Long Island City prices (source: Modern Spaces)

For the first time in several years, Long Island City apartment sales prices rose across the board in 2011 and buyers put a premium on larger units, according to a year-end report released yesterday by Modern Spaces.

The average price per square-foot of a studio increased 3.6 percent from 2010 to $697.45, and the average price paid per square-foot for a one-bedroom jumped 3.4 percent to $700.94. But the biggest increases occurred in the two- and three-bedroom sectors. [more]

In an unusual twist, home prices in the outer boroughs held up better than those in Manhattan in an overall dreadful fourth quarter, according to the latest figures from the Real Estate Board of New York cited by the Wall Street Journal.

While the median price in Manhattan tumbled 8.5 from the prior year quarter to $750,000, prices actually inched up by 2.9 percent in the Bronx to $350,00 and 1.4 percent in Brooklyn to $473,000. [more]

Manhattan residential rents increased 1.82 percent in May, but vacancies have also increased nearly 3 percent as the summer turnover begins, according to a May Manhattan rental market report released today by MNS. The average rent now sits 6 percent above its average in May 2010. Harlem, long the cheaper option for renters reluctant to leave Manhattan, has keyed much of the price gains, as non-doorman and doorman studios and one- and two-bedroom apartments all experienced rent growth in May. Doorman two-bedroom apartments in the neighborhood, for example, rose 7 percent in monthly rent to $2,966. Soho and the Financial District also experienced large gains in rents, but their average rents sill paled in comparison to Tribeca, the city’s priciest neighborhood, the report shows. – Adam Fusfeld [more]

From left, Frank Percesepe of Corcoran and Michael Guerra of Elliman

Brooklyn condominium units were in high demand during the first quarter, according to Prudential Douglas Elliman and the Corcoran Group, with new developments powering the sales spike.

Condo sales soared 61.1 percent to 923 units, from 573 units in the same period last year, the Elliman’s first quarter market report, prepared by Miller Samuel, says. The median price jumped 1 percent from last quarter, and 7.2 percent from a year ago at the same time, Elliman determined.

“It looked like 2010 was setting this year up for a return to normalcy, and that’s exactly what we’ve found,” said Michael Guerra, director of sales for Elliman’s Brooklyn division.
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(source: Modern Spaces)

Long Island City’s 2,084 rental apartments were 94 percent leased at the end of 2010, with just 125 units available, according to a year-end market report from local brokerage Modern Spaces. Rents averaged $1,500 to $4,617 per month, depending on whether the apartments had elevators and doormen. Meanwhile, apartments sold in the mid-$600-per-square-foot range over the course of last year, with the highest price per square foot, $678, reported on one-bedrooms. Click here for the full report. TRD [more]

Steven Spinola

Tourist traffic is driving retail rents in certain Manhattan corridors, according to the Real Estate Board of New York. In the tourism-heavy Midtown corridor between Broadway and Seventh Avenue and 42nd and 47th streets, rents have increased 21 percent since the spring, according to the report, while other popular retail zones in the West Village and Soho have climbed 38 percent and 9 percent year-over-year, respectively. Steven Spinola, president of REBNY, said that the previously lower prices during the recession opened up opportunities for retailers who had been boxed out of the Manhattan market. “As a result of these opportunities in premiere retail areas, the retail space market has become competitive again and average rents are rising,” Spinola said. “This is the trend that we hope will eventually spread into other city neighborhoods.” TRD

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Steven Spinola

Third-quarter residential sales in New York City saw continued improvement, according to a report from the Real Estate Board of New York, released today. Total sales volume reached $8.36 billion in the third quarter, a 26 percent increase over the same time period in 2009 and an 11 percent increase over sales volume in the second quarter of this year. The number of homes also increased, both year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter, climbing 18 percent and 12 percent, respectively. The average sales price of homes sold across the city hit $722,000, a 7 percent increase over the previous year and a 1 percent decrease over last quarter’s figure. Other reports have shown a recent uptick in activity, as well. In Manhattan, third-quarter market reports from the city’s top brokerages showed improvement, while, citywide, some brokers say that a slow summer has given way to a busier autumn. TRD

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Click chart for larger version. (Source: Citi Habitats)

Manhattan rental transactions surged in the fourth quarter of 2009, while rents dropped modestly, according to market reports released by two large city brokerages today (see full reports after the jump). A marketwide report released by Prudential Douglas Elliman estimated that the number of rental deals in Manhattan leaped 47.6 percent to 2,456 in the fourth quarter, from 1,665 in the same period of 2008. Citi Habitats, the city’s largest rental brokerage, said it did more than 2,600 transactions in the fourth quarter, an increase of 30 percent from roughly 1,800 in the prior-year-quarter.
(In a market where rental data is notoriously difficult to obtain, firms use different data to compile their reports.) Moreover, listing inventory dropped 21 percent to 5,255 units, from 6,640 during the fourth quarter of 2008, according to the Elliman report, which was prepared by appraiser Jonathan Miller, president and CEO of real estate appraisal firm Miller Samuel.
The upswing in activity “is a positive development, and we’ll take it,” Miller said, though he noted that the fourth quarter of 2008 saw particularly low levels of activity because of the Lehman Brothers collapse.
“There was clearly a surge in activity coming from a very low point from this time last year, which was post-Lehman,” he said.
Rental prices, meanwhile, are lower than last year, but not drastically so.
Citi Habitats, which only tracks apartments rented by its own agents, said average rents fell between 5.8 and 7.3 percent year-over-year, and dipped 1.5 to 3.3 percent from the third quarter. [more]

In the fourth quarter of 2009, there were fewer price cuts, more price increases than before, a decrease in inventory and a jump in contracts from a year earlier, according to a fourth-quarter market report released today by Streeteasy.com. Though Manhattan hasn’t quite recovered from the Lehman Brothers collapse, “there’s a growing sense of buyer confidence and seller optimism,” said Sofia Song (formerly Sofia Kim), vice president of research at Streeteasy and the author of the report. In the fourth quarter, 3,810, or 27.4 percent, of Manhattan listings on Streeteasy.com saw their prices drop at least once, according to the Web site, which specializes in real estate data. That’s 29 percent fewer price cuts than in the third quarter, and 14.4 percent fewer than in the fourth quarter of 2008. “We saw fewer price cuts, and those price cuts were not as deep,” Song said. Condos saw an average price cut of 7.8 percent, down from 8.4 percent in the third quarter, the report says, while the average price cut for co-ops was 7.7 percent, compared to 8.1 percent in the previous quarter. Moreover, there were actually some price increases in the fourth quarter, though they were still rare, Song said. [more]

Source: Prudential Douglas Elliman

The residential real estate market on Long Island’s East End is looking
better, although the end of the slump is still not in sight. There were 459 homes sales in the Hamptons and North Fork together in the third quarter, a 29.3 percent leap from 355 in the same quarter of last year, and 49.5 percent more than last quarter, according to a quarterly report by Prudential Douglas Elliman (see full report after the jump). Thanks to this spike in activity, the region saw a respite from the steep price declines it’s seen for the past two years. The average sales price of a home on the East End grew 1.3 percent to $1.34 million, from $1.32 million in the third quarter of 2008, and increased 4.3 percent from the second quarter. The median price was $700,000, 4 percent less than the prior-year quarter but 2.9 percent more than the last quarter. “The worst is over,” said appraiser Jonathan Miller, CEO of Miller Samuel and the preparer of the report. “After a precipitous drop in the first couple quarters, we saw prices move sideways, and even a little uptick in the summer.” That doesn’t mean there won’t be further price declines, he said, thanks to the tenuous state of the economy and still-rising unemployment. [more]