For those of you that read my weekly Housing Notes, you’ll know I refer to 2014 as “Peak New Development” for the Manhattan housing market. “Peak Luxury” works as a label too.

Bloomberg news broke the story that a $50M+ condo purchased in 2014 just sold at a foreclosure auction for $36,000,0000. There were five bidders. It’s been the fourth resale since the market peaked and the sixth overall – so I created a graphic of all the resales to show how they fared before and after the 2014 “peak.”

The Bloomberg story (that I got to chime in on) lays out the details of the One57 auction sale: One57 Foreclosure Shatters Price Dreams at Billionaires’ Tower

The story reached #1 as the most read on the 350k± Bloomberg Terminals worldwide yesterday.

It is important to remember that there are still a fair amount of units remaining that are priced at 2014 levels. Extell, the developer, has their work cut out for them to compete with current market conditions.

While One57 is a symbolic poster child for the new dev phenomenon, it is not a proxy for the entire new development market. Some projects were priced more reasonably at the peak, hence they haven’t fallen as much. In addition, the quality and design of each project can vary greatly. One thing is clear – since the 2014 peak, investors don’t have the same potential for big and fast returns on flips – their initial strategy was to buy early and realize instant equity as the sponsor increased the offering prices. That scenario no longer applies. Since the market has more choices for buyers now than it did back during peak, One57 is no longer seen as a “new” building like it was back then.

CNBC picked up the story – My firm and I get a shoutout during the conversation on Sqawkbox which was pretty cool.

Luxury condo in One57 tower sold in New York City’s biggest ever foreclosure auction from CNBC.

And here’s the transcript on yesterday’s PBS Nightly Business Report show (owned by CNBC) with the shoutout that is making the rounds.

Tags: One57, Extell, Bloomberg News, Number 1 on Bloomberg Terminals

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I had a fun conversation on Bloomberg Television with Scarlet Fu, Joe Weisenthal and Julia Chatterley. We were discussing the results of our research behind the Elliman Report: Manhattan Sales 3Q17 that was just released. Here is the Bloomberg story on the report results.

Here’s a portion of the interview.

If you’d like to see the whole segment, my interview starts at the 48:40 mark although I really like the format and the hosts so you might want to watch the whole show.

Tags: Scarlet Fu, Joe Weisenthal, Julia Chatterley

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Douglas Elliman Real Estate just published their fall issue. I created the content for pages 208-209 and I think it looks pretty snazzy (and interesting).

Click on image below to expand.

EllimanMag

Tags: Elliman Magazine

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It’s hard to believe that it’s been 16 years already since 9/11. The name of the attack is now referenced as a noun and every year I think about the events of that day – getting emails from out of state friends and colleagues asking if I was ok, with one asking if I was still alive; Watching the second tower fall; walking to Fifth Avenue and then to Sixth Avenue to see the towers in flames; No cell service; losing all access to public transportation; literally walking northward out of Midtown with throngs of others; getting a lift from my friend’s mom to Westchester county, then borrowing the car to get home to my family in CT; Debriefing with my neighbors who were standing outside like everyone else trying to learn what happened; learning that a parent of my of my son’s classmates was in the tower; hearing stories from neighbors who were talking to someone on the phone in the towers when a plane hit and the line went dead.

It seemed that everything I knew was going away and never coming back. Yet NYC showed me it never quits and I’m proud to be part of it.

Here is my interview with Tom Keene on Bloomberg TV this morning on the resurgence of downtown over the past 16 years.

UPDATE Immediately following the television spot, I walked over to their radio studios and spoke with Tom again as well as David Gura. My interview with Tom Keene and David Gura on Bloomberg Surveillance Radio so click on the graphic below and go to the 10-minute spot:

Tags: Tom Keene, Bloomberg TV, Bloomberg Radio, 9/11, World Trade Center, anniversary, Taylor Riggs

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No one will argue that a $70 million penthouse can be special. But when a penthouse has many open houses and sits on the market for more than a year, it seems reasonable to wonder about pricing.

Samantha Sharf at Forbes presented a great video that juxtaposes the amenities of the apartment with my perspective on the state of the super luxury market and the next possible housing cycle in front of us. When they filmed this in Bryant Park, there were many people standing and watching off camera which was kinda fun despite my serious slouching.

[click on image for video]

Tags: Zeckendorf, Penthouse, Forbes, Samantha Sharf

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I’m looking forward to moderating a great REBNY panel for the Residential Brokerage Division Owners and Managers Breakfast on June 13th. Owners/Principals of Residential Brokerage Firms and Residential Managers can signup here.

