Any Market Update?

Im starting to see pickup with buyers! Past few days or so..Open houses also seem to be getting a bit more crowded. It should get busier as we get into Feb/March, usually does this time of year. So lets see how active it ends up being

urbandigs so now open houses are half filled with potential buyers as opposed to half empty.

yes spunky, manhattan real estate is now ok again! Its better than OK. Its amazing..past few days or so. Everything turned around. I never saw anything like it. Its like the credit mess went away and was never here. Bidding wars everywhere, prices being increased, especially where you hold real estate. In fact, your neighborhoods are through the roof!

I went to 4 open houses this weekend on the UWS. All were quite well attended it appeared. Totally anecdotal, but a data point I suppose.

for those concerned about wall st bonuses / demand -

Goldman Morgan Merrill Lehman Bear
Sachs Stanley Lynch Brothers Stearns

Net Revenue $45.99 $28.03 $11.25 $19.26 $5.95

Comp/Revenue 43.9% 59% 141% 49.3% 57.6%

Compensation $20.19 $16.55 $15.90 $9.49 $3.43

Bonus* $12.11 $9.93 $9.54 $5.70 $2.06

Employees 30,522 48,256 64,200 28,556 14,153

Comp/Employee $661,490 $343,004 $247,710 $332,470 $241,998

Bonus/Employee $396,894 $205,802 $148,614 $199,482 $145,199

from bloomberg...

Bonuses WILL be handed out this year and at fairly good levels. Its HOW THEY ARE SPENT that is concern for this year. Im more worried abotu shortfall in bonus checks for 2009, as 2008 will prove to be a difficult 12 months for all brokerages/banks as they work through all these losses and lose a HUGE revenue generator in the ABS/MBS/CDO/CLO business

Anyone have a data point on the % of bonus that was stock vs. cash and the vesting schedule for that stock?

UD, agreed that there is definitely much less optimism, just wanted to point out that this is still almost twice what was paid out in bonuses last year (~24bb across the street, and the numbers above are only for top 5). For a lot of these folks, as for you, RE is a long term investment, and many may take this market weakness as an opportunity to invest, perhaps not at this exact moment, but perhaps in the year to come. One point i thought was interesting was that comp/revenue for merrill was 141%, showing the importance to these firms of retaining top talent. As long as someone is making money, most if not all of the firms will need to compete at the risk of losing out further from a drain of intellectual capital. And while they move lose on a lot of revenue from their securitization businesses, I'm sure they'll all jump onto the next big trend to generate additional revenues, at least until that blows up as well... Of course, if EVERY BANK does poorly in 08, it may be a different story =)

(insert obligatory refrence to european buyers, petrodollars, general weakness in $)

to bring this back to the original post, it'll be interesting to see how open houses and general market interest do now that bonus numbers are known.

don't know why i put "move" in that one sentence...

ironic, considering how many were predicting doom and gloom for THIS bonus season. And already brokers are reporting a high volume of activity. Heck I went to brunch the other weekend and saw floorplans everywhere. Bottom line is that there is still a lot of demand here in Manhattan. That is not true for many other regions of the country. Urbandigs talk a lot about supply, but there is also the demand side as well.