Manhattan apartment sales highest since crash

Manhattan apartment sales have hit a new post-boom record in the third quarter.

Sales were up 9.3 percent from a year earlier, the highest since before the collapse of Lehman Brothers, driven by high Manhattan rents and low mortgage rates, the Wall Street Journal reported. “The market is phenomenal for sales, rents are ridiculous,” The Corcoran Group’s Laura Lawrence told the Journal.

Brokers say more and more buyers are competing for a dwindling number of listings; the market is strong all the way up to $4 million luxury apartments, though sales of apartments priced at $4 million or more are down 13 percent from the year before. That figure doesn’t include many of the pricy and well-publicized sales in new buildings like One57, where deals won’t close until next year.

According to the Journal’s analysis of public records, median prices climbed 2.1 percent from the second quarter and were up 2.7 percent from the third quarter a year ago. Average prices were down, which reflects improvements in sales in the lower end of the market. [WSJ] — Jane C. Timm