Tags: REBNY, moderater

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Because I’m a little behind, the awesome infographic below by Michael Kolomatsky appeared in the New York Times real estate section a few weeks ago: How Much Is Your House Worth Per Minute?.

My original version covering Fairfield County was so popular they wanted me to do recurring versions. This one was much harder since there wasn’t an obvious “sweet spot” but the concept was the same. And best of all, it’s pretty darn cool.

Tags: Michael Kolomatsky, commuting, Metro-North

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Well here’s a first for me.

Our Manhattan parking stats were compared with the average value per acre of agricultural land in FarmLife magazine.

In 25 years, the cost of an acre of agriculture farmland rose 309% while a Manhattan parking space rose 855% over the same period. Cost? $7,700 per acre for California agricultural land versus $55.5 million per acre for a Manhattan parking spot.

Gotta love this comparison.

UPDATE A colleague pointed out that we don’t know how large the average farmland was or whether it had reasonable access to water and electricity. I pointed out that Manhattan parking spaces don’t have electric and water service and seem to be about 100 feet from the elevator. LOL.

Tags: land, Farm Life, acre

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Bloomberg maintains 6 quarterly charts on their terminals covering the Manhattan luxury sales and rental results we compile.  I periodically throw these charts on this Matrix Blog only because I find myself asking…how cool is that?

Manhattan Luxury Average Sales Price

Manhattan Luxury Average Sales Price Per Sq Ft

Manhattan Luxury Median Sales Price

Manhattan Luxury Average Rental Price

Manhattan Luxury Average Rental Price Per Sq Ft

Manhattan Luxury Median Rental Price

Tags: Bloomberg Terminals, Luxury Market Charts

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Speaking about the state of the real estate market tomorrow morning. Looking forward to it! The cool graphic below is enough of a reason to attend. 😉

The original invite graphic was also pretty cool.

Tags: DEDM, Douglas Elliman Development Marketing, Bruce Eichner, John Gomes, Fredrik Eklund, Madison Square Park Tower, Douglas Elliman

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Almost two years ago the real estate new development world was rocked by the New York Times epic page one story by Louise Story and Stephanie Saul about foreign investment in U.S. real estate. The vehicle for “Towers of Secrecy” purchases was the ubiquitous LLC shell corporation. While I’m no advocate of illegal activity for the sake of preserving the health of a real estate market, I was very skeptical and outspoken about the challenge of measuring the impact of this new rule. Especially since the new development market had already started to show signs of over supply by mid 2014 in both Manhattan above $3M and Miami above $1M. It also seemed to single out wealthy buyers who did not want to get a mortgage. How could the effectiveness of this six month rule be measured reliably enough to be extended or made permanent when the market was already falling?

Since these series of articles came out, I have learned a lot more about the scale of kleptocracy around the world and more appreciative of what the rule attempted to accomplish.

Fast forward to 2017 and the super lux (≥$5M) new development condo market cooled sharply. The rule has been extended but is now up for renewal in a month. It is not clear whether the new administration will renew it. Nicholas Nehamas of the Miami Herald penned are great recap of the rule status. To make it even better, he included a YouTube video of bulldozers playing chicken in the piece.

I have to say I admire the messaging that came out of Homeland Security to justify the rule’s impact. Whether or not the following is an exageration, the mere existance of the rule is probably an effective deterent.

“We don’t come across [money laundering in real estate] once every 10 or 12 cases,” said John Tobon, U.S. Homeland Security Investigations Deputy Special Agent in Charge for South Florida. “We come across real estate being purchased with illicit funds once every other case.”

Here are the areas current covered by the Treasury rule.

Using the parameters of the rule, the Miami Herald asked that I analyze sales in the five boroughs of NYC since enactment.  I stuck with condos and 1-3 families since co-ops tend not be a preferred property type of foreign buyers. I found that sales dropped 6% year over year for the aggregate of Manhattan sales over $3M and the outer borough sales of $1.5M. This included legacy contracts that closed during the rule enactment period but went to contract before it started. Those sales likely softened the actual decline in sales.

While it appears reasonable that the rule had some drag on demand, a possible repeal in February won’t likely have much of an impact on the oversupply that currently exists.

Tags: US Treasury, Miami Herald, Nicholas Nehamas, FinCEN, kleptocracy

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I love the way the NYT Real Estate section handled the data from our Elliman Report series to present the Manhattan resale market.

I added my chart on bidding wars below – falling as supply enters the market, causing resale prices to soften.

Tags: Manhattan, Elliman Report, NYT Real Estate, Michael Kolomatsky, resales

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