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 ...

Students are heading this way again.
The past year we really missed a good influx of college grads looking for their first home in the Big Apple.
In the recent months we saw them coming back looking for the best deals within their price range.
As I mentioned in previous articles: rental buildings are scaling back on incentives for renters, and the market has definitely gotten stronger in the last two months.

On the residential sale side: prices have stabilized for ...

In the first quarter of 2010, Prudential Douglass Elliman reports 2384 transactions happened in Manhattan – a 99.5% increase in volume from the same 2009 period.
The median price for an apartment in the first 2010 quarter was $868,000. This figure is 11% lower compared to the same period last year and 7.2% higher than the last 2010 quarter.
The luxury market is giving positive signs with many high priced sales happened in the last few months.
Interesting ...

Consider this:  last month, a single family building on the Upper West Side was sold at a new record high for the area in its category – $20 million.
Sure, a lone transaction doesn’t mean much but given its peculiarity, it is nevertheless a symptom of the sophisticated buyer’s change in attitude towards the current market.

On the other hand: Potential sellers are starting to realize that the situation is not as dark as few years ago ...