Matrix Blog

It’s time to share my Three Cents Worth (3CW) on Curbed NY, at the intersection of neighborhood and real estate in the capital of the world…and I’m here to take measurements.

Check out my 3CW column on @CurbedNY:

It’s been a while since I dropped in on Curbed with a Three Cents Worth post but since I’m currently huddled next to an air conditioner, I really needed to take my mind off the heat and humidity. I thought I’d reach back into history and trend the year-over-year changes in the Manhattan sales and rental markets. I presented the median rental price and median sales prices by quarter back to 1991 measuring their year over year percent change. I’m surprised I haven’t done this before since there is so much discussion about the relationship between the two markets, and whether it’s better to rent or buy…

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My latest Three Cents Worth column: Three Cents Worth: Tracking 24 Years of Manhattan Sales and Rental Prices [Curbed]

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Tags: Three Cents Worth, Curbed NY, 3CW, median sales price, median rental price, housing bubble, year-over-year, dot-com

Comments Off on [Three Cents Worth #290 NY] Tracking 24 Years of Manhattan Sales and Rental Prices

It’s time to share my Three Cents Worth (3CW) on Curbed NY, at the intersection of neighborhood and real estate in the capital of the world…and I’m here to take measurements.

Check out my 3CW column on @CurbedNY:

This week I thought I’d dig out some of the residual stuff from last week’s rental report to explore the vacancy hyperbole. As far as I know, firms that present the vacancy rate (including mine) use a sampling of buildings from different neighborhoods/regions of Manhattan where building rental status is continually updated. The bottom line—and a reality check—is that the vacancy rate has always been low. It’s remained below 5 percent since at least World War II. (At least that’s what I’ve read; I only started writing for Curbed circa 2004.)…

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My latest Three Cents Worth column: Three Cents Worth: Proof: Summer Is the Hardest Time to Rent in New York City [Curbed]

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Tags: Three Cents Worth, Curbed NY, Seasonality, 3CW, average monthly rent

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It’s time to share my Three Cents Worth (3CW) on Curbed NY, at the intersection of neighborhood and real estate in the capital of the world…and I’m here to take measurements.

Check out my 3CW column on @CurbedNY:

Back in 2011, I embarked on a fun research project for Douglas Elliman’s 100th anniversary, in which I traced how sales prices and rents changed since the 1910s. I explain in detail how I did the research here, but I ended up with a very loose proxy to represent price per square foot for sales and average monthly rents during each decade…

Here are some other ways to view the 100 year trend based on feedback from readers.

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My latest Three Cents Worth column: Three Cents Worth: Tracking New York Rents and Asking Prices Over a Century [Curbed]

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Tags: Three Cents Worth, Curbed NY, Elliman Magazine, 3CW, inflation, average price per square foot, average monthly rent

Comments Off on [Three Cents Worth #287 NY] Tracking New York Rents and Asking Prices Over a Century

It’s time to share my Three Cents Worth (3CW) on Curbed NY, at the intersection of neighborhood and real estate in the capital of the world…and I’m here to take measurements.

Check out my 3CW column on @CurbedNY:

The Washington Post published an article last year titled “8 in 10 Manhattan home sales are all-cash,” a statement that was (and still is) hyperbole; the actual figure was 45 percent. The data is worth revisiting, though, and I thought it might be a good time to look at the makeup of Manhattan apartment purchases in regards to cash versus financing. Obviously, there has been some confusion in the past, so I thought it would be helpful to display a year’s worth of trend data…

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My latest Three Cents Worth column: Three Cents Worth: How Many NYC Apartments Are Bought With Cold Hard Cash? [Curbed]

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Tags: Three Cents Worth, Curbed NY, Cash, 3CW, Co-ops, Condos

Comments Off on [Three Cents Worth #286 NY] How Many NYC Apartments Are Bought With Cold Hard Cash?

It’s time to share my Three Cents Worth (3CW) on Curbed NY, at the intersection of neighborhood and real estate in the capital of the world…and I’m here to take measurements.

Check out my 3CW column on @CurbedNY:

Since both the sale and rental markets in New York City continue to plot a parallel course—and that’s upward—I thought I’d break down both markets by the number of bedrooms and see how they compare. Turns out the mismatch is quite pronounced at the extremes of each market…

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My latest Three Cents Worth column: Three Cents Worth: Renters Love Small Apartments; Buyers Are Relegated To Them [Curbed]

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Tags: Three Cents Worth, Curbed NY, 3CW

Comments Off on [Three Cents Worth #282 NY] Renters Love Small Apartments; Buyers Are Relegated To Them

It’s time to share my Three Cents Worth (3CW) on Curbed NY, at the intersection of neighborhood and real estate in the capital of the world…and I’m here to take measurements.

Check out my 3CW column on @CurbedNY:

After covering more serious topics as of late, this week I thought I’d lighten things up and look at New York city’s signed contracts by day of the week. I used the roughly 2,000 contract dates I had for the closed sales in Q1 of 2015, as used in the Elliman Report for that time period, and parsed out the market by day of the week. Strategically, there is probably nothing to be learned from this exercise, but hey, it’s an angle I’ve never examined before…

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My latest Three Cents Worth column on Curbed: Three Cents Worth: 6 Graphs That Prove New York Real Estate’s Love of Mondays [Curbed]

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Tags: Three Cents Worth, Curbed NY, Contracts, 3CW, Mondays

Comments Off on [Three Cents Worth #281 NY] 6 Graphs That Prove New York Real Estate’s Love of Mondays

It’s time to share my Three Cents Worth (3CW) on Curbed NY, at the intersection of neighborhood and real estate in the capital of the world…and I’m here to take measurements.

