Who Benefits Most ..

Nobody. When you're not selling, it's gratifying to see the comps for your own place go up, but that's just spectator sport.

In the press, brokers are saying they'd rather see a balanced market without all the craziness.

NWT, Owners benefit vs non-owners as the non-owners who want to buy have to pay a much higher price unless of course these non-owners have a rent controlled apt or manage to find rental deals which are significantly better than the experience of the average renter in prime Manhattan.

Real estate agents naturally benefit as they do not have to work that hard to get a deal done.

>Real estate agents naturally benefit as they do not have to work that hard to get a deal done.

They may have to work hard to meet their clients' rising expectations.
Also, are there enough properties to sell to go around for all the agents?

Since I already own and am not planning to sell, a frothy market does me no good. I could say "oh wasn't it good to have bought 20 years ago", but that gloss has worn off. Then again, we could both get hit by a bus this afternoon, so it'd be good for our heirs, but that doesn't cut much ice.

For virtually all brokers, listings are tough to come by at any time, and even more so now. I keep getting mail from brokers looking for listings, saying "It's a great time to sell!" but not saying where I'm supposed to live after that.

Of course you're getting mail urging you to sell .. and there's a record-low percentage of owners responding to those suggestions. It isn't out of greed, but rather your exact point: where am I supposed to live? On the other hand, if you bought in 20 years ago and are looking to move to Iowa, you'd be sitting pretty about now. Low inventory, regardless of how fast property moves, has to be the worst case situation for most agents.

Condo developers and co-op/condo owners currently selling obviously benefit from the high prices.

Landlords of market-rate rentals (32% of NYC rental market) also benefit due to (1) increased demand for rentals due to people being priced out of co-op/condo market, (2) restricted supply of market-rate rentals.

Low inventory is bad for agents but also very frustrating for buyers. I guess you could make the argument that it is worse for some agents as they need to earn money to live. Buyers on the other hand have much less at stake. Cheap money, high rents, low inventory.

Sellers with a place to go benefit, agents with listings benefit. There you go.

Keith Burkhardt (buy-side broker witha twist)
The Burkhardt Group

urbandigs shows the sales volume at a post-crash high and deals sell themselves without much effort from listing agents - you can't feel too bad for brokers - at least those who get listings.

It takes several years to see new construction projects ramp up. If prices keep rising you will begin to see conversions and new buildings come up to meet some of the buying demand. Also the more prices rise, the more you will see sellers come out of the wood work. I certainly believe that the supply of homes varies with prices, and you will see more sellers, not less as prices go up. When prices fall the natural tendency is to pull properties from listings and only certain sellers who must sell do.

It's fun to be on the sales side -- asterisk. Yes, properties are generally easier to sell, and that's a nice change from the slog of trying to move inventory in 2009.

But if, as a listing agent, you run a bidding war with five parties, four of them are going to lose, and you have to dance extra hard to not make enemies of those four agents. Also, lending banks and boards are being extra-difficult, because they can.

As a secondary effect, current market should benefit all of us homeowners slightly... because higher sales transaction volume equals higher real estate transfer taxes equals less of a need for the city to make up tax revenue by raising existing property taxes.

ali r.
DG Neary Realty

Of course 6% commission translates into higher dollars in a rising market, and those letters pretending to represent a buyer to an unlisted apartment might be more listened to.

I think its disingenous to say brokers don't benefit from a rising market, even if its based on limited supply. Part of the sales schtick is telling buyers how much properties have gone up and convincing them ,without say so, that past returns are indicative of future ones.

this will always be a volume based business. high volume = great for brokers. high volume with high supply is good for both buyer and seller brokers. high vol with low supply like today, mostly good for listing agent only.

very high deal vol right now considering the time of year, same story has been going on for past 5+ months. Limited supply and animal spirits out there mean the market is great for listing agents as days on market has plunged recently. Listing Brokers always enjoy quick turnover. Very greedy sellers testing the market are not doing themselves any favors in today's market. Buyers and buyer brokers continue to face a challenging environment with fierce competition for quality property that is remotely priced correctly. Thats the side effect of being 1 of 6 (or similar), going for a good new property that hits the market with a reasonable price.

>Very greedy sellers testing the market are not doing themselves any favors in today's market.

Why not?

Urban, I've seen some sellers listing aggressively and getting it. And if we're talking about limited supply then that supposition works against fierce competition. I don't think you can have limited supply and fierce competition for buyers at the same time. To a degree they are mutually exclusive.

http://streeteasy.com/nyc/talk/discussion/36087-buy-now-or-be-priced-out-forever

riversider -- thats what the data shows. You can have tight supply and high deal vol...what happens is most of the new stuff that comes on is absorbed, leaving only the undesirable property + overpriced property to linger.

Monthly Contract Activity -- http://urbandigs.com/chart.php?k=e5921aa9a57509ae707733ddce48158a
Monthly Supply -- http://urbandigs.com/chart.php?k=c46decf0fcfc1a981864e1057d768a2c

Hunter -- absolutely nothing wrong with it, they have every right to test the market. Im just saying they are not taking full advantage of leverage shift in their favor by severely overpricing. If they are not motivated or not serious seller, as you say, why not?? nothing to lose. I have clients bidding on overpriced listings, and enjoy the 1 on 1 negotiations. Except the seller doesn't take the strong bids because as the seller broker usually says "my client is looking for a cash offer, or a no finance contingent offer" -- ofcourse they r, they know it would never appraise

On supply, the past 4 months finally saw an uptick in new supply when compared to the same month in years past. Need that trend to continue for a lot more though.Right now my daily ticker shows a 30 day pace of:

About 1,200 new listings coming to market
About 1,100 active units going into contract
About 450 or so active units coming off the market

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Add it all up --> continued Net decline in supply. Supply is a function of current listings set to active state in RLS and updated by the listing broker + new supply to come to market - deals that were active that get signed into contract - active listings that come onto the market. Over the past month, supply is down 10%, its down 18% over the past quarter even with the tick up in monthly supply over the past 4 months.