New York, NY – Study Finds Area Homes Lost $130B in Value – is now the time to buy?

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    New York, NY – Sky-high real estate statistics usually don’t faze us. A $10 million price tag on a SoHo loft doesn’t even raise eyebrows. A dilapidated brownstone in Harlem fetching millions doesn’t make us flinch.

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    But even normally unflappable New Yorkers may be shocked at the latest sky-high real estate number: $130 billion.

    Homeowners in the NY metro area lost $130,291,409,688 in home value in 2008. In the U.S. as a whole, home values dropped about $2 trillion, the study found.

    More than half of this $130-billion loss – about $75 billion – came in the fourth quarter, as the Wall Street crisis and other economic woes hit the real estate market – hard, the study found.

    “Over the last couple of years while much of the country had a debilitating downturn, New York was relatively immune,” said Spencer Rascoff, COO of Zillow.com. “But the party’s over for New York.”

    The data begs the question: Is now the time to buy?

    This is a tough question to answer, but several studies suggest that home prices have a good deal more to fall before they bottom out.

    Goldman Sachs recently issued a report predicting that New York City’s real estate prices may fall by as much as 44%, according to CNN. The Case-Shiller Home Price Index report predicted that prices would fall more than 20% in the next four years.

    It also depends on where you want to buy. Manhattan home prices actually showed an increase from the third to the fourth quarter, according to several of the city’s biggest real estate agencies. The median sale price of a Manhattan apartment rose 8% from a year ago, to $895,000, according to Halstead and Brown Harris Stevens, CNN reported. Prudential Douglas Elliman estimated the rise at 5.9% and Corcoran Group estimated it at 3%.

    However, there were signs that even Manhattan is feeling the burn. The number of closings for Manhattan homes dropped 34% from last quarter. This was the sharpest decline since 2005.

    “What we are seeing is a lack of confidence among buyers due to the state of the economy and so much of what is happening on Wall Street, the credit crunch and even the Madoff scandal,” said Sofia Kim.

    Some New York City neighborhoods are offering better deals than others. According to Streeteasy.com, here are some of the neighborhoods where you might be able to find better read estate deals:

    These neighborhoods saw the most price cuts from Q3 to Q4: Beekman (50.6% of listings cut prices), Manhattan Valley (45.7%), East Village (43.1%), Central Park South (41.9%), SoHo (41.7%).

    These neighborhoods saw the deepest price cuts from Q3 to Q4: Clinton (10.93% was the average discount), Tribeca (10.83%), Flatiron (10.35%), Central Harlem (8.58%), East Harlem (9.98%).

    But will these prices fall even more? Only time will tell for sure. One thing that does seem likely is that New York City home prices haven’t hit bottom yet.


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    9 Comments
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    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    15 years ago

    Could we get some statistics on prices in the heimisha brooklyn neighborhoods.

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    15 years ago

    I’m waiting for Bklyn prices to fall.

    NY Appraiser
    NY Appraiser
    15 years ago

    In borough Park prices haven’t dropped a cent, although there is a stock of condominiums that developers are stuck with, they aren’t moving anywhere, single and multi-family houses in the surrounding streets of borough Park are being bought up by the chinese at there full market value, I just hope with the chinese economy slumping day by day, and with import and export heavily down, we may see prices drop in the surrounding streets of BP, but we’ll have to sit and wait.

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    15 years ago

    heimishe yidden will keep prices high.

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    15 years ago

    Can’t we see something in wb

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    15 years ago

    No, now is not the time to buy. I suspect we have only seen the beginning of the drop – the bottom is falling out folks.

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    15 years ago

    Anyone who purchases a home for more than 485.000 in the heimishe areas are a fools. it’s the people like you that keep the prices high. let the phony real estate morons who were buying and flipping and let them lose their pants for creating this &^$*& to begin with.