Manhattan resi listings continue nosedive: report

The first full week of New York’s stay-home policy saw a massive drop in new residential listings in Manhattan.

An analysis by data firm UrbanDigs compared new listings, contract signings and withdrawals of homes from the market in the fourth week of March in Manhattan to the same period in 2019. The results show steep declines in residences going into contract and listing inventory, while the pace of de-listings rose.

The report found only 63 new listings last week, an 85 percent decline from the 411 in the year-earlier period. Just 67 contracts — down from 208 a year ago — were signed for deals in the borough, and only two were pricey enough to make the weekly Olshan Report, which tracks Manhattan home sales of $4 million or more.

Sellers also retreated, with 168 taking down their property listings last week, two-thirds more than the 111 removed in the same week last year. Still, that was an improvement over the nearly 450 properties delisted last week.

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The report’s author, UrbanDigs founder and CEO Noah Rosenblatt, attributed the delistings slowdown to consumer-facing listing portals suspending the days on market calculation that show how long a seller has been trying to unload a property.

He said he expects few transactions as the pandemic continues and, based on anecdotal reports, that the discrepancy between buyers’ “opportunistic” offers and sellers’ asking prices to widen.

Rosenblatt also pointed out that if low levels of new inventory persist, it could have a lasting impact on the market.

“We average over 1,900 new listings coming to the market a month in March and April (based on data from the last three years), and we expect numbers to come in significantly lower,” he wrote in a statement. As a result, he said that buyers “should expect fewer options” to be available on listing portals.

Though some brokers and developers believe that millions of American staying at home may lead to increased web traffic on listings, a study of listing portal traffic by Mike DelPrete, a real estate technology strategist, found that traffic had dropped up to 40 percent globally.

Even before sweeping orders were introduced to combat the spread of the coronavirus in New York, appraiser Jonathan Miller reported a slowdown in listing inventory of condos and co-ops, which he attributed to the pandemic.

Write to Erin Hudson at ekh@therealdeal.com