burkhardt group

I have worked with Keith B - he has provided me assistance and free advice. Personable. Informative. Very
"un-brokerish". I second these sentiments.

I agree wholeheartedly. I've noted in other discussions how highly I regard Keith and his business model.

Add me to the chorus. He is excellent and well informed about the market. I can't believe more people don't use him.

Keith and his crew are the bomb

Nice Job KB!

Much appreciated.

KB, do you mind telling what's your most difficult experience you ever had in a transaction?

caonima: raising two kids in Manhattan was a difficult experience (:

Had to jump on the Pro-Burkhardt bandwagon. I just bought my apartment with the help of Christian and Keith and will be recomending them to anyone who's looking for a broker. Thanks for making a stressfull process easier!

Time certainly flies!

How's business, Keith?

Great first half of the year. A significant slowdown at least for us starting in June and then picked up pretty nicely going into the late fall. Currently busy, with about half a dozen active buyers.

We recently bid on a beautiful home in one of my favorite Brooklyn buildings, 135 Eastern parkway.. we were decently over ask, they had a total of nine bids. We did not get it.

Also lost out to multiple bids at 21 East 10th Street last week. Another one of my favorites! We were also above the ask here. Have a bid in on a brownstone in prime Park slope, fingers crossed!

I think it's a market where you have to have very high quality buyers that are not interested in renting. And high quality listings. And there's not an overabundance of either.

Keith

Thanks for sharing the color, Keith.

>> I think it's a market where you have to have very high quality buyers that are not interested in renting.

What is a “high quality buyer” — is this a comment on them having a lot of money, or them being serious about buying rather than waffling, or them just being good human beings?

And how does “not interested in renting” contrast with markets of the past? Are you saying people that were on the fence before would sometimes buy, but nowadays the buyers are firmly committed?

Not a great choice of words, rather than 'high quality', 'committed/bias towards buying versus renting.' And yes, I think we may have discussed once in the past, this can be for various reasons from school district, social or cultural bias etc.

The frenzy of buying activity driven by zirp basically created a herd mentality of buying activity. At the peak of this we were doing 70 to 100 deals per year, that's an insane amount of business for a three-person team! And I lost two very good assistants during this time to severe burnout.

Sort of reminded me of the dotcom era, everybody and their brother were talking about stocks, trading, stocks, etc. The same thing happened in real estate during these periods of ultra low interest rates on mortgages.

Also, I realized these examples I give, of actual transactions and bids we're making certainly don't represent the entire Market! I just thought some people on here might find it interesting to hear some real time transactional stuff.

Keith, that’s an Interesting dynamic. If you look at overall sales volume during ZIRP vs outside it, there doesn’t seem to be much of a relationship:

https://millersamuel.com/files/2024/10/Manhattan1Q25-DJIA-scaled.jpg

There was certainly a 2021 bump after the 2020 drop, but this may have been more a “pent-up demand” thing? But the 2010-2021 ZIRP years just don’t look very different than the years before or years after.

So it’s interesting that *your* volume changed dramatically. I don’t think that is reflective of anything you’ve done—your business model is the same, etc. Rather, it might be a difference in the buyers that find their way to you—they were more motivated by ZIRP, even though the market as a whole viewed it differently (from the perspective of sales volume, anyways).

What do you think, what’s your interpretation of the discrepancy?

I’ll note this chart that certainly seems to have a ZIRP-era difference. It is percent of sales that happens above ask:

https://millersamuel.com/files/2024/07/3Q24Mht-overLIST.jpg

So to the extent “frenzy” involves bidding activity, there are material differences during the ZIRP years versus not. But I suspect if we saw more of the pre-2008 years, it’d show similar above-ask numbers as the ZIRP years even though there was not ZIRP for several of them.

Yeah that's very interesting, I've definitely seen charts showing that sales data has been relatively steady across these various cycles. But I just find that hard to believe, and although the data is the data, it just doesn't make sense to me.

I just did a chatgpt on closed condo sales 2022 versus 2024 and got more of a picture of what I believe to be true.

In Q2 of 2022 there were 1,970 closed sales. In Q2 of 2024 there were 1,152 closed sales. Median sales prices were stable. It also spit out a lot of other data showing the strength of 2022 versus 2024, just one example of these different momentum cycles I was talking about.

