A joint report by Brown Harris Stevens and Halstead Property showed that new-development sales accounted for 26 percent of all transactions in the quarter. Startup brokerage Compass reported price records for the Upper West Side, Downtown and in both the east and west sections of Midtown, as well as a Manhattan-wide high-water mark of $1.24 million.
Properties priced at more than $3 million accounted for 24 percent of all available listings in the quarter, Compass said. Homes priced higher than $10 million took longer to sell than a year earlier, suggesting the market has become “top-heavy,” according to the brokerage.
An analysis by StreetEasy last month showed resale prices for Manhattan’s most expensive homes have been declining since February as high-end inventory piles up. While StreetEasy’s price index doesn’t include new developments, the firm cited an 8.9 percent jump in the number of all types of homes for sale at the top fifth of the market. For the other four levels combined, listings declined more than 3 percent.
With all the new high-end development, luxury buyers now have more options so there’s “less urgency to buy this very minute,” said Liebman of Corcoran.
‘Being Selective’
“We’re seeing them taking their time and really being selective as to where they’re willing to put this enormous amount of money,” she said. “There’s a lot of competition and it will be harder to push prices this year than it has for the past several years.”
Buyers seeking previously owned apartments in the fourth quarter found a limited supply of choices, helping to push the resale median to $960,000, according to Miller Samuel and Douglas Elliman. While that’s up 8.1 percent from a year earlier, it still hasn’t topped the $975,000 record for resales, set in 2008.
On the Upper West Side, where the number of sales increased 31 percent from a year earlier, the median price of a previously owned condo jumped 24 percent to $1.63 million, according to Corcoran Group. Co-ops resold for a median of $852,000, or 4 percent more than a year ago.
Downtown, the area below 34th Street excluding the Financial District and Battery Park City, the resale median for condos climbed 12 percent to $2 million, Corcoran Group said. For co-op resales, the median was $810,000, up 8 percent.