Check out my 3CW column on @CurbedNY:

A lot of time and energy has been spent writing about one of the biggest challenges to the New York City housing market in recent years: affordability. One of the primary observations of the purchase market has been the lower number of first time buyers, both locally and nationally. Tight credit, slow household formation, and a creaky economy have been a root cause of keeping their participation muted, but it’s also the disproportionately higher price growth over the long term for smaller apartments. Here’s my attempt to illustrate this trend, using data from the last 25 years…

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My latest Three Cents Worth column on Curbed: Three Cents Worth: Smaller Manhattan Apartments Keep Getting More Expensive [Curbed]

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Tags: Three Cents Worth, Curbed NY, Listing Inventory, entry-level, trade up

Comments Off on [Three Cents Worth #280 NY] Smaller Manhattan Apartments Keep Getting More Expensive

It’s time to share my Three Cents Worth (3CW) on Curbed NY, at the intersection of neighborhood and real estate in the capital of the world…and I’m here to take measurements.

Check out my 3CW column on @CurbedNY:

Now that I am fully recovered from Micro Week, I thought I would think a little bigger and present the Manhattan inventory picture by comparing new development and re-sales. I’ve charted it from the pre-Lehman high (PLH for those in the know) through the end of 2014 in two graphs. One shows the year-over-year change, and the other tracks inventory by units to help tell the whole story. Inventory was in a state of free fall for both types from 2009 through 2013, but in 2014 the picture clearly changed…

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My latest Three Cents Worth column on Curbed: Three Cents Worth: New York’s Building Boom Doesn’t Mean More Units For Sale [Curbed]

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Comments Off on [Three Cents Worth #279 NY] New York’s Building Boom Doesn’t Mean More Units For Sale

It’s time to share my Three Cents Worth (3CW) on Curbed NY, at the intersection of neighborhood and real estate in the capital of the world…and I’m here to take measurements.

Check out my 3CW column on @CurbedNY:

Uptown may have the smallest studios, but which Manhattan neighborhood can claim the most micro units? To find out, I looked at where apartments measuring 300 square feet or less are located and determined what they have in common—besides being small. We’ve appraised many micro apartments over the years, so I was admittedly a little confused at how micro apartments were some sort of new concept…

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My latest Three Cents Worth column on Curbed: Three Cents Worth: Murray Hill Has the Most Micro Units in All of Manhattan [Curbed]

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Tags: Three Cents Worth, Curbed NY, Micro Week, micro apartment

Comments Off on [Three Cents Worth #278 NY] Murray Hill Has the Most Micro Units in All of Manhattan

It’s time to share my Three Cents Worth (3CW) on Curbed NY, at the intersection of neighborhood and real estate in the capital of the world…and I’m here to take measurements.

Check out my 3CW column on @CurbedNY:

Although I’m often a bit macro in this column, it’s Micro Week at Curbed. So I thought I would rank Manhattan neighborhoods by the average square footage of their studio apartments based on all the closed sales of 2014. The results are in: if you want a plethora of small apartments, look uptown. On both the East and West Sides above 96th Street, from Morningside Heights and the Upper East Side to Harlem and Inwood, the average studio clocks in at under 500 square feet. By contrast, downtown, in areas like Soho, Tribeca, Battery Park City, and the Financial District, studios are larger…

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My latest Three Cents Worth column on Curbed: Three Cents Worth: Which Manhattan Neighborhood Has The Smallest Studios? [Curbed]

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Tags: Three Cents Worth, Curbed NY, 3CW, Micro Week, micro apartment

Comments Off on [Three Cents Worth #277 NY] Which Manhattan Neighborhood Has The Smallest Studios?

It’s time to share my Three Cents Worth (3CW) on Curbed NY, at the intersection of neighborhood and real estate in the capital of the world…and I’m here to take measurements.

Check out my 3CW column on @CurbedNY:

Finally, after nearly two years of referring to the $88 million sale at 15 Central Park West as the “highest Manhattan residential sale on record,” we get a change of scenery. A new record was set with the $100.47 million sale of the penthouse at One57 recorded late last week. Timing is everything, although, in this case timing really wasn’t. I believe this sale went to contract in 2012, which would be shortly after the $88 million sale went to contract in December 2011 and closed in early 2012. While these super luxury sales are more of a circus sideshow and have little, if anything, to do with the vast majority of the Manhattan housing market, I find them surreal to consider…

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My latest Three Cents Worth column on Curbed: Three Cents Worth: Proving New York’s Blockbuster $100M Sale Is An Outlier [Curbed]

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Tags: Curbed NY, Tall Tower, Breaking Excel

Comments Off on [Three Cents Worth #276 NY] Proving New York’s Blockbuster $100M Sale Is An Outlier

Read my latest Bloomberg View column Living the High Life.

Please join the conversation over at Bloomberg View. Here’s an excerpt…

Never have so many residential buildings had such lofty aspirations. Based on the number of stories in buildings worldwide that are more than 650 feet (200 meters) high, we’re in the midst of an edifice eruption. An even bigger surge is forecast for next year. The interest in what might be called pinnaclenomics has been driven by capital seeking higher returns in hard assets like luxury real estate in the world’s financial centers — especially in developing nations….

[read more]

Some other related content on the tall building phenomenon:

• My ‘Three Cents Worth Column’ on Curbed NY: Proving New York’s Blockbuster $100M Sale Is An Outlier
  
• Bloomberg News (Prashant Gopal, Oshrat Carmiel and John Gittelsohn) Manhattan Luxury Condos Sit on Market While Foreign Buyers Wait

My Bloomberg View Column Directory

My Bloomberg View RSS feed.

Tags: Curbed NY, edifice eruption, pinnaclenomics, Prashant Gopal, Oshrat Carmiel, John Gittelsohn

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