Upper Manhattan leads city in investment sales in first half of 2012

Investment sales in New York City are led by transactions above 96th Street in Manhattan and in Brooklyn, a recent report from brokerage Massey Knakal shows, according to Bloomberg News.

Sales in Upper Manhattan totaled $441 million in the first half of 2012, three times the amount for the same period last year, Bloomberg noted. Sales in Brooklyn totaled $1.3 billion, up 60 percent.

The boom in transaction volume is due in part to Area Property Partners, a Manhattan-based private equity firm, shedding properties it bought at the peak of the market, brokers told Bloomberg.

“Institutional investors who bought during the peak in 2006 and 2007 are now being forced to take their medicine,” he said. “We’re seeing a return of the local mom-and-pop investors who’d been on the sidelines now being able to scoop these property back up.”

Almost all of the 130 property sales in the five boroughs in the second quarter of 2012 were in Upper Manhattan, Bloomberg said.

“Northern Manhattan has been on fire,” said Paul Massey, CEO of Massey Knakal. [Bloomberg News] — Guelda Voien