Manhattan building sales soar, but far below peak: report

Investments sales in Manhattan for the first half of the year more than doubled in 2010
compared to the same period a year earlier, but still remained far
below the market’s peak in 2007, brokerage firm Massey Knakal Realty
Services reported this morning.

South of 96th Street on the East Side and south of 110th Street on the
West Side, 230 properties valued at $5.2 billion changed hands in the
first six months of the year, compared to 122 properties valued at $1.9
billion in the first half of 2009, the company said at a mid-year
market briefing at its Midtown office.

During the peak of the boom in the first half of 2007, the value of the properties sold was $30.8 billion, the firm reported.

Paul Massey, the firm’s CEO, said the city did not see the large number of distressed sales that had been expected.

“This is not, as I said before, the deluge of restructured properties that we are anticipating,” he said.

Property prices per square foot were mixed, Massey Knakal reported. The
average price per foot for the $2.7 billion in office properties that
sold in the first six months of the year fell to $488 per foot from
$565 per foot last year.

But the prices for development parcels remained stable as the number of sites sold rose sharply.

There were 19 development sites in Manhattan that sold this year, compared to five in the first half of 2009.

The average price per foot for those 19 sites was $418 million, or
about $326 per foot. For the five in 2009, the value was $114 million
or $322 per square foot, the firm reported.