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Read my latest Bloomberg View column Housing Market Blows Hot and Cold.

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

The northern third of the U.S. is locked in a straitjacket of snow, ice and bleak weather better suited to staying at home than going out and hunting for a new one. I can almost hear it now: Remember how awful last year’s polar vortex was for the fledgling housing-market recovery?…

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Tags: Seasonality, Seasonal Adjustment, average temperature

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This infographic was part of an epic must-read Andrew Rice piece for New York Magazine called: The Red Hot Rubble of East New York which explores the gentrification frontier where investors and New York City’s efforts to create affordable housing are running headlong into each other.

As much as 10% of the property sales are flips and prices are up 150% over the past 2 years.

Tags: New York Magazine, Affordability, Gentrification, East New York, Bushwhack, flip, speculation

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With the closing and recording of the record $100.47 million penthouse sale at One57, I thought it was time to dust-off the tall chart I created in 2012 when the prior record price of $88M at 15 Central Park West was set.

This week I ended up writing a piece about tall towers in my Bloomberg View column called Living the High Life, another one on Curbed NY for my Three Cents Worth called Proving New York’s Blockbuster $100M Sale Is An Outlier which provided some needed context for the new record sale in the following scattergraph. Note the $100.47M record sale in the upper right hand corner and then scroll down…a lot.

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Tags: One57, 432 Park Avenue, Tall Tower, 15 CPW, Nordstrom Tower

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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:

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

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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….

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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

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

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Read my latest Bloomberg View column Do First-Time Homebuyers Need Help?.

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

To bring more first-time buyers into the housing market, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac recently said they would offer certain mortgage programs that require down payments of as little as 3 percent, down from 5 percent. Because first-time buyers already make up a large share of the housing market, the wisdom of this policy change should be open to question…

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Tags: Fannie Mae, First-Time Buyers

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Read my latest Bloomberg View column Do Experts Value Your Home More Than You?. Please join the conversation over at Bloomberg View. Here’s an excerpt…

Homeowners are almost naturally inclined to have a higher opinion of their properties than anyone else, including potential buyers, lenders, brokers or appraisers. But that wasn’t always the case during the bubble years, and inflated real-estate appraisals contributed to the excesses.,,

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Tags: Appraisal Management Companies, AMC, Appraisal Pressure, Quicken

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Read my latest Bloomberg View column Real-Estate Appraisals Are Bubbly Again. Please join the conversation over at Bloomberg View. Here’s an excerpt…

A key goal of the financial reforms after the housing bust was to prevent banks and other interested parties from pressuring real-estate appraisers to inflate valuations…

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This particular column blew up the Bloomberg Terminals, becoming the number 1 most read real estate article and the 15th most read of all articles on Bloomberg Worldwide.

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Tags: Appraisal Pressure, lender bias, Number 1 on Bloomberg Terminals, Dodd-Frank Act

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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:

As 2014 winds down I thought I’d break down the year’s condo market by splitting up resales and new development closings using median sales price. Since early 2012, the new development and resale price trends have parted ways. That’s when the stalled shadow inventory that resulted from the Lehman collapse—a.ka. condos that weren’t formally offered yet and went unsold, because first batches of units didn’t sell in the midst of the financial downturn—was finally bought up or otherwise absorbed…

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My latest Three Cents Worth column on Curbed: Three Cents Worth: Why New Developments Are So Darn Pricey [Curbed]

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Tags: Three Cents Worth, Curbed NY, 3CW

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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:

This week I took a look at the volume of super high end sales that closed each quarter to show how out of whack current activity is when compared to longer term norms. From 2006 through 2013, the average was 21 apartments sales for $10M or higher per quarter. That’s seven per month or nearly two per week for eight years. That’s a lot of sales in this price segment…

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My latest Three Cents Worth column on Curbed: Three Cents Worth: Number of Manhattan Homes Selling for $10M+ Is Way Up [Curbed]

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Tags: Three Cents Worth, Curbed NY, 3CW

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Read my latest Bloomberg View column Housing’s Misleading Health Indicator. Please join the conversation over at Bloomberg View. Here’s an excerpt…

The National Association of Realtors will release its monthly U.S. existing home sales report tomorrow. Among other things, the report includes what’s known as the absorption rate, or how many months it would take to sell all inventory at the current sales pace. This report and the media coverage around it will inevitably provide the well-worn insight that when the rate is less than six months, housing is “healthy”…

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Tags: Absorption, healthy

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Read my latest Bloomberg View column Housing Bust Wasn’t About the House. Please join the conversation over at Bloomberg View. Here’s an excerpt…

Unless you live in a cave, you’re no doubt familiar with the outlines of the housing bust that marked the beginning of the financial crisis: Real-estate prices plunged, people lost their homes, banks went under and the economy tumbled into a recession. We are still grappling with the hangover…

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Tags: land, Wisconsin School of Business, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy

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