2001 Prices - BW

Suburban San Francisco is not comparable to Manhattan in any way. Land there is infinite. There is only a shortage of land within the city limits.

There is a huge amount of developable land in Manhattan as well - just doesn't happen to be in the prime neighborhoods.

"Suburban San Francisco is not comparable to Manhattan in any way. Land there is infinite. There is only a shortage of land within the city limits."

This is simply not true, especially with respect to Silly Valley and Marin.

Yeah, the areas that are state parks (20k acres in San mateo county ALONE) and otherwise off-limits plus a gigantic bay in the middle (which is bigger than all five boroughs of NYC combined) show that alpine is an utter ignoramus. There is in fact a finite amount of land in the counties ACTUALLY NAMED in teh BW article, if you bothered to read it. it mentions five - SF, SM, Marin, Alemeda and Contra Costa. Only the last two still have a significant amount of developable area - but environmentalists make it near impossible.

I've been to Marin. It is quite rural with lots of land. Plus there is talk of tearing down the San Quentin prison and re-devleoping it.

And in Manhattan, there is actually a TON of availbale land. You have the west side rail yards and lots of outdoor parking lots that can be re-developed.

Here's a photo of Marin. Do you see a shortage of empty land?

http://www.plan4preschool.org/documents/marin-county-civic-center.png

Here is another one:

http://www.mattfoxartist.com/misc/images/MarinCountyHayfield.jpg

If you type Marin County into Google images, almost all of the results show, large open tracts of land.

You are retarded. There is plenty of empty land in Marin County BUT THE LAND YOU SHOW CAN'T BE BUILT ON, EVER, you dummy. That is the point. The bay area is full of state and county parks and wildlife refuges. The hills in the background in those pictures are PERMANENTLY off limits, as are the 20,000 acres from teh Southern border of SF down to Woodside where Crystal Lake is. In SF itself, you GG park which is the size of Cnetral park AND the Pressidio, which are bigger, PLUS another few thousand acres of park land....in an area the size of Manhattan. SF proper is like Manhattan if you had three more central parks. Southern Marin County is like if Brooklyn had 200 more Prospect Parks. You frickin dummy.

Jason, you are the iDiota. There's plenty of wide open land between prime 15 CPW and prime Fifth Ave. I saws it on the Googles maps.

Jason I think you're right on the merits...so why resort to the name calling. Do you think it strengthens your case?

no need to be a dick Jason.

Alpine we are down 25-30% in six months...Are you really ready to claim that half off, taking us to 2001 levels, is not likely? Come on.

Alpine - how much has your house lost in the last 9 months?

name calling aside, i don't see how the following math brings prices back to 2001 unless prices were flat from 2001-2006...

"...have dropped back to 2001 levels. The number crunchers at Integrated Asset Services released data today showing U.S. house prices have now fallen 14.4% on a year-over-year basis and 17.9 % since the height of the real estate bubble in 2006." [Hot Property]"

Whatever says the Headlines, i'm not impressed by the price drop in Manhattan & Brooklyn. There still is a long way to go ...

Alpine, you are soooooooooooo RIGHT! There's no place left to build in Manhattan -- I mean, when was the last time someone built anything on 86th and Lexington?

and there are NO unnecessary commercial spaces left in Chelsea, Koreatown, Soho, etc. and there are NO corners filled with tenements that will most likely exit the RS program over time (a number of which are already empty or nearly so). and there are NO outdoor parking lots left to cause concern to the morons who bought apartments with lot line windows. and there are NO commercial and hotel buildings that will not be able to make it over the next couple of years that will need to be adapted to best possible use.

but best of all, there is NO excessive inventory now or coming on line the next 2-3 years. i say BUY, NOW, before these shortages present themselves for what they really are!!!

Manhattan has large landfills and could add more. Even Centre Street north of Chambers Street was once a lake. Buildings are also built over the water, on piers, in NJ.

I've been looking from Soho to Upper East and West Side for about 10 months and have seen around 100 apts. I can tell you that every apt that I've looked at is still on the market. My price range is $2-3M. The typical reduction over the past year is abot 15% and still nothing is selling. I think that at -35 to 40% from early 2008 levels some stuff will move but there are very few buyers. Sellers are trying to hold and many will sit rather than reduce to -40% but at this point they most likely will chase the market down.

ieb, that's why I don't understand sellers logic - its exactly the mentality people rationalize with the stock market. I'm down 20% and should sell but maybe it will go back up. Then a few weeks go by, the stock is down another 10% and buyers lament sets in. Same story here. But sellers are in denial now, brokers cannot get them to budge off of the 2007 price so their offices are like walking in to see the Maytag repairman. And did you read about banks ratcheting up foreclosure notices again. When does it all end?

ieb, not a single apt? I can show you at any price range apts that went into contract.

"There is only a shortage of land within the city limits."

It's limited in Tokyo, too, where property still costs 50% less than it did in nominal terms 20 years ago.

uppereast - Not saying that no apts in NYC have sold. What I'm saying is that no apts that I've looked at have sold.

rmrmets - I'm in sales and still don't get the mind set. I was talking to a seller that's a currency trader at Citi and he refuses to sell at or below what he paid in 2004. This person has to trade down for obvious reasons and will make up some of the difference on the buy side, you can imagine that he'll drive for a hard price. The notion that every transaction will result in a profit is deeply flawed.

I copied this the other day and lost the source...