"Summary of Market Dynamics
​In summary, the comparison shows a market shift from high-volume, high-demand in 2022's first half, to a lower-volume, price-sensitive market in 2024.
​2022: A booming year driven by low-rate momentum, leading to record-high sales volume in the first half.
​2024: A year defined by market acceptance of elevated interest rates. While transaction volume is lower overall, the market showed resilience in sales velocity compared to 2023, though prices remain under slight pressure from a lack of high-end activity."

is this ZIRP hangover? When will it end?

Keith, the uptick in early 2021 to early 2022 is certainly in the data. See the first link I posted. But that 1-year period is not really what most people would consider ZIRP. For example, this person has it as 10 years spanning 2009-2017 + 2020-2022:

https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!mKF7!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F483cd35b-fd62-43c3-acb9-d9d54a7e5ca0_1600x981.png

The final year was special because the Fed was pouring ZIRP + quantitative easing onto a super-inflationary fire.

If the number of deals you were doing peaked at 100 during that year but were at a level of (say) 60 the decade prior, that would have been in line with the market.

"If the number of deals you were doing peaked at 100 during that year but were at a level of (say) 60 the decade prior, that would have been in line with the market." -Yes.. however, as we grew, deal volume of course grew. Stepping back from the actual amount of deals, I do remember when I first explored moving to Florida in 2011, I had done about 26 million worth of transactions that year... And then that peaked to about 200 million in around 2022-2023 before things started to slow down significantly.

We actually had a pretty good 2024, although part of that was due to three transactions that totaled close to $40 million. But I definitely remember many conversations with agents telling me how they were just absolutely struggling that year. And I think the data would verify this, though I haven't actually looked recently. That's why when I see year over year comparisons, there doesn't seem to be all that much to be excited about when you see increases 2025 v 2024.

I also think our business model attracts a specific kind of buyer. Although what buyer or seller doesn't want to save tens of thousands of dollars! My new partner Norman is leading a redesign of our website (quite frankly, we never really had a website, just a simple one that I built 15 years ago!) along with a new identity for the company. We really want to reach out to the masses and get our position across to mainstream affluent buyers. Our biggest sale to date has been helping a buyer purchase a $28 million townhouse, would love to assist somebody with a $50 million plus transaction! Nada, Don't the ultra high net worth folks appreciate some added value to their transaction In the form of a large six-figure rebate? Especially since most of them are probably going to wind up losing money on the transaction at some point ; )

When you really think about it, especially at that purchase price point, what tangible value is your main Street buyer broker actually contributing to the transaction? How many sales people have actually told their client not to buy something? ; )
Especially when you hear that one out of three condo buyers are going to lose money when they sell. Since that report came out, I've really seen everybody from the top on down in the business changing their tune on Manhattan real estate. No one ever dared talk about losing money previously on a New York City purchase.

Look at the CNBC report on YouTube on luxury real estate and the losses many owners are facing when they sell. The attitude shift is quite telling and interesting.

This one? Yeah, the tone was very interestingly different.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NCjjQm3pwRw

>> Nada, Don't the ultra high net worth folks appreciate some added value to their transaction In the form of a large six-figure rebate?

Hell if I know. What I’ve learned in life is that people have all sorts of interests and motivations. Just having a lot of money, or not, does not change that. Some people don’t care about the money, or getting value. Others do. Some people like the experience of being pampered, being physically escorted to 40 places because they cannot figure it out from the pics. Others feel it a waste of time. The ones who’ll prefer your model will find you, as they long have.

>> No one ever dared talk about losing money previously on a New York City purchase.

A friend of mine was telling me a story from his Brooklyn coop board membership last night. Someone (age 60’s) bought a modest apt (1BR, sub-$1M) in his building last year but then decided she preferred a different location. So she listed it for 10% higher, a price at which it hasn’t found much interest. She’s emailed the board a few times, writing long emails about how she needs that price not to “lose” money, and how “losing” money on RE does not happen and is unacceptable. The emails didn’t verbalize anything the board could do about the situation. Maybe she just needed to express her frustration?

Yes, that's the feature. Also, just an FYI, we actually accompany clients to all private showings.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Keith