is the NYC market coming up ot just media fluff

i have noticed a fairly quick reduction in inventory, not from sales, but from units being pulled. if the market was going full speed ahead this would not happen, in my opinion.

the media has been positive in the face of awful news for years. they present pockets of gloom only when to not do so would discredit them 100%. anything less is fair game, although to be fair to the media, it's fair game to the government as well.

AR - the reduction in inventory is both due to a sharp increase in sales and properties being pulled for the summer by non-desperate sellers or others that were testing the market. Contracts signed have steadily increased over the past 3 months.

OTNYC: close, but no cigar. The new listings continues to overwhelm contracts signed. The minimal reduction in inventory is exclusively due to listings being removed, but not sold. These would include properties being removed for the summer, removed in order to be relisted as a new listing at later date, removed because owner didn't need to sell and realized they couldn't get their price....etc..etc...but has nothing to do with sales volume picking up.

OTNYC, they always increase in spring. and if you amortize over the year, and compare to years past, still not so impressive. and over the time when you are referring to the steady increase in contract signings, new listings have still outpaced contract signings by a fair margin.

but my comment has to do with an uptick based on those green shoots, and that hidden demand. this year, if that were to be the case, you'd expect pent-up demand to continue into the summer. if brokers saw that they wouldn't have removed about 300-400 properties over the past few days (nothing to do with contracts signed, btw). inventory is going down, and whether or not it's an attempt at psych manipulation (don't think so, people don't like to show during the dog days of summer), it doesn't indicate that the brokers think this train is riding full-steam ahead into summer, or that they can convince their sellers of the same.

agree with AR.
If you check
http://www.urbandigs.com/charts3.html
and select the 6 month view you see that the contracts signed have plummeted in the last 2 weeks, as have new listings
We have noted in the past that these charts may not be reliable. However, they are the main window we have and new listings are still arriving at a rate in excess of contracts signed, even though inventory is declining
I havent been to an OH in a while now, but the reports from last Sunday did not indicate hordes rushing in

Will be very interesting to see what happens this summer. I want to build a green townhouse but no one seems to offer a construction loan any more.
It could well be that we are headed to 500-700 psf eventually so waiting may have its rewards.

patient09, I will also add properties that fail to sell at the price of the underlying refi mortgage...waiting for short sale approval from the bank. People that are defaulting and hoping for the bank's (the taxpayer's?) bailout.

mimi, I have noticed a few houses in Harlem have recently gone into contract. Of course, we'll have to wait and see if the financing comes through. Could be head fakes.

"I want to build a green townhouse but no one seems to offer a construction loan any more."

"Green" is the biggest bullshit marketing gimmick out there. If you want a "green" house, just build, or buy, a regular townhouse and install solar panels on the roof. I have seen people try to market houses as "green" even though they have no solar panels! WTF? Solar panels are perhaps the single most environmentally feature a house can have.

Serious recessions are characterized by market volatility, no?

And that means that a small number of people, for a short period of time, are convinced that "it's over, buy low". And then they're greatly disappointed when the bottom falls out again, which I think is inevitable given worldwide unemployment, etc.

So it's media fluff.

williamgrey:

The RE section of the NYT is a wholly owned subsidiary of the brokerage industry. sunday's article had one weak dissenting opinion from all the broker bullcrap. check out this article from august 2007:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/19/realestate/19cov.html?_r=1

pity the poor soles who purchased after reading this garbage