more actual data / November sales in Manhattan more or less steady

frustratingly vague, isn’t it?
Don’t blame me; blame Josh Barbanel of the NY Times, whose Big Deal column on Sunday was entitled Manhattan Market Remains Stable, and the quote above is nearly as much hard information as in his whole article.

As with his article about the state of the Manhattan market based on October sales (What Market Slump?), which I talked about on November 11 (some Oct market data shows stable Manhattan market) the source of his data is a mystery. And this month’s data is even more than last month’s, where he talked about median prices and inventory in addition to the number of transactions and price data.

But I have not seen elsewhere any November data reports, so beggars can’t be choosers here.

closed sales flat year-over-year
Barbanel compares the number of transactions in November 2007 to the number of transactions in November 2006 (which “just about matched” each other), but not to October 2007 sales, which would have been a useful trajectory indication. My guess is that November 2007 sales were considerably lower than October 2007 sales, but “considerably” is a word I cannot quantify at this point.

prices higher and flat
Barbanel did compare November 2007 closed prices to the prior year (“considerably higher”) and to the prior quarter (“roughly flat”), which really scrambles the comparisons, but did not get into the detail of his October sales analysis, which had both median and average sales price data. Oh well.

My take is that this indicates that sellers are holding firm (as firm as before, at least) and that (at least some) buyers are willing to meet sellers there. So the (fewer) deals that got done in November got done at similar levels to October.

slowing or seasonal?
Of course, each set of updated data focuses the question to what happens next? Especially in a jittery time (such as we seem to be in) every data point needs the not-yet-available next data point for critical context. (Even better, the next one after that, and the next, etc.; for the more context the better.) So it is impossible to say whether the incredible market momentum of January through October 2007 is taking a holiday breather in November or whether November is the first sign of a moderating market (at least as measured by the number of transactions between still willing buyers and still willing sellers).

Since I data the ‘liquidity crisis’ as a factor in the real estate market since mid-August, these November data set is the first good set of data in which that crisis has been felt. That is some indication of stability, imperfect as it is.

Hope this analysis (with all those darn parentheticals) makes sense….

© Sandy Mattingly 2007