case schiller april report just released

That's funny because nyc realtor are saying otherwise.

"Did anyone watch CNBC this morning? Great piece on Manhattan real estate with two real estate investors (and one person from Halstead who I haven’t quoted below) that actually know what they are talking about. Some great lines like":

"Miami and Manhattan are two completely different markets that can't be compared. 5000 additional units are about to come online in Miami that will add to already staggering inventory. We are buying product for .30 on the dollar. This will never happen in Manhattan"

"Las Vegas is starting to turn a corner"

"Manhattan has already fallen 10% and we don't expect it to fall more than another 10%"

"The best time to buy in Manhattan is during Wall St. uncertainty because people panic and there are significant opportunities"

“We are looking at deals in New York as we speak”

"If Manhattan can survive 9/11, Manhattan will survive anything. Manhattan has experienced Wall St. downturns before and they always come back. Wall St will find areas for growth, they always do"

"We don't try and time a bottom, we look for good deals in the current market and buy and hold for the long term"

“Inventory in Manhattan is at respectable levels”

I guess these people who make a living buying and selling real estate don’t know what they are talking about either. Not one of them talked about a 50% correction. I wonder why?

I guess (according to your logic) people who DON'T make a living buying and selling real estate are the only ones who DO know what they are talking about!

A 50% average correction in prime Manhattan properties, you say?

Would you like to place a bet on that?

malraux - if you take your actual data and apply a different logic by removing data points and multiplying it by a factor that Steve made up, then you will see that prices have actually fallen in Manhattan prime. If you add dco's personal factor you will see that this data actually says that Manhattan prime will drop by 50% in the next year. While during that time, non of dco's personal investments or earning potential will be harmed at all.

You see, you should be renting and putting all your money in the stock market because you will be able to pick the stocks that only go up, make a fortune then pick the absolute right time to buy real estate and be able to buy a UWS townhouse for $250K.

You cant see that?

"Case Schiller reports released today, here's the indices numbers for NYC"

The Case Shiller report only covers single-family homes, and the NY metropolitan area stretches to New Haven, CT.

"Manhattan has already fallen 10% and we don't expect it to fall more than another 10%"

Yup. As tens of thousands of people are losing their jobs.

Ahh.... what do we have here? Malraux, the "wanna-be" david lereah/lawrence yun spin-meister?

spin spin spin away the data... how about this quote from a "different" spin:

http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?guid={EB1B0595-37FA-4542-88A2-CE470ACAF101}

"Here's the city-by-city breakdown in the Case-Shiller index:
Las Vegas, down 26.8% in the past year; Miami, down 26.7%; Phoenix, down 25%; Los Angeles, down 23.1%; San Diego, down 22.4%; San Francisco, down 22.1%; Tampa, down 20.4%; Detroit, down 18%; Minneapolis, down 15.5%; Washington, down 14.8%; Chicago, down 9.3%; New York, down 8.4%; Atlanta, down 7.5%; Cleveland, down 6.8%; Boston, down 6.4%; Seattle, down 4.9%; Denver and Portland, both down 4.7%; Dallas, down 3.4%; and Charlotte, down 0.1%."

New York down 8.4% from peak... somewhat consistent with the realtor talk in CNBC about Manhattan already fallen about 10% with about 10% more to go.

But of course you already knew that. Just like you knew that the CaseShiller is not seasonally adjusted which is why your month2month analysis to come up with your conclusion is, ahem, misleading to say the least.

But I digress... go ahead, spin away.

hmmmmm. As an investor who do you think is more credible?

stevejhx - a Chelsea renter that claims he is an economist but graduated from Columbia (which he lied to get into) with a MA is languages and translates documents for a living. At one point in his career, mapped some data for PWC (which makes him and expert in systems) and is currently underwater in his ownership of a tea dance place on Fire Island

malraux – has made his fortune buying and selling NYC real estate and has lived in the city for decades. Owns multiple properties, has bought and sold multiple times, and has lived through many cycles and downturns of NYC real estate. Has continually has had a balanced argument and believes (and has stated) that this is a rocky time to buy and that he probably wouldn't right now but doesn’t see a large correction in the cards.

in this case, malraux is comparing month-to-month on an index that isn't seasonally adjusted.

this is exactly why YoY is used to generate % increase/decrease numbers. which is exactly what all the publications use.

so, that is a misleading "spin" on data that even the professional "spin-masters" don't bother attempting because they know they will get called out.

it is what it is.

