Manhattan Real Estate In The Midst Of Its Longest Losing Streak In 30 Years

Manhattan real estate seems to be plummeting faster than contestants on a Japanese game show!

The Manhattan real estate market saw it’s worst quarter since the financial crisis. Total sales fell 3% in the first quarter according to the report by Douglas Elliman and Miller Samuel. It is the sixth straight quarter of declines. the last 18 months is the longest downturn in the three decades.

The drop stems from a number of issues. Manhattan faces an oversupply of high-end apartments and a lack of foreign buyers. Also, the new federal tax law has hit real estate in high-tax states.

A new “mansion tax” approved by New York state legislators over the weekend will also layer another tax on the sale of multimillion-dollar homes.

The pain is being felt at all levels of Manhattan real estate. The trouble in high-end real estate appears to be cascading down. The entry-level market in New York has started to suffer.

CEO Jonathan Miller of Miller Samuel told CNBC:

It’s like a layer cake. When you have softening at the top, it starts to melt into the next layer and the next layer after that because those buyers further down have to compete on price.

Prices in Manhattan continue to remain soft. The median sales price in Manhattan declined to just over $1 million. 

Sellers who still have unrealistic price expectations are the biggest barriers to sales, brokers say. That has led to more listings piling up and sitting on the market for longer periods. There is now a nine-month supply of homes on the market, with inventory up 9 percent. The glut in new development is even worse: The supply of newly built condos jumped 56 percent over last year, to a 19-month supply.