Condo sales sag as more units flood the market

Contracts for new Manhattan apartments priced at $10M and up fell 18% in first half of the year

From left: One57, 220 Central Park South And 520 Park Avenue
From left: One57, 220 Central Park South And 520 Park Avenue

In another sign of trouble at the top of New York City’s housing market, the abundance of new ultra-luxury condominiums for sale is sapping the urgency out of the hunt for a high-end home, real estate professionals say.

At Extell Development’s One57, just two units went into contract through the first half of the year, Bloomberg News reported. That follows a three-month period at the end of last year when no condos sold, according to the news site.

The slowdown seems to be spreading. In the first six months of 2014, Manhattan saw an 18 percent decline in contracts for apartments priced at or above $10 million compared with the year-ago period, according to data from Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group cited by Bloomberg. Availability surged 74 percent to 129 units.

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From the third quarter of this year through the end of 2016, 13,000 additional apartments in new developments will hit the market, according to Corcoran Sunshine. Those include units at Zeckendorf Development’s 520 Park Avenue and Vornado Realty Trust’s 220 Central Park South.

Jeff Dvorett, vice president of development at Extell, told Bloomberg that it is natural for a development with as many as 70 percent of units sold to then see a slowdown along the final stretch of contract signings. [Bloomberg News]Tom DiChristopher