Do you remember Nouriel Roubini?
He is the famous pessimist-economist that correctly predicted the 2007-2009 crisis.
Well, he recently bought a $5.45 East Village condo. Who knew there even are apartments that pricey in that neighborhood?
Given he looks at the glass cup half empty, he must think the market is going up. Good to know!

One World Trade Center is halfway up. Mazel tov!

looking back at 2010
It’s not easy to interpret the 2010 residential sales market.
The beginning of ...

Here in the Big Apple, we continue to witness remarkable transactions lately.
At the beginning of November, a contract was signed for the sale of an apartment at 15 Central Park West, constructed in 2006 and considered, for its beauty, the Prima Donna of the real estate residential market. The price, $40 million, will mark, when it closes, a new record for price paid per square foot: more then $10,000.
Another recent record from the month of November involves the ...

The seasonal pattern of the residential sales real estate market is coming back. After the Lehman Brothers crash in September 2008, we witnessed the financial storm taking place in front of us that interrupted the seasonality trends typical of NYC real estate. Starting this year, however, we are back to a strong spring sales season, followed by a slower summer, a good autumn and an expected physiologically weaker Winter Holidays period.

The third quarter 2010 Prudential Douglass Elliman report says that ...

Transaction activity, after the summer slowdown of July and August, has resumed at a very decent pace.
If during the last two years potential buyers were just looking, they are now acting. Deals are actually going through especially because financing is once again available.
Sure, the process of getting a mortgage is not as simple as it was during the era (that looks like the Jurassic period nowadays) preceding Lehman Brothers’ crash, but it is becoming less challenging than it ...

Through data collected by the Department of State of New York, we learn that 6,800 jobs were created in the financial sector between February and May of this year.
As we know, this is the industry that drives New York City (and the rest of the economy I should say). The forecasts were bleaker than reality, the unemployment rate in the financial industry stopped rising and inverted its course before most analysts expected.

Mansion Tax
This infamous tax, equal to one ...

Families are among the most important engines that kept the market moving in the past quarters of slow paced real estate activity.
In fact, during the dark 2009, there were 1,200 sales of three and four bedrooms apartments in Manhattan, a purchase typical of families. Similar real estate product transactions were 670 in 2008 and 830 in 2007 (Miller Samuel data)! Isn’t this worth noting?
Now that prices are more affordable, many households have decided to move back to town ...