“We head into 2019, beaten, battered”: Manhattan just had its slowest year for condo, co-op sales in almost a decade

Sales were down by 12 percent compared to last year

56 Leonard Street (Credit: CityRealty)
56 Leonard Street (Credit: CityRealty)

Co-op and condo sales in Manhattan fell to their lowest level since 2009 this year.

Sales dropped 12 percent compared to 2017 and 22.5 percent compared to their peak in 2013, according to the Wall Street Journal. Inventory has been going up for several years and is likely to continue rising during the spring.

The sharpest falloff occurred in sales of new luxury condos, the Journal’s analysis showed. Median condo prices dropped by 6.5 percent, while median apartment prices dropped by 5.2 percent, and co-op prices rose by 2.5 percent. The median apartment price was $1.09 million.

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Factors impacting Manhattan’s slow sales market include lower demand from foreign buyers, rising interest rates, concern about federal tax changes making it more expensive to hold real estate and political uncertainty.

“It’s rough,” broker and urbandigs.com founder Noah Rosenblatt told the Journal. “We head into 2019, beaten, battered and now kicked by the recent stock market volatility.” [WSJ] – Eddie Small