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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 at The Real Deal Magazine, and she asked me to prove it empirically.

So I did.

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

My methodology:

• The data set was co-op based because they account for 74% of the apartment market and doesn’t have the wild fluctuation of contract versus closing date because of condo new development lags.
• We don’t have all the contract dates for co-ops, but for those we do, they have been remarkably consistent at around 90 days. That 90-day average was applied to all the closing dates to reverse-engineer contract dates.
• Contracts for even and odd years were compared: Even years represented federal election years, including midterms.

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.

Tags: Contracts, Co-ops, federal elections, midterms

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Source: Wikipedia.

Co-op Boards Cannot Prevent Sales They Think Are Low Without Damaging Shareholder Values

I have spoken with buyers, sellers or real estate agents that were told by co-op board members their sale may not be approved by the board because the resulting “price per share” of the sale (purchase price/apartment shares) is less than a prior similar sale in the building. Here are some thoughts about co-op boards who try to “protect” shareholder values by preventing transactions.

1. Co-op boards wield a lot of power over a sale within their building. In a research study I coauthored that was published by NYU Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy with Michael H. Schill and Ioan Voicu called The Condominium v. Cooperative Puzzle: An Empirical Analysis of Housing in New York City found that there was an inherent cost of a co-op board’s power over their shareholders, unlike the relationship between a condo association and their respective unit owners. It is important to note that market forces are far more powerful than a co-op boards intention to “protect” the market within their building. Much of this gateway mentality stems from the legacy of no public record for co-op sales prior to 2003 (made public record in 2006, but retroactive to 2003). When a co-op overextends it reach and stops a sale because the price is considered too low – often because it falls short of a recent similar apartment’s sales price – the co-op board is doing a disservice to their shareholders, despite best intentions. Why? The decline of a transaction where the listing was properly exposed to the market creates a public perception that the board is disconnected from the market. Brokers are less likely to bring buyers to listings within such a building in the future. Less market exposure for listings in the building means fewer potential buyers and ultimately a lower achievable sales price.

2. Housing markets do not always rise. This was made clear during the housing bubble and bust cycle a decade ago. The mindset of requiring a current sale to be higher than the last highest similar sale would prevent any sale from occurring when a market is flat or falling. This taints the building in the market and would make values fall much harder in a down cycle once the board capitulated. This would serve as a significant miscarriage of board power during such a cycle. I saw a lot of this circa 2009 after Lehman collapsed. A board would consistently nullify deals on a specific listing that was properly exposed to the market. By the time the third market vetted contract was signed at about the same price, the seller would give up and be possibly exposed to significant financial hardship. And since many co-ops are restrictive about a temporary rental scenario, the seller would be unable to rent the apartment after they moved out.

3. One of a few valuation remnants of the past includes a co-op board valuing a current contract sale on a price per share basis. This is a “shotgun” approach to determining a reasonable market value and is at best case, a broad brushstroke approach that is not suitable for an individual apartment valuation. Valuing by share allocation does not reflect the fair market value. When the sales price per share is consistent with a building average or trend, it is simply coincidence within a wide bandwidth of price probabilities. Such a price per share valuation philosophy would appear to violate the board’s fiduciary responsibility to protect its shareholders by penalizing them for a share allocation perhaps done decades or even a century ago. There is no science to the original allocation of co-op shares and the patterns are often fraught with inconsistencies. For example, the perception of value for a certain exposure in the building may be different today than it was in 1927. A buyer doesn’t look at a per share valuation in a building as market value for guidance – they never have. They look at competing properties in the market surrounding the property. Incidentally all of those co-ops with competing listings likely had different rationale for their respective allocations when they were built or converted.

4. Investor value can be mistaken for market value. In the case of the co-op board judging an adequate sales price based on the price per share within the building is known as investor value. It is the value to them, not the value to the market. This is why sellers can be so disconnected from the market when setting their asking price. A seller might think that a purple formica entertainment center in the living is worth another $50 thousand to a buyer when the buyer is thinking it is worth minus $2 thousand for the cost to remove it. Co-op boards are responsible to protect the interests of their shareholders but they can confuse that with market value.

A few definitions of Fair Market Value

IRS: “The fair market value is the price at which the property would change hands between a willing buyer and a willing seller, neither being under any compulsion to buy or to sell and both having reasonable knowledge of relevant facts.”

