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]