The borough saw 3,837 closed sales in the third quarter, a dramatic 30 percent increase from 2,952 in the same period of last year, according to a market report released by Miller Samuel.
On the other end the average price of a Manhattan apartment in the third quarter was $1.43 million, a 0.7 percent decline from $1.44 million in the same quarter of last year, according to Miller Samuel’s report. The median price, meanwhile, dropped 2 percent year-over-year to $872,000, down from $890,000.
Jonathan Miller, who prepared the report, cited mortgage rates as the explanation for these seemingly incongruent trends.
Mortgage rates have been steadily rising since May, which Miller said has pushed previously undecided homebuyers off the fence as they rush to take advantage of low rates. Most of these buyers, for whom interest rates can make a big difference in the affordability of a new home, are at the low end of the market, he said. As a result, apartments that traded in the third quarter tended to be smaller than those that sold in the same period of last year — hence the drop in overall prices.