Sunday driving: down memory lane for October 2008 predictions about New York real estate

not quite all of the usual suspects
Keeping up the lighter weekend fare, while staying away from the bread and butter of closed Manhattan loft sales for another post, I came across a piece from the New York Daily News with a fascinating title, given the publication date: Top property professionals assess New York’s real estate market, October 31, 2008. Those were the days, of course, when the overall Manhattan residential real estate sales market was newly into the nuclear winter that followed the Lehman bankruptcy filing on September 15 that year. Jason Sheftell spoke to a range of developers, lenders, construction people, and brokers to get paragraph length predictions from each, but somehow overlooked my personal go-to guy (The Miller).

Read the whole thing, unfortunately dragged out into 4 clicks on the inter-tubes. Sheftell’s real-tme overview:

You won’t see empty plots of land being scooped up and your neighborhood will be safe from overdevelopment for the time being. You will, however, continue to see a sharp decrease in apartment and home prices that should inspire home buying from people with strong credit or cash on hand.

Some of my favorite nuggets:

I would guess that it will take about two years for things to even out nationally and globally and fortunately the city is solid enough to ride out this situation. [from some ‘hair’ with ego]

Typically, in these times you see an increase in infrastructure developments – something that from a sustainability and economic engine standpoint, the entire region needs for future development. [a buldiner who failed to anticipate Mitch McConnell’s #1 priority]

The Wall Street crisis and major decrease in the bonus pool that has largely driven the market, combined with the weakening euro, will affect the residential sector so that we should see a steady decrease in prices over the next six to 12 months. [a lawyer]

our city is indeed the center of the world. While the world is facing tough economic challenges today, New York will recover better than before, especially if our mayor is reelected. [a politicking developer]

I believe these conditions will lead to a modest decline in the short term, with a recovery in the first half of 2010. [a deeloper with a crystal ball]

And my absolute favorite, in a cheap shot sort of way:

I’m still experiencing a fair amount of traffic and interest in my properties. … I don’t see a dramatic decrease in value coming. [if you guessed residential real estate agent, you win]

Predictions are hard. Second-guessing is fun. (Cheap, but fun.)

© Sandy Mattingly 2012