Brooklyn, N.Y. from above

Brooklyn holds the dubious honor of being the county in the U.S. where completing a foreclosure takes the longest, Bloomberg News reported. It took an average of 1,187 days to repossess a home in Brooklyn during the last three months of 2011, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. There were a total of 32 foreclosures in the last quarter of 2011, although upwards of 27,000 homes had loans in delinquency, data from the New York Department of Financial Services show. [more]

The number of people showing up to open houses has reached 2007 levels, and buyers are doing more than looking; they are buying, increasingly getting entangled in bidding wars, the New York Times said. It seems New York City is on the cusp of a true, unadulterated recovery from the 2008 economic crash. [more]

Case-Shiller index

U.S. single-family home prices are back to early 2003 levels, according to the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller home price indices for January, released today. The index showed annual declines of 3.9 percent and 3.8 percent for the 10- and 20-city composites, respectively. Both composites saw price declines of 0.8 percent in the month of January (see video after the jump). [more]

source: Bloomberg News (Wall Street bonus data reflects compensation from two years prior)

The high-end Manhattan real estate that has propped up an otherwise stagnant sales market, is likely to begin a decline of its own in 2013 and 2014. According to data from the New York State Comptroller’s office and Miller Samuel CEO Jonathan Miller cited by Bloomberg News, the top 10 percent of the Manhattan condominium and co-op market tends to follow the pattern set by Wall Street bonuses two years earlier (see chart above). [more]

From left: Stuart Saft of Dewey & LeBoeuf', Diane Ramirez, president of Halstead Property, Andrew Berman, director of the Center for Real Estate Studies at New York Law School, Jonathan Miller, CEO of Miller Samuel, and Lockhart Steele, founder of Curbed

Why aren’t more people buying residential real estate? That was a question posed today by Jonathan Miller, CEO of the appraisal firm Miller Samuel, at the third annual breakfast forum organized by the New York Law School’s Center for Real Estate Studies.

Miller was one of four industry experts — along with Stuart Saft, chair of Dewey & LeBoeuf’s real estate department; Diane Ramirez, president of Halstead Property; and Lockhart Steele, founder of the blog Curbed — asked to whip out their crystal balls to discuss the future of New York City real estate at the law school’s campus at 185 West Broadway in Tribeca. [more]

From left: Construction on the Second Avenue Subway and a muck house

While apartment owners and longtime residents of Second Avenue on the Upper East Side constantly voice complaints and anger over the construction work on the forthcoming subway, for young renters it provides a rare opportunity for a bargain apartment in Manhattan. [more]

Condo and co-op sales (source: Prudential Douglas Elliman)

Through the housing booms and credit busts, the Manhattan residential sales market had a fairly nondescript decade ending in December 2011.

Prices across all housing stock increased about as much as one would expect they would have since 2002, and sales activity was remarkably similar in 2011 to 2002. [more]

Landlords continue to have the upper hand when it comes to Manhattan’s residential rental market, according to fourth-quarter reports released today by brokerages Prudential Douglas Elliman and Citi Habitats. The median asking rent climbed 6.6 percent over the last year, and vacancies were filled at a near-record pace, according to Elliman, while both firms reported a sharp decline in concessions. [more]

From left, Prudential Douglas Elliman’s Dottie Herman, Halstead Property’s Greg Heym and the Corcoran Group’s Pamela Liebman The volume of Manhattan home sales declined at least 12 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011, although prices continued to hold steady, according to quarterly reports issued today by the city’s largest residential real estate brokerages. Experts proffered a host of explanations for the drop in sales activity, from global economic chaos to low inventory levels to financing issues for buyers in the middle of the market. [more]

From left: Donald Trump, president of the Trump Organization, Dottie Herman, president of Prudential Douglas Elliman, Elizabeth Stribling, president of Stribling & Associates, Stuart Saft, chairman of Dewey & LeBoeuf’s global real estate department, and Frederick Peters, president of Warburg Realty Partnership, and Lois Weiss, real estate columnist for the New York Post

Compiled by Lauren Elkies

In the wake of Sandy Weill’s reported $88 million sale of his 15 Central Park West penthouse, The Real Deal wanted to touch base and see if real estate executives had any last minute predictions for the New Year since speaking with the magazine for the December residential market report.

Dottie Herman, president of Prudential Douglas Elliman, and Frederick Peters, president of Warburg Realty Partnership, said to expect 2012 to be a bit of a repeat of 2011, while developer Donald Trump said “really good real estate will have excess value.” Elizabeth Stribling, president of Stribling & Associates, predicts a “continuing strong demand for new condominium offerings all over town,” while Stuart Saft, chairman of Dewey & LeBoeuf’s global real estate department, said “the euro will continue to be in trouble causing a flight to safety to the U.S. and particularly New York City, so New York City properties will trade at even lower cap rates.” Meanwhile, Citi Habitats President Gary Malin and Halstead Property Development Marketing President Stephen Kliegerman recently told amNY that 2012 would bring more development and fewer amenities to New York City’s real estate market. [more]