last month’s big foreclosure legislation was signed in Morris Park, a
middle-class enclave of leafy streets and tidy brick homes in the Bronx
where the bill’s co-sponsor, Senator Jeffrey Klein, grew up.
During the first three quarters of 2009, the Furman Center counted
190 foreclosure filings in the community district — the fourth highest
in the Bronx, where the overall quarterly foreclosure filing rate shot
up by 42 percent last year. In fact, four of the five community
districts in the Bronx that have the highest median incomes also saw
the most foreclosure filings (Riverdale-Soundview is the one
exception). Klein said he’s watched empty homes in his neighborhood become
havens for rats, vandals, druggies and squatters; and has heard stories
of marshals evicting unknowing tenants whose landlords were foreclosed
on.

There were 1,750 bank-owned properties in New York City, as of September 2009, according to a report released today from the Furman Center. This represents a six-fold jump in the number of bank-owned properties over the last two years, and that statistic stands to increase even further given the city’s record 20,000 foreclosure filings in 2009. A handful of regions, including Eastern Queens, Central Brooklyn and Staten Island’s northern shore, appeared to be the hardest hit, showing a higher concentration of bank-owned properties than other parts of the five boroughs. The report noted that these neighborhoods had a higher level of mortgage distress than other parts of New York City, as well. TRD

From the December issue: Until last year, The Real Deal‘s annual accounting of real
estate records was a Mad Libs of giddy peaks: The highest price ever
paid for [insert type of real estate] in [insert name of borough] was
catalogued, time and again.
Even in 2008 — before Lehman Brothers fell and the recession
tightened its stranglehold on the city — records were toppled. On the
residential side, Manhattan logged the highest median sale price ever,
$945,276, while on the commercial side, Boston Properties paid $2.9
billion for the GM Building, the highest price ever shelled out in the
United States for an office tower. But many of 2009′s records are record lows, rather than record
highs. For example, the second quarter of the year saw the largest
year-over-year drop — 25.6 percent — ever recorded by appraisal firm
Miller Samuel in Manhattan’s median sale price for apartments. The firm
has been releasing market reports for the last decade. [more]