20% of my SE saved listings have sold in the last three weeks

Are you sure they are "sold" or "in contract"? I'd say a lot of my saved listings are now "no longer on market". It is unclear if that means sold or in contract.

Average time on market is, say, 120 days. Your 119 might've had been on the market for an average of 60 days at the time you saved them. An average of one per day dropping off over three weeks doesn't seem particularly fast or slow.

Yes, I have also noticed that many of my saved listings are also in contract. I am also noticing that I am getting a lot more new listings at the higher end of my search parameters. Are asking prices increasing again?

Buy now or be priced out forever!

my experience is that a lot of my saved apartment around 900K-1 million are actually "no longer on market" which means that they are unsold and have been removed from listings. And by checking on many recorded sales I have noticed that the closing prices are actually from 5% to 15% lower than the asking price...I don`t but the "buy now or be priced out forever"...

Just checked and none of my listings were taken off the market - all have sold or are in contract.

It's hard to tell what's a blip, what's a pattern, and what isn't anything. SE's third-quarter report has lots of interesting stats: http://docs.streeteasy.com/market_reports/2009Q3_Report.pdf

nprr, you're looking in a very specific market, very inexpensive units that allow use as pied a terre. i wouldn't extrapolate much from that, although it is interesting. my saved units have about a 25% sold/in contract rate, but i saved them quite some time ago and they had already been on the market for varying amounts of time. they're certainly not flying off the shelf, in the past few weeks less than 5% have gone into contract.

It is like the NY Times article about "price wars". Quality units are selling. My wife and I are also looking for a pied a terre (UWS, Park Slope) - I used saved listings to follow the market. However, I only save reasonable sales - location, layout, maintenance, price. The undesirables never get included. A decent number are in contract within three weeks. I would surmise that our saved searches are not representative.

nprr: Do you save "overpriced" listings?

My point is that you have a selection bias in your saved listings.

I think my inadvertent "selection bias" has been to save quality listings, many of which started out overpriced and were then reduced - most are/were comparatively larger prewar units in desirable neighborhoods. I have been searching long distance and haven't seen anything in person yet...but I've sent a savvy friend with good taste to check out some of my choices, and she wasn't surprised that a large percentage have sold.

....but what do i know? A bit off topic, but can you guys tell me if a pied a terre is a decent investment or a big mistake? Would love to hear from others who have taken the plunge.

nprr: Your saved listings should always be in a constant state of shrinkage. And at some point reach zero. This says nothing about the state RE: in NYC. You need to have a stated criteria universe that will include new listings that meet same criteria and watch this inventory go up or down.

nprr: just click the box "save this search and notify me of updates"