REBNY: Home prices declined 23% in 1Q in NYC

Hey brother Jason,

Any stats on brooklyn?

Yep, click on the link

You can't look at average prices. You need medians. A couple of big sales skews the average.

Correct!

"A couple of big sales skews the average."

And a small sample size skews the median.

You need to look at them all at once, but most of all you need to look at the price history of the same unit over time.

> You can't look at average prices. You need medians. A couple of big sales skews the average.

Medians are down 22% per Miller Samuel.

What else you got?

Same unit or similar unit resales in same bldg. are the best measure, but all others help, especially if every one points in the same direction.

this is one reason why an illiquid asset should be worth significantly less than a liquid asset with a similar yield: much hard to value, much hard to sell.

All in all - the news is good. Prices are dropping fast

Jason10006, so interesting that you posted these figures. Compare those to the ones I received from the Douglas Ellimen's first quarter report. (See Real inventory and Absorbtion Rates thread) Aren't they part of REBNY? Sorry, but Ellimen's sugar coating of what is going on in the marketplace is distasteful.

Average sales price- $1,825,827
-Up 22.9% from 2008 4th quarter

Average price per square foot- $1,259
-Up 6.4% from 2008 4th quarter

Listing Inventory
-Up 15% from 2008 4th quarter

Average Days on Market
-170 days
-11 days longer than 2008 4th quarter

Listing Discount
-Up to 12.4% comparing 2008 4th quarter

I am no expert on these studies by any means, I am sure someone else can explain better why Pru differs not just from REBNY but from streeteasy, miller Samuel, case-shiller, and literally everyone else.

NYRENewbie and Jason10006 - Hey all - My firm Miller Samuel which is an appraisal firm, prepares the report for Pru (since 1994) - they don't have a separate report from the one we write - like every quarter, some metrics differ from the others - most of its due to timing since different firms have access to some closing data that is available before it is actually recorded - follow the trends. The aggregate numbers you posted include new development sales and most of the trends are similar to the other brokerage firms that released Q1 a week ago. You might want to look at how we parsed out re-sales from new dev as a separate line item so you can take a look at the market without closings (new dev) that went to contract 12-18 months ago. Also - just a head's up - Case Shiller does not include co-ops, condos and foreclosures (and new development) in NYC.

love to hear "the housing helix" (it's a free podcast, available on itunes and many people here might enjoy it)!

But CS DOES have a SEPERATE condo index on their site for NYC, SF, LA, and Boston (I think maybe Chicago too) and it tracks the main NYC fairly closely ie prices are down from the peak by a similar amount.

Admin - hey thanks. I post a new podcast every sunday night on itunes so it'll be available on monday morning. sort of a recap of the prior week along with my thoughts. Going to start to have guests in the near future once I get more comfortable with the medium. If there is something you want me to address, submit your comments/questions on the web site - http://www.housinghelix.com

Jason10006 Yes CS does have a separate condo index for NYC but that is not the report commonly referred to in the media - it also doesn't include co-ops which represent 75% of the Manhattan housing stock. Still, it's good to be aware of it and refer to it - it's important to understand what a report has and represents-there are a lot of 'em out there.

My point is that if you overlayed the NYC CS condo report and regular NYC report there would not be so great a difference in the lines, so its not like the CS index for NYC is utterly useless. But I am sure you ahve already done that on your website.

JM, great stuff. Have you seen the Streeteasy Q1 report - their numbers seems to differ from the brokerage reports by a fair amount. I know you're not intimately involved in that report, but any insight as to why?