Manhattan Residential Prices Up, Inventories Down, According to Brown Harris Stevens

The Manhattan for-sale apartment market is hotter than last year, mainly because multimillionaires are more active in the market than before.

By Dees Stribling, Contributing Editor

New York—The Manhattan for-sale apartment market is hotter than last year, mainly because multimillionaires are more active in the market than before. According to the recently released third quarter 2013 Brown Harris Stevens report on the Manhattan residential market, transactions over $10 million during the quarter were up 75 percent compared with the same quarter in 2012, driving the average apartment sales price up 8 percent to about $1.45 million.

The average price for a condo sold in the third quarter of 2013 was about $1.86 million, or 9 percent more than the same quarter last year. At about $1.17 million, the average price of cooperative apartments rose 11 percent year-over-year. The average price increased for all size categories of co-ops, with studio and three+ bedrooms experiencing the biggest increases.

On the other hand, the median price for Manhattan residential properties, which measures the middle of the market and is less affected by high-end sales, didn’t rise nearly as much year-over-year, though it too has been increasing. The median price rose 3 percent in 3Q13 from a year ago to $870,000, its highest level in more than four years, notes the report.

While inventory is still at relatively low levels, the number of 3Q13 closings was up 16 percent to 3,240, when compared to 2Q12. The West Side is experiencing the lowest levels of inventory in Manhattan, a circumstance that’s leading to significant increases in prices in that submarket across all sized apartments, Brown Harris Stevens posits.

Downtown experienced an increase in prices for all sizes of apartments as well, with studios and three+ bedrooms seeing the greatest increase over the third quarter of last year. The report also says that prices for new development apartments rose 9 percent compared with the third quarter of 2012, averaging $1,342 per square foot in 3Q13.