Jonathan Miller

The housing market’s recovery is being closely watched by analysts and brokers, amidst fears that the rapidly rising home prices may be the sign of a housing bubble, BBC News reported.

“Twenty-five years, and we’ve never seen this kind of market,” said Warren Lewis Sotheby’s International Realty president Aroza Sanjana, referring to the high demand and intense bidding wars seen in the Brooklyn market. Similar signs were seen in several markets across the country, including Atlanta, San Francisco and Phoenix. See the full story and video after the jump.

David Frankel, Department of Finance Commissioner

ACRIS is getting a makeover. The New York City Department of Finance is updating the Automated City Register Information System, which tracks public real estate records filed throughout the city — including deeds, mortgages and liens — with new functions and additional data.

The maintenance work for the update, which has shut down ACRIS, began yesterday afternoon and will continue until Monday morning. [more]

Average rents in Manhattan in April (courtesy: Citi Habitats)

Rents continue to rise in both Manhattan and Brooklyn, according to monthly market reports from leading residential brokerages released today. And the market is only slated to tighten further, real estate executives said. [more]

Chris Halstead, the 50-foot-wide Harkness Mansion and the super skinny 75 1/2 Bedford Street

At first glance, Manhattan’s toniest townhouses would seem to have little in common with mobile homes. But, in fact, both types of real estate share a metric for measuring value: the wider the better. Not only is townhouse width a point of pride for homeowners, buyers and brokers in New York City, it is one of the most important attributes appraisers use in determining the sale price of a townhouse, said Jonathan Miller, president of appraisal firm Miller Samuel. But how much does width actually impact the price per square foot of a property? [more]

Average and median price of a Hamptons home (Image courtesy the Corcoran Group)

If the Hamptons real estate market celebrated the end of last year with a boom — as high-end homebuyers rushed to complete deals before capital gains tax rates spiked at the start of 2013 — then the last three months must have felt like a hangover. Home sales and prices in the tony enclave plummeted in the first quarter of this year, according to reports released today by the area’s largest residential brokerages. [more]

Jonathan Miller and a shot of Mott Haven

In the last two decades, the Bronx has ranked as the fastest-growing part of New York City for new businesses, thanks in part to low residential property prices and low commercial rents, Crain’s reported. And that is especially true of Mott Haven, a neighborhood bounded from north to south by 138th Street to Bruckner Boulevard, and from the east to west by St. Ann’s Avenue and Third Avenue. [more]

Jonathan Miller, Stephen Roefaro and Carol DiSanto

With an eye on an approaching federal deadline, New York State is drafting legislation that would require appraisal management companies — the firms that mortgage lenders enlist to hire appraisers — to register with the state. Despite their critical role in the generally highly regulated residential real estate industry, the companies currently have no oversight. [more]

Manhattan rents in March (per Douglas Elliman)

Aspiring fiction writers and artisanal mayonnaise purveyors beware: rents are rising appreciably faster in Brooklyn than in Manhattan, according to real estate maven Jonathan Miller, author of a monthly Manhattan and Brooklyn rental market report released today by Douglas Elliman. [more]

Manhattan apartment contracts signed (Courtesy: the Corcoran Group)

Manhattan apartment prices held steady in the first quarter of 2013, while inventory continued to plummet dramatically during the same period, according to a quarterly market report released today by Douglas Elliman. 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. [more]

Doug Perlson, CEO of RealDirect, and an extreme “fixer upper”

A particularly intrepid group of homebuyers actively scours the market for dilapidated properties known as “fixer-uppers,” and brokerages are getting in on the action, the New York Times reported. [more]