potential impact on NY r.e. of the Greek crisis

Bullish.

Out of Euro assets and into US assets (dollar, stocks, housing, cars, whores, etc).

WAY bullish.

All those Europeans will want nothing more than to spend their few Euros on NYC real estate, now that the Euro is weak and NYC real estate is even MORE expensive for them.

Let me put in another way:

If on top of high unemployment and economic uncertainty in the US, the US dollar plummeted in value against the Euro, what would you do? That's RIGHT - you'd buy an apartment in Paris!

ericho - props for getting the stock rally very early last year and the sustained rebound in Manhattan. But on this one, I have to take other side. When dollar was weak, everyone rushed to say how bullish it was for Manhattan re prices...tons of foreigners, buying all cash apts propping up demand. Now the reverse force is in play, how can the argument remain bullish?

if anything, two things are happening:

1. purchasing power is lower
2. foreigners who own, have an incentive to sell and perhaps cover losses on the asset from currency gains

interesting viewpoints ... i would pay money to know what percent of properties were purchased by foreigners (and then the European subset) over the last 5 years ... that's the only way to gauge the impact of a potential mini-sell-off, should it come

i dont think its anything market moving Ana. Id venture a guess that at any given time in NYC markets foreign investment accounts for somewhere between 6%-10% of sales? We are talking investments in a foreign currency here. In 2006-2007, perhaps that rose to 15-18%?

Not necessarily true Honeycrisp. Buyers from Europe may not be representative of their countries(i.e. they may have substantial resources)

fair enough, riversider - was just thinking this would at least give us SOME starting point at measuring any magnitude
to UD's point, not likely to sway markets ...

Honeycrisp: easy enough to do. In my market of interest, large apts/THs on UWS, I have looked at the identities (as long as non-LLC) of buyers in the last 5 years. Very, very few are to "foreigners", esp. outside of the large new developments like 15CPW.

And exclude the Trump towers, which lousy with foreign buyers (though some are naturalized foreign-born buyers).

what's the definition of a "lousy foreign buyer"?

Lousy WITH foreign buyers. Not lousy foreign buyers.

The crash is going to come soon!!!!! Stay afraid make no investments. I know you have been waiting 5 years for this crash to come and bring NYC RE down 50% but its coming. Keep waiting....keep paying 50% of your take home pay to your landlord as he is financing your living......it makes no sense to ever buy....keep renting...your landlord is a fool....something is going to wipe out all those RE owning fools sometime...whether it is Greece, sub prime, gays, liberals, aliens, ...something is going to come and show those RE investing idiots that you were right...it may take a decade but you will be right......

Yes, please do stay away.

Petrfitz, I've been meaning to ask something. You said that additional income made up for unrealized losses on your RE portfolio last year, and that you were still waiting to add to your RE portfolio in NY (looking at townhouses in Brooklyn if I recall correctly). Did you end up pulling the trigger, or are you still looking? Where has the cash been sitting?

i still want to know who petro thinks is paying 50% of their take home pay to slumlords. because only a slumlord would accept a tenant who is paying 50% of their take home pay on rent.

oh, i forgot. that would be petro's tenants. he's writing based on his own personal slumlord experiences.

In petrfitz's defense, that is the line drawn that some people choose to take: 40x monthly rent. A $2500 place has a 40x qualification of $100K income. At $100K, you're probably taking home on the order of $60K after taxes, social security, medicare, and maybe some 401k. Your rent is $30K.

I have no doubt that many people in NYC follow those sorts of finances.

No whether it'd be better for them to instead pay the equivalent of 75% of their take-home pay for the same thing is another question...

Am I mistaken or did petrfitz announce not too long ago that he now believed prices might fall if the Chinese bubble were to burst. Did someone else get access to your account or are you pleading temporary sanity?

nada, your tax rate is way too high for that income.

If one is painting a total doomsday scenario with everything falling apart, why would that same scenario assume the dollar is worht anything? The scenario suggests bomb shelter, a rifle and life time supply of chef-boy-yardee.

"nada, your tax rate is way too high for that income."

Really? I figure maybe $13.5K in exemption & deductions, so in the ballpark of $18K federal on $86.5K in taxable income. Then, $92.5K taxable at state level ($7.5K standard deductions), which puts state+city at around $9K. Then, around $8K for social security and medicare. That puts you at $35K in taxes, so $65K take-home. Put something like $7.5K in 401k on a pre-tax basis, and you're looking at $60K take-home.

I'm assuming single person here, too crazy to run that tight (50% take-home to rent) with mouths to feed. How do you figure?