Oh yeah! That index is stuffed with contingent sales and a lot of them will fall through when the contingent home doesn't sell. Soft landing my foot.
--JoAnne Phillips
Here’s more “good” news on the housing front from Today’s New York Daily News:
Manhattan Apt. Price Hits Record
The cost of owning a small piece of the Big Apple hit a new record - $1.386 million.
That was the average sale price of a Manhattan apartment in April through June - up 6.6% from the first quarter, according to a study by appraisal firm Miller Samuel.
But don't confuse high prices with a hot market. Sales are slowing down."We have a contradiction - rising prices yet waning demand," said Miller Samuel CEO Jonathan Miller, author of the Prudential Douglas Elliman Manhattan Market Overview.
Elliman CEO Dottie Herman said there's a message in the numbers."What you see is the end of the boom - and the beginning of a balanced market," she explained. "It's neither a buyer's market, nor a seller's market."
Actually, the “contradiction” is exactly what Conquer the Crash said would happen – not at the beginning of a “balanced market,” but the beginning of a historic plunge in real estate prices. The January issue of The Elliott Wave Financial Forecast (see Additional References comment below) explained the meaning of the record price/rising supply phenomenon when it hit other markets late last year. Now that it’s reached New York City, it is only a matter of time before sellers start to see the writing on the wall and start to drop prices in a desperate bid to get out from under the weight of crushing mortgage debts. The real contradiction in the current housing market environment is that while so many are willing to admit that the real estate bubble is over, virtually no one will say that a corresponding bust is likely. “Real estate experts said yesterday that while demand for apartments in New York City is slowing and the supply of new apartments continues to grow, strong economic conditions will forestall a potential glut,” reports the New York Sun. "It is the transition from a housing boom to a period of modest to flat growth," says an appraiser. No one expects anything like the experience of early 1990s when housing fell modestly and only in certain geographic areas. The true potential for decline is buried deep in another Bloomberg story about the surge in Manhattan “for sale” signs. It says Manhattan condos with four or more bedrooms fell 54% from May 2005. 54%? The front edge of the “cave in” suggests that this is nothing like the unfolding debacle will be nothing like the real estate retrenchment of the early 1990s. It will be far worse.
For more Sociotimes real estate insights see the entries of February 27 and February 8. |