Investopedia: “Fair market value is the price that a given property or asset would fetch in the marketplace, subject to the following conditions:
1. Prospective buyers and sellers are reasonably knowledgeable about the asset; they are behaving in their own best interests and are free of undue pressure to trade.
2. A reasonable time period is given for the transaction to be completed.
Given these conditions, an asset’s fair market value should represent an accurate valuation or assessment of its worth.”

Merriam-Webster: “a price at which buyers and sellers with a reasonable knowledge of pertinent facts and not acting under any compulsion are willing to do business”

Tags: Co-ops, shares, allocation, The Dakota

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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:

The Washington Post published an article last year titled “8 in 10 Manhattan home sales are all-cash,” a statement that was (and still is) hyperbole; the actual figure was 45 percent. The data is worth revisiting, though, and I thought it might be a good time to look at the makeup of Manhattan apartment purchases in regards to cash versus financing. Obviously, there has been some confusion in the past, so I thought it would be helpful to display a year’s worth of trend data…

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My latest Three Cents Worth column: Three Cents Worth: How Many NYC Apartments Are Bought With Cold Hard Cash? [Curbed]

Three Cents Worth Archive Curbed NY

Three Cents Worth Archive Curbed DC

Three Cents Worth Archive Curbed Miami

Three Cents Worth Archive Curbed Hamptons

Three Cents Worth Archive Curbed LA

Three Cents Worth Archive Curbed Ski

Tags: Three Cents Worth, Curbed NY, Cash, 3CW, Co-ops, Condos

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A few months ago there was a record $70M sale of a penthouse co-op sale at 960 Fifth Avenue.  The purchaser paid $5M over list price.

While doing some research I ran across an article in the New York Times archive that described a record Manhattan sale of $450,000 in the same building in 1927.  The apartment was located on the 10th and most of the 11th floor in the same building (aka 3 East 77th Street).

Based on the unit description, I believe this to be Apartment 10/11B which last sold for $21,000,000 on July 24, 2013.   Using the BLS calculator for CPI, a $450,000 sales price in 1927 adjusted for inflation to 2014 dollars would be $6,164,043 or an increase of 1,270%.

However the apartment sold for $21,000,000. an increase of 4,567% or 3.6 times the rate of inflation.

Tags: Penthouse, Co-ops, Fifth Avenue, 960 Fifth Avenue, 3 East 77th Street, CPI, price appreciation, inflation

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Real estate reporter Katherine Clark at the New York Daily News got the scoop on the $70,000,000 penthouse sale at 960 Fifth Avenue, the highest price ever paid for a Manhattan co-op apartment. Curbed New York lays out all the (pretty?) pictures.

The previous record was held by David Geffen, who paid $54,000,000 in 2012 for the Penthouse at 785 Fifth Avenue. Although the Geffen penthouse was renovated, it was 12,000 square feet, more than twice as large as the 5,500 square feet within the penthouse at 960 Fifth Avenue – that just sold for a record price of $70M.

To further illustrate how much more expensive this new record price actually is, take a look at the two highest Manhattan co-op sales prices achieved, but on a price per square foot basis:

David Geffen paid $4,500 psf for the penthouse at 785 Fifth Avenue for the then record price of $54,000,000.

Nassef Sawiris paid $12,727 psf for the penthouse at 960 Fifth Avenue for the new record price of $70,000,000. On a sales price basis, the new record is 29.6% higher than the old record of 2 years ago.

On a price per square foot basis, the record sale was 182.8% above the previous record sale price set two years ago.

With all the attention focused on the newish or new development residential condo market, the all-time price per square foot apartment record was set 2 years ago, around the time of the Geffen purchase.  A Russian oligarch paid $88,000,000 for Sandy Weill’s penthouse condo that works out to $13,049 per square foot. That record breaking sale was largely viewed as a market outlier, that the buyer overpaid as part of a larger divorce strategy – since it was 31% higher than the previous record in the year prior within the same building.

Some other oddities about this new record co-op sale at 960 Fifth Avenue:

• The 960 Fifth Avenue co-op board is old world and I’ve heard it is fairly tough. As a general statement, it is not that common to see a foreign buyer at the high end of the market approved by a co-op board.
• The news coverage suggested the buyer was slow to pay his taxes and negotiated a reduced amount with the government. This would be a concern for most co-op boards in terms of collecting maintenance charges in arrears from a foreign national if they stopped paying.

Since these conditions would probably make any high end co-op board nervous, perhaps this is a sign that shareholders (board members are also shareholders) are concerned about damaging potential property values by limiting the universe of people that would be able to afford these types of prices in this new market condition.

