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Read my latest Bloomberg View column Real-Estate Agents Ride High Again.

It was disappointing to have so many Realtors go on the attack over this piece showing they missed the entire point – I was writing about the trend, not the dollars or the splits. Are commission incomes higher in say Manhattan than in rural Texas. Doh! The very idea that incomes are rising after years of low transaction volume plus the lack of resurgence in NAR membership since the financial crisis has made for a little less competition today. This seems like good news to me for the industry. But with the barrier to entry so low, the window will close sooner than later.

I even had a PR executive at NAR send me a critical email concerning my numerical calculations and results but made the mistake of exposing her significant lack of understanding about what data NAR actually publishes. To avoid embarrassing her I opted not to share the letter in this post.

Here’s an excerpt…

This is turning out to be a pretty nice time to be a residential real-estate agent. As the housing market recovers, average income has been rising faster than sales largely because there are fewer agents planting for-sale signs…

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Tags: real estate brokers, commissions, transaction cost, NAR, National Association of Realtors

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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:

Uptown may have the smallest studios, but which Manhattan neighborhood can claim the most micro units? To find out, I looked at where apartments measuring 300 square feet or less are located and determined what they have in common—besides being small. We’ve appraised many micro apartments over the years, so I was admittedly a little confused at how micro apartments were some sort of new concept…

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My latest Three Cents Worth column on Curbed: Three Cents Worth: Murray Hill Has the Most Micro Units in All of Manhattan [Curbed]

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Tags: Three Cents Worth, Curbed NY, Micro Week, micro apartment

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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:

Although I’m often a bit macro in this column, it’s Micro Week at Curbed. So I thought I would rank Manhattan neighborhoods by the average square footage of their studio apartments based on all the closed sales of 2014. The results are in: if you want a plethora of small apartments, look uptown. On both the East and West Sides above 96th Street, from Morningside Heights and the Upper East Side to Harlem and Inwood, the average studio clocks in at under 500 square feet. By contrast, downtown, in areas like Soho, Tribeca, Battery Park City, and the Financial District, studios are larger…

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My latest Three Cents Worth column on Curbed: Three Cents Worth: Which Manhattan Neighborhood Has The Smallest Studios? [Curbed]

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Tags: Three Cents Worth, Curbed NY, 3CW, Micro Week, micro apartment

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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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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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Comments Off on [Three Cents Worth #275 NY] Why New Developments Are So Darn Pricey

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

Comments Off on [Three Cents Worth #274 NY] Number of Manhattan Homes Selling for $10M+ Is Way Up

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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