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Manhattan Co-op Sales Fall During Federal Election Year

For the past decade, I’ve been observing a pullback in sales in the summer of an election year and then a release in sales after the election into the new year, no matter the party or the candidate. I was speaking about this to Sylvia Varnham O’Regan [1] at The Real Deal Magazine [2], and she asked me to prove it empirically.

So I did.

Her article: This is how presidential elections really affect home sales [3] lays it out for the Manhattan market.

My methodology:

The results compared federal election years to non-federal election years, finding that beginning in June of an election year, sales were progressively weaker than their non-election year counterpart. The most significant difference occurred in September during an election year with a 12.7% weaker sales market than a non-election year. Beginning in November during an election year, sales overpower their non-election year counterpart, with the release of pent-up demand occurring well into the following spring.

[4]