"Housing Slump Begins to Hit Manhattan
Published 04/13/2009 - 6:34 a.m. EST
If I could short one thing, New York City real estate would probably be a great one - it has mostly held up 'til now. I believe that changes and they join the crowd over the next 24 months.

NYC will be an especially special sort of bust due to the fact that prices were subsidized by all the free money handed out by the credit boom. (and yes of course 4.7% or lower mortgages, taxpayer subsidizations to to the tune of 2% mortgages or 40 yr mortgages under the Obama plan, and all the other nice things FHA, Fannie, and Freddie are cooking up will offset this to some degree - if you steal enough money from future generations you can do some "good" today)

The first signs, via New York Times

While sales have picked up a bit in some suffering housing markets in the West, creating a glimmer of hope that home prices nationwide may be approaching a bottom, the Manhattan real estate market has just begun a steep slide. It parallels the decline in New York’s financial services industry, and housing analysts say it may continue long after other markets heal.

Apartment prices have once more become the talk of the town in Manhattan, but this time the talk is of uncertainty and falling numbers. While brokers say they are seeing more activity lately, especially from first-time buyers taking advantage of lower interest rates, housing analysts are predicting a prolonged slump in prices and sales that could last as long as four or five years.

In this year’s first quarter, sales of co-ops and condominiums in Manhattan plunged nearly 60 percent from the first quarter of 2008. Average co-op prices fell as much as 24 percent in the same period, according to various market reports released last week.

Condo prices have held up so far, but only because buyers who went into contract long before the downturn were closing on newly completed condominium buildings. But now few new contracts are being signed on unfinished condominiums, and some buyers have been renegotiating contracts or are trying to back out of them. Co-ops and condos make up 98 percent of the residential properties for sale in Manhattan.

The stress is most severe at the high end of the market. There are 350 apartments and town houses for sale in Manhattan with asking prices of more than $10 million, and inventory has been growing. It would take about six years at the current sales rate to absorb all those listings.

Manhattan was spared some of the housing problems the rest of the country faced during this downturn.
The mortgage foreclosure rate in Manhattan remains low even today. While thousands of condos were built here, most were bought by homeowners, not speculators, as was common in Miami and other oversaturated markets. But Manhattan housing prices were driven higher by record earnings and bonuses on Wall Street, and they fell hard when the music stopped last fall.

The quick fall in prices is shown in the experience of Abigail Disney, a philanthropist and documentary filmmaker, who a year ago put her sprawling 17-room co-op on West End Avenue on the market for $13.5 million. After a series of price cuts, Ms. Disney has finally found buyers for the property, for just under $7.5 million, a 46 percent discount from her initial asking price. But to make a deal she agreed to restore the walls and convert it back into two apartments and sell it to two buyers.

Jonathan J. Miller, an appraiser who prepares quarterly reports on Manhattan, said the market could continue to fall through this year and next, especially if credit remained tight for most buyers. After that, he said, it could take several more years to work through the excess inventory."

The reason I was a "dick" is exactly as "inonada" alluded to - alpine292 did the EXACT equivalent of someone on a similar chat board in California showing Google maps pictures of Central Park, Prospect Park, and Riverside Park and claiming that NYC has plenty of open space on which we can build new housing. It was just to dumb for kind words.

would agree...there's asking questions, uninformed, dumb, stupid and frigging idiot. frigging idiots deserve whatever they get.

AR,

Where is KoreaTown?

mutombo, south of Macy's, fifth to sixth avenue, centered on Broadway, lots of cheap retail and low level commercial space. crap for sale, wholesale.

boston is at 2001 levels? that is just incredible. boston is probably the US housing market that most resembles new york--the prime boston neighborhoods are similar to prime manhattan neighborhoods, etc. amazing.

"Alpine - how much has your house lost in the last 9 months?"

Funny you should ask. I just got an automated e-mail from Zillow today telling me my house's Zestimate is down 3% in the last quarter. I could not care less because their numbers are total garbage.

"boston is at 2001 levels? that is just incredible. boston is probably the US housing market that most resembles new york--the prime boston neighborhoods are similar to prime manhattan neighborhoods, etc. amazing."

The whole point of the thread. But I will concede that NYC is more like London or Paris or Hong Kong than like any American city...

I've never been to Boston, but the city that I found to most resemble NYC is San Francisco. And I mean the SF city limits, not Marin County, Oakland, or any of the suburbs.

I adore San Francisco. But it has one major difference from NYC. It is one of the least finance-oriented big cities.

AR,

Thnx.

"It is one of the least finance-oriented big cities."

True, but SF is very tech oriented. Their RE market got killed wen the dot com bubble burst.

alpine, that was then, this is now. tech isn't doing well, finance is doing much less well (current quarter's "earnings" notwithstanding).

Actually, SF is the third most financed-oriented city, after NYC and Boston, and ahead of Chicago, in terms of hedge funds, asset managers, investment bankers, etc. They are disproportionatley tech-oriented hedge funds, VC, bankers, etc, but I have no idea why you think its less finance oriented than most large U.S. cities.

yeah, but at least finance companies are getting bailed out by the govt. The tech companies are not gettig a dime in money.

Oh, i don't know, must have been the talk of an MD (who I respect, I must add) living there who swayed my opinions. jason, not less than "most" large US cities, i guess, but much less than NYC. you're right, though, there are relatively few "big" cities in the way that I'd construe the term.

alpine, the finance companies NEED to get bailed out. so far the techies are seeing a massive slowdown, but they don't have those bad loans looming like the sword of Damocles. And, if it can pass, I'd bet that the next stimulus package will look significantly different.