Tags: Penthouse, Co-ops, Fifth Avenue, Egypt, Nassef Sawiris, 960 Fifth Avenue, 785 Fifth Avenue, David Geffen

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The concept of “setting a price floor” applies to gated communities, homeowner associations, planned unit developments – in fact any situation where a central governing body has direct influence over the sales price and/or buyer of your property. I believe the idea of “setting price floors” is surprisingly common in the outer boroughs of NYC, especially Queens.

Let me back up a second to provide context.

As the Manhattan market peaked in 2007/2008, we began to observe some co-op boards setting floors to prices in their buildings to “maintain value” for their shareholders. While a fiduciary responsibility, it is steeped in contradictions to free market principles. There was a great New York Times summary piece about this practice back in June 2007: “Should Co-op Boards Set ‘Floor Prices’?“

About 15 months after the NYT article was written Lehman Brothers had collapsed and AIG, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were all bailed out. Manhattan sales prices had fallen about 30% from 2008 to 2009. During this period I observed an increase in the practice of setting price floors. A hypothetical scenario (the type I often observed first hand) for – let’s call it – “Apartment XXX” and the timeline might go something like this:

• Sold in 8/2007 for $1,000,000
• Listed in 8/2008 for $1,100,000
• Zero activity until 1/2009, offered $700,000. Offer rejected by shareholder.
• Offer made by new buyer in 2/2009, offered $705,000. Offer rejected by shareholder.
• Offer made by new buyer in 3/2009, offered $700,000. Offer accepted by shareholder.
• Board turndown – “price too low.”
• Offer made by new buyer in 4/2009, offered $695,000. Offer rejected by shareholder.
• Offer made by new buyer in 5/2009, offered $710,000. Offer accepted by shareholder.
• Board turndown – “price too low.”
• Taken off market by shareholder.

A co-op board CAN’T dictate sales prices
It is clear from the steady stream of new offers in my hypothetical that the market had reset to a significantly lower level during the year. If that was the case (it was), then the board was actually doing a disservice to their shareholders by making their apartments essentially unsaleable. A buyer isn’t going to pay what the seller or the board wants the price to be. Econ 101. Housing market prices change over time, hopefully rising more than falling in the long run. The brokerage community also has a fiduciary responsibility to get the highest price for their seller under market conditions at that time. Although the board is trying to protect their shareholders (and themselves as shareholders), they have in effect, temporarily nullified the market in their building. The brokerage community is less likely to bring offers to sellers because they assume the board will reject the price even though the property had been properly exposed and vetted in the marketplace.

A co-op board CAN protect their shareholder against price outliers
One of the misnomers of the “setting a price floor” discussion is the fact that appraisal quality for lenders has been decimated since the financial crisis as banks now fully rely on appraisal management company ie “AMC” appraisers and most have no “local market knowledge.” An out of market appraiser will likely be more influenced by outliers than a local appraiser because the out of market appraiser is data starved and has no experience in the nuances of that market. It is clearly prudent for a board to be vigilant about outliers as reflected in the video. I’ve consulted on transactions for boards that don’t represent market value – ie the heir or executor lives on the other side of the country, doesn’t care about the market value and simply wants to dump the unit, make some money and move on. The out of market appraiser will probably use that sale as a “comp.”

“Protecting against outliers” is very different than “controlling prices” in a market.

In the outer boroughs especially in Queens, I believe the practice of setting a price floor has remained a widespread practice for years. Here’s a co-op attorney who is providing tips on how to “maintain values” on Habitat Magazine‘s web site. Concepts like setting up “sliding scales” to sell at 95% of the average of past sales may work in a stable market but worry me because the co-op won’t be able to respond to downturns and is in danger of choking off the market, potentially depressing prices even more.

This video also talks about apartments being different in condition and boards need to consider this because real estate appraisers don’t take into consideration whether or not an apartment was renovated.

No! This is absolutely an incorrect or the appraiser is not being asked to provide an opinion of market value – appraisers are supposed to take condition into consideration if they are being requested to provide an opinion of market value.

As I mentioned earlier, with the proliferation of AMCs, appraisers working for retail banks are generally being paid 50% of the market rate and can’t or won’t confirm condition of their comps. Higher up banking executives don’t yet equate appraisal fees with appraisal quality.

