Click image to enlarge (credit: Streeteasy.com)Manhattan condominium sales prices in October decreased 0.1 percent from the previous month, and rose by the same amount on a year-over-year basis, according to the Streeteasy.com’s Manhattan condo market index released today.
Sales volume for condos decreased 7.9 percent compared to September and stood at exactly the same level as October 2010.

Streeteasy.com set the market index baseline of 1,000 on January 2000, and the index measures returns on Manhattan condos since that date. In October it stood at 1,891. It peaked in March 2008 at 2,164. – Adam Fusfeld [more]

Lenox Hill single-family mansions have become some of the city’s most in-demand properties, the Wall Street Journal reported, but they’re rare and often pricey.

The median asking price for a Lenox Hill home is $1.2 million, or $1,045 per square foot, according to data from Streeteasy.com, compared to $1,020 a square foot in the Carnegie Hill neighborhood and $999 a square foot on the Upper West Side. Closing prices for townhouses in Lenox Hill have ranged from $8 million to $48 million since 2008, data shows.

“It’s rare to find a house in Manhattan” that is the size of the single-family homes in Lenox Hill, said Susan Greenfield, senior vice president at Brown Harris Stevens. [more]

Gary Malin, president of
brokerage Citi Habitats

At least six new New York City rental websites have launched in the last 18 months, according to Crain’s, as the city’s booming rental market and low vacancy rates drive prospective renters to do what they can to avoid paying broker fees that range from one month’s rent to 15 percent of a year’s rent.

New rental sites include 18-month old UrbanEdgeNY.com, which provides no-fee apartment listings directly from landlords, and NakedApartments.com, where apartment hunters can search for free, but brokers and landlords must pay monthly subscription fees. The new start-ups face the challenge of standing out in a sector that now has around 30 sites, Crain’s noted, including industry fixtures like Streeteasy.com and Craigslist.com, the latter of which is increasingly deemed unreliable by consumers, according to Crain’s.

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From the November issue: That New York City draws property hunters from around the world is no surprise.

In fact, 15 percent of buyers in the city today are international, according to Elizabeth Stribling, president of Stribling & Associates.

But just how big a force are foreign nationals in the highest reaches of the residential market? To find out, The Real Deal combed through the priciest deals of this year so far, relying on data provided by listings aggregator StreetEasy, to find out which of the biggest transactions involved international buyers and sellers. Of the top 20 deals, six had one or more parties from outside the U.S., according to property records, press reports and interviews. [more]

From left: Rubicon Property CEO Jason Haber and a rendering of Extell’s One57A lack of new construction, an influx of international buyers and prices still far from peaks have fueled a shortage of high-end apartments in New York City, Bloomberg News reported.

There were 832 homes on the market asking at least $5 million in New York City in October, according to Streeteasy.com, down 9.5 percent from the same time two years ago. Simultaneously, sales of Manhattan luxury apartments increased 17 percent in the third quarter from the prior-year quarter, according to Miller Samuel. There were more sales of at least $20 million in the third quarter this year than during any time since the third quarter of 2008. [more]

Dottie Herman, president
of Prudential Douglas Elliman

Though pricing indicators were mixed, the volume of Manhattan residential sales increased in the third quarter of 2011, creating an overall picture of stability in Manhattan’s residential market, according to quarterly reports issued today by the city’s largest real estate brokerages.

The market’s bright spots included an uptick in sales at the most expensive end of the market — larger or relatively high-end properties (those at $5 million and above) — as well as an overall decrease in inventory, which buoyed prices, and an influx of foreign buyers investing in condominiums, experts said.

The median sales price hardly budged since last year, dropping a mere 0.3 percent to $911,333, an increase of 7.2 percent over the previous quarter, according to a report from Prudential Douglas Elliman. As The Real Deal reported in the October issue, the number of sales rose 16.7 percent year-over-year and 17.2 percent since last quarter, hitting 3,106, the report said. [more]

Residential sales and rental brokerage Core launched an online listing and client management platform in collaboration with listings website Streeteasy.com today, dubbed Core Control, the brokerage announced (see video above for commentary about Core Control from the two companies’ heads).

For an undisclosed monthly fee to Streeteasy.com, the system is available free and exclusively to Core’s agents and clients to help them more easily navigate citywide listings from all firms.

Core described the platform as a comprehensive database of citywide listings from all brokerages represented on Streeteasy.com, with a few additional features added on, including the ability for Core agents to add private and public notes to a listing, link press coverage to properties and view broker-only information on listings, such as commissions and listing expiration dates.  [more]

Clockwise from left: An aerial view of Four Freedoms Park, an interior view, a view from the East River and Kathy Sloane, senior vice president of Brown Harris Stevens

Top co-op expert Kathy Sloane, a senior vice president and managing director at Brown Harris Stevens, has high hopes for Roosevelt Island’s Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park. Sloane, who sits on the board of the group spearheading the $53.4 million project, claims it will increase property values for the cluster of buildings across the East River, including Trump World Tower and One Beekman Place. The 4.5-acre site, which juts into the water like a ship’s prow just north of United Nations Plaza, will incorporate a lawn and a granite “room” inscribed with the “four freedoms” Franklin D. Roosevelt advocated in his 1941 State of the Union speech: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear. The project is 36 years in the making, stalled by a lack of financing and the 1974 death of its designer, the noted American architect Louis I. Kahn, among other things. [more]

By Lauren Elkies and Amy Tennery

Linda Stein and images from inside her former apartment at 151 Central Park West

A home that once belonged to murdered broker-to-the-stars Linda Stein has seen an 11 percent price cut to $15.5 million, according to Streeteasy.com. Howard Margolis and Jeff Adler of Prudential Douglas Elliman, where Stein had worked, are marketing the unit, 8C, located at 151 Central Park West between 75th and 76th streets. They first listed the pad in October last year at $17.5 million. After their marriage in 1971, Stein and music producer Seymour moved into the Kenilworth, before selling it to the current owner in 1994. The building is known for its celebrity residents, including Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas. Despite Stein’s headline-grabbing death, Adler said he doubts her connection to the apartment will influence buyers. [more]

Home sales slowed in Manhattan during the fourth quarter of 2010, but aggregate prices increased as consumers bought larger homes, according to fourth-quarter market reports released by the city’s major brokerage firms today. The median price of homes sold in Manhattan in the last three months of 2010 increased between 3 and 11.2 percent from the fourth quarter of 2009, according to market reports from Prudential Douglas Elliman, the Corcoran Group, and sister companies Halstead Property and Brown Harris Stevens (which use the same data to produce their reports). [more]