Softening Demand

“The trajectory right now is of a softening demand of $5 million-plus dollar apartments due to the lack of foreign buyers,” said Brian Meier, a broker at Douglas Elliman Real Estate. “If the global market doesn’t increase its demand on Manhattan residential real estate, we could see a sluggish super-luxury market going into the second and third quarter.”

The pace of sales growth for homes costing more than $2 million is already slowing in cities across the U.S. Transactions in the New York area rose 10 percent last year, compared with a 27 percent jump in 2013, according to CoreLogic DataQuick, a real estate information service. The Miami area’s gain slowed to to 19 percent from 39 percent.

In the Los Angeles area, the number of homes sold for more than $2 million climbed 15.5 percent last year to 3,927, compared with a 41 percent growth rate in 2013, CoreLogic DataQuick said.

Los Angeles

Across the U.S., the luxury-home market has been healthier than lower-end segments, where buyers of lesser means may struggle to get mortgages. That has enticed developers to build more high-priced residences.

On the Los Angeles Multiple Listing Service, there were 3,198 homes with asking prices greater than $2 million at the end of 2014, up 17 percent from a year earlier, according to Partners Trust, a Beverly Hills, California-based brokerage. The number of homes priced at more than $5 million, including new and existing properties, jumped 27 percent to 546.

“They’re shooting themselves in the foot,” said Roger Perry, a broker-associate with Rodeo Realty in Beverly Hills. “Everyone’s trying to get a piece of that luxury pie.”

South Florida

In Florida’s Miami-Dade County, which skews heavily toward Latin American buyers, almost 30,000 new condos are proposed, on the drawing board or under construction east of Interstate 95, according to CraneSpotters, a Miami-based consulting firm. There have been 71 new towers with 19,158 units proposed in greater downtown Miami since the latest boom began in 2011, compared with 84 properties with 22,200 condos built from 2003 to 2010.

“Foreign buyers are the purchasers who saved the South Florida condo market during last dramatic downturn,” said Peter Zalewski, principal of CraneSpotters. “Ironically, foreign buyers are going to be the ones to push condo prices back in a tailspin because of the drop in commodity prices and weakening foreign currencies.”

U.S. home purchases by international buyers surged 35 percent to $92 billion in the year through March, the most recent data available from the National Association of Realtors. About 23 percent of sales to foreign buyers were in Florida and 14 percent in California, the top two states.

“We may begin to see some dent in foreign purchases” as overseas economies slow, Lawrence Yun, the Realtors group’s chief economist, said in a phone interview. “The strength in the dollar makes it pricier to purchase in the U.S.”