fourth quarter Manhattan residential market reports hit / what's your favorite number?

that time of the year again
It would have been too much to expect that the number crunchers could have dug out soon enough to have delivered numbers to the press under embargo last Friday (aka, last year), so the flurry of news reports about the residential real estate market in Manhattan from the major firms hit the news papers today, not yesterday. They still caught me asleep at the switch, planning to post today about other things (that will have to wait).

So far I have only taken a quick look at the three brokerage firm reports and two major news articles about them. I will post again after I have chewed on the numbers (particularly, on the loft numbers), but my first blush reaction is that the reports are interesting for being uninteresting … that there is not a lot of movement in the overall Manhattan real estate market reflected in these reports. Also, that it remains a scandal that each firm reports as though it had its own reality, ignoring the ‘fact’ that other firms report different facts.

The main headlines hint that the Wall Street Journal and New York Times story focused on different comparisons. Did the Manhattan residential real estate market dip at the end of the year? See today’s Wall Street Journal, Manhattan Housing Prices Dip, by Josh Barbanel. Or would you have emphasized a different trend? (as the New York Times did today, in Manhattan Real Estate Market Continues Steady Growth, as Luxury Sales Perk Up, by Vivian Toy).

For another quick and dirty, Noah at Urban Digs explains how they both are ‘right’; that you can look at different periods for comparison and get different results (quarter over quarter, or year over year; dip or steady growth). In the inevitable word salad of articles that attempt to summarize reports that cannot easily be summarized (and can hardly be reconciled), Barbanel and Toy focused on different trends, and offered different quotes from the same small group of brokerage firm heads and number crunchers.

to the links!
You can find the three major firm reports here, and if the StreetEasy report is up yet on their website, I can’t find it:

• Miller Samuel 4Q10 report (pdf) (2,295 sales)
• Corcoran report (pdf) (approximately 2,900 sales)
• Halstead (pdf) (1,901 sales)

I get it that no one yet has access to the full records for deals closed by December 31, as it will take a few weeks (at least) for the deeds to be filed, and then available in city records. And I assume that each firm is proud of their proprietary methods, and is loath to ‘dumb them down’ by adopting someone else’s numbers, or a mealy-mouthed consensus report. Yet that range of reported sales in the same 90 day period is disturbing; a range that cannot help the credibility of the Real Estate Industrial Complex.

Really long-time Manhattan Loft Guy readers will recall that I rant about this a lot, epically way back in my April 14, 2008, Mothra v. Godzilla, or the epic battle over Manhattan sales volume reports, when there was some unusual public trash-talking between bean counters, one of whom claimed the other “missed” 600 sales in a quarter. In the privacy of their own closed systems (I hope), the trash might be on the other … errr … foot this time, as the firm with “missing” sales this quarter is different. Unless someone wants to explain exactly how he counts (and adjusts), I hope they keep the smack quiet this go-round.

enough trash, some treasure
I often (over?) praise The Miller’s ability to sift through the numbers for some useful context, offering prose that makes you think you know more for having read it than if you had juts looked at cold tables and numbers. But i thought this excerpt from Corcoran was pretty good at providing some context:

Versus a year ago, median price increased 3% while average price per square foot improved very slightly by 1%. Every bedroom category increased in median price compared to Fourth Quarter 2009. Compared to Third Quarter 2010, however, median price declined 5% while average price per square foot declined slightly by 1%. From a year ago the trend has been towards larger residences but from Third Quarter to Fourth Quarter demand was towards smaller apartments, which explains why overall pricing declined despite median price gains in most bedroom categories. Studios and one-bedroom residences were higher in median price while two-bedrooms decreased slightly. Three-plus bedrooms increased 4% in median price from last quarter.

Of course, the part of his report that The Miller excerpted on his blog today is also helpful:

There were 2,295 sales in the fourth quarter, 7.2% below 2,473 sales in the same period last year and 13.8% below the 2,661 sales of the prior quarter. However, the comparison to the same period last year is a comparison to a quarter that represented the largest fourth quarter market share of sales activity in more than 20 years. When comparing the 13.8% decline in sales from the third to fourth quarter, the change exceeded the 20-year 7.5% average decline. Fourth quarter listing inventory increased 5.6% to 7,232 from 6,851 in the prior year quarter—the same quarter that had the record surge in sales that worked off excess inventory during that period. The fourth quarter inventory total was 11% below 8,123 in the prior quarter. The decline was greater than the 3.4% average decline over the past decade, suggesting the new year will begin with a modest level of inventory entering into one of the seasonally highest sales periods of the year…

Look for more this week, as I chew on the numbers and the reports (and find StreetEasy’s!)…

© Sandy Mattingly 2011