Matrix Blog

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, Metro-North, commuting

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

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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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Last week a newsletter from John Burns Consulting got big SEO points by exclaiming that Wall Street Has It Wrong: Luxury Home Sales Increasing. Normally his firm is a good source of housing research, but this time they missed the mark on New York City, even when using facts.

While facts are provided and luxury sales are rising in markets like DC, there is a lack of proper context and this is a challenge that national analysts face when looking at specific market subsets. In this analysis, the luxury market was arbitrarily defined as having a $600,000 threshold. In a number of high cost housing markets on the following chart, their luxury threshold is equivalent to the entry or middle market, which I agree, is booming.

I took a look at markets I report on: Kings County (Brooklyn) and Manhattan. Their respective median sales prices of $735,000 and $1,073,750 are higher than $600,000. The John Burns definition for luxury would include more than half of these respective housing markets.

Besides the random threshold selection, their reasons seem to be weak. This list of common perceptions that would explain our underestimate of the strength of the luxury sales market are provided by them. I provide a subsequent clarification for each.

1. New disclosure laws. Foreign-buyer activity has slowed in two high-profile markets, Manhattan and Miami, due to threat of enforcement of new disclosure laws that began in 2016.

The market in both of these markets actually slowed sharply well before the new disclosure laws were in place. And foreign buyer participation in NYC has long been over-hyped.

2. High-profile Florida second-home markets. High-priced homes have indeed slowed in two of the highest-profile second home markets in the country, Naples (Collier County) and Palm Beach. These are two of the six counties where sales have declined.

Again county-wide prices set way below the actual luxury market may be the problem. Within Palm Beach County, I cover Palm Beach and the luxury market starts just below $5 million. In arguably the most expensive city in this county, the median price for all property types is just below their $600,000 luxury threshold.

3. Fortune article on Greenwich, CT. The sales slowdown in high-profile Greenwich, CT, was featured in Fortune magazine. The article included some very misleading headlines about a national luxury slowdown that were supported only by the fact that prices have appreciated 5% at the high end compared to more appreciation at lower prices.

This is an odd interpretation of the Greenwich market. I track this market in my research, live near it and have relatives that live there. This Fortune article was not misleading. Prices have not appreciated 5% at the Greenwich high end and $600,000 might not even buy you a starter home there. In fact, their luxury market has still not recovered from housing bubble.

4. Increased $1 million new-home supply. New-home sales have slowed in a few new-home markets due to a surge in competitive supply. Coupling this surge in supply, builders have pushed prices too high in comparison to the resale competition due to rising costs.

Why is this perception wrong? Excess or rising luxury supply is apparent across the 28 markets I research.

5. Improving entry-level sales. Entry-level sales are also improving at a faster rate than higher-priced home sales. Indeed, the market for lower-priced homes is stronger, but that does not mean that luxury sales are struggling.

True, but I think the disconnect is just the opposite. The luxury market is soft so many market participants assume the entry level is soft as well and yet it is seeing heavy sales volume.

Since housing across the U.S. is softer at the top, Wall Street looks like they have been correct about luxury. Placing a uniform threshold across a slew of different U.S. housing markets doesn’t tell us anything. Stick to specifics since that’s where you provide solid research.

Tags: John Burns Real Estate Consulting, Luxury

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The New York Times created another super cool graphic in their new Calculator column, based on my idea. In the fall of 2015 I observed a massive surge of sales in Westchester County (north of NYC for those not familiar with our area). However median sales price was nearly flat during this period. This was phenomenon repeated in all of the counties that surround NYC – except for NJ since I don’t cover that market yet but anecdotally I believe the same phenomenon is occurring there. I believe this moment was the point where the affordability challenge became so severe that renters and move up buyers had to move out of the city.

Specifically, Brooklyn showed a surge in median sales price from 2009 with a modest growth in sales. Westchester reflected the opposite patterns of Brooklyn. Westchester county sales boomed over the same period while the growth in median sales price was much more tepid.

Below is the NYT graphic for the suburban sales boom article.

Tags: Calculator, NYT Real Estate, Michael Kolomatsky, monopoly

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Back in the mid 1990s after my wife and I moved to Fairfield County, Connecticut from Manhattan, I noticed the decline in housing prices further from the first express stop in Stamford, CT.

I worked on an updated version of the concept for this weekend’s New York Times Real Estate section: What’s Your Commute Time Worth? They did an amazing job on the graphic.

Tags: Michael Kolomatsky, Metro-North, commuting, Stamford, CT, Grand Central Station

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I’m liking the new goodies in the New York Times real estate section, especially this week, and not because the most recent market report on the Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens rental market for Douglas Elliman was featured.  No, really.

See for yourself.

Tags: NYT Real Estate, Michael Kolomatsky

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Had a nice chat with Scarlet Fu and Matt Miller on Bloomberg TV, to discuss our 3Q2016 report on the Manhattan residential sales market that I author for Douglas Elliman. We referred to Oshrat Carmiel’s Bloomberg News story on the Manhattan housing market that went viral on the Bloomberg Terminals as the number one read story world wide and the story chart made their “Chart of the Hour” on their home page.

Tags: Bloomberg TV, Scarlet Fu, Matt Miller, Douglas

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