Manhattan Sales start to Slow

Pending sales are 16% higher now vs the same time last year with active inventory about 2% less. That shows strength not weakness.

as is normally the case, its all relative in terms of timing. If we look at 6 month % chg, pending is UP 30%. If we look at 3mth % chg pending is down 4.3%, if we look at 1mth % chg pending is down about 10%.

Relatively speaking, June was a very active month seeing 988 new deals signed so relative from that we are weakening right now. Looks like we are on pace for around 800-850 deals for the month of July.

In terms of supply, we are just not seeing as much product come to market on a monthly basis for 10 consecutive months now..inventory is tight. In terms of off market trends, sellers are removing property from the market at a very low pace, so listings that do come to market tend to stay there until they sign..best info I can give with real time data our system shows

last year peaked earlier and higher. other than that inventory and pending sales seem very similar. over 570 manhattan listings this week. granted, many are re-listings, but at some price point just about any listing is interesting to some buyer.

we show 331 new listings in last 7 days for Manhattan..but the ticker has lots of rules that scrub the total data count

It's one of the most difficult metrics to rely on.
It goes from pending to closing anywhere between 10 days to 90 days for over 90% of acrtually closes.
Then throw in failure to close rates which are much higher for the last 2 years, dare I say around 20%?
We saw,particularly at the early onset of the decline, some brokers listing mass amounts of units in contract that were just outright lies.
As the input info is relied upon by brokers, my purchase a counter case in point was in contract a full 45 days without it being in the system as such.

few things truth..dropout rate is not 20%. I think it was something like 11% when I had my engineer check it but that was in very early 2010 when we were scrubbing the RLS db to discover and engineer out integrity issues. I havent checked it since, but we will work on that kind of stuff in a month or two. Second, your right in regards to data quality - nothing anyone can do about agents that do not change the internal status of a listing to pending, due to some belief that it gives them some advantage. It doesnt. If anything, I would think showing more in contract listings will show how good an agent is at procuring and handling a deal. This is the most frustrating part. My thinking is to try to solve this at the RLS level. Build in a system to the sharing network that pushes forward data integrity breaches - once u solve the acris to rls sync up challenges (and that is a decent size issue we r working on now), how many active listings closed without a visit to the pending listing state? Notify the agent, the manager, and the oversight body (rebny). failure to change results in a fine. multiple violations, fine goes up. Integrity breaches should result in penalty and if fines reach a certain level, the agent or principal loses their license.

btw, I think pending is one of the best metrics to follow. Take a look at this 3+ yr chart

http://www.urbandigs.com/chart.php?s1=Pending+Sales&s2=&mindt=07%2F22%2F2010&maxdt=07%2F22%2F2011&t=Market+Trends&interval_mindt=2008%2F01%2F01

To compare to actual sales vol, by acris, you will see how pending sales leads sales trend by 2-3 months or so, and follows the trend exactly to verifiable sales data. You just have to scrub to get to the gold underneath the whole source db. Nothing we can do about data breaches but that % is fairly low

Noah,if it could be regulated like that it would be fantastic.

>Notify the agent, the manager, and the oversight body (rebny). failure to change results in a fine. multiple violations, fine goes up. Integrity breaches should result in penalty and if fines reach a certain level, the agent or principal loses their license.

Then just the floating threat of an in contract listing audit would keep 99% of in contracts accurate.

OF course, the REBNY would never do it. (Maybe get Bloomberg involved before he's gone. He's the only one that could make it happen.) :)

I think some form of real regulation would ultimately get the industry more respect and honest brokers should be at the front proposing it.

i agree truth..im doing my best when I can to talk to the people that can help bring this kind of change to the industry. its not an easy process with old political battles still in play - cant get into. I do think most execs and agents do want better data and actual fines for data breaches. Getting that structural change will take time, I fear.

I think this slowdown is purely seasonal. I "expect" the second half of the summer to be vacation, getting some clients settled in rentals, cleaning my desk, and lining up things to sell in the fall.

If anything it's been busier than that (I expect to have a CS today, which is unusual for me for this time of year).

Rental market seems even nuttier than usual -- I have one client who was presented with a 16% increase in her lease renewal -- and it will be interesting to see if that jacks up fall, or if fall is "normal."

ali r.
DG Neary Realty

"I think this slowdown is purely seasonal."

I completely agree with this, as far as interpreting the last four weeks of data

How accurate have your interpretations been in the past?