“Maintaining Value” in a co-op (or multi-unit housing entity with a governing body) Here are a few (non-legal) valuation thoughts on “maintaining” values in a co-op. I’ve personally always taken this to mean that the corporation is run efficiently for the benefit of the shareholders and when that happens, property values are “maintained” relative to the market. I also believe their values will ebb and flow with the world that surrounds the building – ie supply, demand, credit, interest rates, economy, employment, etc. These are outside factors tend to be things that the board has no control over. If the board takes actions to control “market forces” they can potentially damage shareholder value and they are potentially not fulfilling their fiduciary responsibilities.

Tags: Co-ops, Condos, local market knowledge

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Over my career, I have observed a higher frequency of combination apartments (ie co-ops or condos) when inventory is tight.  A combination apartment is simply the connecting of 2 or more adjacent apartments (to either side, above or below).  It may be easier and/or less expensive to buy the apartment next door to create a larger space (even if you have to overpay for it) than to brave the tough market searching for a larger place to live.

A few years ago I started to track this during the preparation of the Elliman Report: Manhattan Sales. I looked at the actual apartment numbers and counted those that suggested they were combined. I am clearly omitting apartment nomenclature that is not so clear ie 7AB is renamed 7A, so my results are conservative.  The above chart reflects the recent trend of more combinations being sold but doesn’t necessarily equate to more being created, so new combinations would only be considered a subset of this data.

I’ve dubbed the phenomenon “1 + 1 = 2.5” because there is a premium for larger contiguous space.

I’ve always thought of co-op or condo buildings that allow combinations (nearly all do) as providing a potential way for shareholders to realize value upside, thereby enhancing the price structure of a building ie higher values rub off on other apartments in the same building.

Some top line ideas about combinations

• No shares are lost and in fact, many combinations result in the acquisition of dormant common hallway space providing additional revenue in perpetuity to the corporation and a cash infusion from the purchase price.
  
• Larger units sell for more on a ppsf basis (ie my formula above) potentially influencing higher values for other units.
  
• Fewer apartments in the mix is a non-issue (ie risk) in a building this size, unlike, say a 4 unit brownstone.
  
• I’ve always thought it wise to keep the stock certificates separate to give the buyers and co-op more flexibility, but I see this done both ways (and admittedly don’t understand any legal nuances on this point.)
  

Some other more granular thoughts

Some layouts don’t work
– Not all combo layouts make sense or provide value upside. – Layouts tend to work better in pre-war and new developments than in post-wars. – 1980s condos often have the least combinable layouts – i.e., a side-by-side 1-bedroom. – Over the last decade, developers have kept this in mind during construction to give them more flexibility during the sales process.

Higher value per square foot
– Creating larger apartments creates value upside to existing space ie “1+1=2.5”
– Sometimes large combos can be oversized for the building and there is no ppsf premium for the larger space.
– When an owner of a large unit buys the adjacent unit, the mere fact that the same unit owner owns both usually results in a ppsf premium before renovations are made to connect.
– The upside in value for a smaller apartment, means that a buyer can overpay for the unit as an individual sale but the addition of the smaller unit to the large unit adds value to both units on a ppsf.
– The highest value is realized when the buyer can’t tell the layout was comprised of two different units.  Simply creating a door between two apartments would realize the least upside.

That second kitchen
– The biggest “tell” on a combo is the existence of a second kitchen.
– They are often converted to a laundry room or bathroom, taking advantage of the utility connections.
– Buildings might object to the removal of the second kitchen because it may impact the building Certificate of Occupancy – I defer to lawyers on this point.

What do lenders think?
– Some banks are scared of combinations and others are not.
– In my experience banks require financing on the whole apartment – if they have a loan using the collateral of one of the apartments, they will require that it be replaced with a new mortgage to cover both apartments.
– Banks often get confused on the value of a combo asking the appraiser to provide a value for each of the separate apartments before they are combined. The problem with that position is that the combination is usually worth more as one apartment (even before considering improvements) – in other words, the sum of the parts is less than the whole and the bank will incorrectly assume the collateral is inadequate.

Maintenance fees
– Many agents tell me it is assumed that maintenance charges are skewed higher for combos. I can’t prove this, all other things being equal.  When it occurs, it’s probably for reasons other than simply combining the units.
– A combo in a small building, ie a 4-unit brownstone co-op, raises the risk to the remaining shareholders if the combo shareholder stops paying their maintenance charges. Risk exposure to a mid to large-sized building should be nominal.

Common Area
– Quite often hallways are purchased and incorporated into a combo layout for a better result.
– The co-op wins by getting a cash infusion for the purchase and income in perpetuity for the additional share allocation from the common area purchase.

Tags: combination, combos, combined, 1+1=2.5, Co-ops, Condos

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