CityRealty Releases Manhattan Real Estate Numbers
Report details priciest properties along with where celebrities are doing deals.
By Dees Stribling, Contributing Editor
New York—During the four weeks leading up to June 1, the average price of a Manhattan apartment—condos and co-ops considered collectively—hit a record $1.9 million, according to a report released this week by CityRealty. That fact, the company asserts, made May 2015 the priciest month in Manhattan real estate history so far.
To put it another way: There were 876 Manhattan condo and co-op sales in May, totaling $1.7 billion. That means that if apartment sales for the month of May were a sovereign nation, it would have a higher GDP than nearly 20 real countries. The GDP of the Solomon Islands, for instance, was about that much in 2012, according to World Bank calculations—with such small countries as Dominica, Samoa,and Tonga having less.
Sales were spread around the borough fairly evenly: 35 percent of the sales were downtown, 24 percent were in Midtown, and 22 percent were on the Upper East Side. At the top of the sales-price heap was a 12th-floor unit in the Soho condo building called The New Museum Building. The 7,800-square-foot unit, which has five bedrooms and five bathrooms, fetched $34 million, or about $4,338 per square foot.
One unusual feature of the report is that it also notes some of the more expensive condos for sale in Manhattan. For instance, a five-bed, five bath unit at The Pierre, including 42 feet of Fifth Avenue frontage (14 rooms, unspecified square footage), is on the market for $70 million. Thriftier millionaires can pick up a three-bedroom, 2,420-square-foot unit at River Lofts for only $5.4 million.
CityRealty also reported some celebrity condo deals in May. Recording artist Roberta Flack has put her two-bedroom unit in the Dakota, which she has had for 40 years, on the market. Winston A. Marshall, banjoist for Mumford & Sons, bought a 2,000-square-foot, three-bedroom co-op at 237 Lafayette St. for $3.2 million.