From the August issue: New Yorkers are fleeing the city in the scorching summer heat, trading subway cars for the Hamptons Jitney and business casual for bathing suits. Even so, the residential rental market is as sizzling-hot as the temperature, brokers say.
According to a market report released by the brokerage Citi Habitats, the average second-quarter rent for a Manhattan apartment jumped around 10 percent from the same period of 2010. Taking into consideration landlord concessions like a month of free rent, the median net-effective monthly rent paid by Manhattan tenants grew to $2,888 in the second quarter, up from $2,700 in the prior-year quarter, according to a report from Prudential Douglas Elliman.
“The rental market is going absolutely crazy,” said Bruno Ricciotti, a principal at Bond New York Real Estate. In some desirable neighborhoods, he said, apartments are renting for higher prices than they did during the peak of the real estate boom. [more]

From the July issue: The Manhattan residential market remained relatively stable, if lackluster, in
the second quarter of 2011, according to newly released market reports.
“We’re bumping along the bottom,” said Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel Real Estate Appraisers and the preparer of quarterly market reports for Prudential Douglas Elliman, the city’s largest brokerage firm.
Manhattan’s median sales price in the second quarter was $850,000, 17 percent below the market peak of $1.025 million in 2008, according to the Elliman report. That’s an improvement from the depths of the downturn, when Manhattan prices were down 25 to 30 percent from the high. “We’ve recaptured some of that,” Miller said.  [more]

From the South Florida website: The Miami housing market saw its highest level of sales activity in more than five years during the first quarter, with all-cash purchases accounting for close to two-thirds of that, according to the first-ever Miami housing market report by Douglas Elliman Florida, which was prepared by appraisal firm Miller Samuel and released today. Sales of condominium units, townhouses and single-family homes rose by 25.9 percent year-over-year, and cash purchases rose by 12 percent during that time period, the report says. Meanwhile, average sales prices were down by 14 percent from last year, reaching a five-year low of $260,918 as distressed properties took an increasing share of the market and remained stable pricewise. TRD [more]

If you’re looking to rent on the Upper East Side or Soho and don’t need a doorman, now might be the time to make a move. While rents overall fell .6 percent in April, rents for non-doorman units on the Upper East Side fell 5.67 percent from a month ago, and non-doorman one-bedroom unit rents in Soho dropped 17 percent in the last six months, according to the Manhattan rental market report released today by the Real Estate Group of New York. Overall, the average rent in non-doorman Manhattan units fell 2.84 percent this month, while doorman unit rents rose .8 percent, and inventory across the board rose 3.84 percent. TRD Comments

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Source: Prudential Douglas Elliman

The East End residential real estate market completely collapsed in the first
quarter of 2011, according to a Prudential Douglas Elliman market report released
today, but the report’s preparer said the numbers were an anomaly created by
fear surrounding the possible expiration of the so-called “Bush tax cuts” this past
December. (President Barack Obama eventually extended the cuts for two years in late December.)
Jonathan Miller, president and CEO of Miller Samuel and the compiler of the report,
said that buyers who feared Bush tax cuts would expire in 2010
moved early on their East End purchases, thereby inflating last quarter’s sales
numbers and depressing statistics for the first three months of this year.
The combination set the first-quarter report up for drastic declines. [more]

From the April issue: Last month, the U.S. Commerce Department announced that sales of new homes nationwide plunged to levels not seen since 1963. Meanwhile, political turmoil raged across the Middle East, and Japan lost thousands to a devastating earthquake and tsunami. By contrast, the big real estate news in Manhattan was a new record-high sale price at the Plaza. Late last month, the Post reported that Russian composer Igor Krutoy closed on a $48 million purchase of a 6,000-square-foot Plaza spread. But nonetheless, market reports that The Real Deal recently reviewed from the city’s major residential brokerages showed a relatively stable first quarter. [more]

From left: Elliman’s Dottie Herman, Corcoran’s Pamela Liebman, Halstead’s Diane Ramirez and Brown Harris Stevens’ Hall Wilkie

Tight credit, a harsh winter and a return to seasonality led to a relatively quiet first quarter in Manhattan, according to several residential sales market reports released today by some of New York City’s top firms. While reports from Prudential Douglas Elliman and the Corcoran Group show a rosier picture than those from sister companies Brown Harris Stevens and Halstead (which release the same data), experts across the board agreed that the market is stable.

The median home sales price dropped to $782,071 in the first quarter of the year, down 9.9 percent from the same time a year earlier and 7.4 percent from fourth-quarter 2010, according to the Elliman report. [more]

From the March issue: In real estate these days, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. As January’s snowdrifts finally melted, would-be buyers and renters flocked to open houses last month, tempted by low interest rates and visions of discounted dream homes. “Buyers are out in full force and bonus checks have hit the bank,” said Prudential Douglas Elliman’s John Gomes. But brokers complain that the sheer amount of market data available these days can hinder deals, especially in a still-uncertain economic environment. “Real estate buyers are savvier than I’ve experienced in the past,” said Stacey Chametznik, a senior vice president at City Connections Realty. [more]

54 Bond StreetFrom the February issue: “It’s like being in the desert,” luxury broker Donna Olshan recently said
of the inventory in the high-end Downtown Manhattan market.
“There’s nothing to buy,” reiterated agent Alison Rogers of DG Neary
Realty, when the fourth-quarter Manhattan market reports were released.

The very beginning of the New Year is always a cyclical low point
for residential inventory in New York, as sellers pull their listings
from the market in the hopes of re-launching their efforts with vigor in
time for the spring buying season.
But this year’s January inventory trough was actually 5.8 percent
above its year-ago level, according to the real-time listings tracker on
UrbanDigs.com. And at press time, inventory had already risen by 6.5
percent in the three weeks since then. [more]

From the January issue: The Manhattan real estate market has been full of contradictions over the past few years, but perhaps never more so than right now.
Last month, much like November, ushered in a number of very high-end deals, like the sale of Brooke Astor’s 778 Park Avenue duplex and the much-anticipated closing of William Zeckendorf’s penthouse at 15 Central Park West (which still hadn’t shown up in public records at press time).
“We’re being barnstormed right now,” said one high-end broker. “The last 10 days have been pretty wild.” [more]