JuiceMan, that last post is almost as sad as "A member of the Obama Team lied?!?!?!?"

As malraux will tell you, there are times when it is good to buy and times when it is bad to buy. It is good to buy when it's cheaper to buy; it's good to rent when it's cheaper to rent.

Now it's cheaper to rent.

I'm not underwater on my Fire Island place, though on Sunday a realtor I know offered to show me a bayfront house for $850k. Seems like a lot of people bought a lot of properties with the expectations of renting them out, but this year there aren't a lot of renters, and next year there will be fewer.

MMAfia:

"Here's the city-by-city breakdown in the Case-Shiller index:... New York, down 8.4%"

And of course, that's ALL of NYC, from the northern most tip of the Bronx to the southern most tip of Staten Island - RIGHT?

So, again, in reality, I again repeat -

Realistically, we can assume that prime Manhattan prices have probably dropped far less than the hardest hit areas such as East Queens/Brooklyn, and Staten Island. If we assume this to be the case, than prime Manhattan prices have probably been pretty close to neither rising nor falling since the beginning of the this year, and in the past 12 months have fallen less than 5%.

I think your number quoted by Case Schiller more or less bears out my POV.

Thank you very much.

actually, malraux i agree with you. i got tripped up by your

"So for all of greater metro NYC, prices have fallen by (about) 3.5% for the first third of the year"

comment which isn't taking YoY and seasonal changes into account.

Juiceman, aside from Malraux's balanced arguments and cool,calm,collected tone, he also knows a lot about high-end art, and was most helpful to me in guiding me away from a bad art investment.

JuiceMan: "malraux – has made his fortune buying and selling NYC real estate and has lived in the city for decades. Owns multiple properties, has bought and sold multiple times, and has lived through many cycles and downturns of NYC real estate. Has continually has had a balanced argument and believes (and has stated) that this is a rocky time to buy and that he probably wouldn't right now but doesn’t see a large correction in the cards."

Except he's wrong. The Case Shiller index includes only single-family homes, eliminating 99.9% of the Manhattan market.

It is also not ALL of NYC, to quote mr. malraux. It is a metropolitan region:

"The New York City region is expanded from the New York MSA to include counties in New York State,
Connecticut, New Jersey and Pennsylvania that are within commuting distance of New York City."

That's from - oh, how do you like that! - Standard and Poor's, which ....

...publishes the Case Shiller index!

How do you like them apples!

www2.standardandpoors.com/spf/pdf/index/MetroArea_FAQ.pdf

Therefore, it is not indicative of Manhattan at all.

One more genius interpretation of false "facts" based on ignorance.

Thank you very much.

Technical question - why does C-S need to be seasonally adjusted (and thus why is MoM not a reasonable way to look at it)? I understand why employment data and inflation data is seasonal (as people have summer vacations or drive/heat more/less), but I can't think of why housing prices are seasonal. C-S doesn't look at number of sales, but at the average price, as I understand it, so the fact that more sales happen in Spring shouldn't matter, unless the mix changes as well, and I can't think of why it would.

Anyone know the answer? Because the MoM data is not that bad (although still negative but at decelerating rate)

Good point paul10003, I agree.

steve, were you wrong yesterday when you said "inventory never crossed the 8000 mark in 2006"?

<>

Case Shiller is not seasonally adjusted. They take the sale price on the same property and compare it over time. You could not seasonalize that - if a property sold in May of one year and resold in December the next, how can you seasonalize that?

Some people attempt to seasonalize the data, but it makes no sense based on the methodology.

The beauty of seasonalizing is that if you seasonalized temperatures the temperature would be the same all year long.

JM, unlike you I have no problem admitting when I am wrong. The data I had showed that inventory hadn't, you provided other data according to which you were correct, that inventory did on at least 2 occasions average more than 8,000 in a month.

Were you wrong yesterday when you said that "inventory hovered around 8000 all during 2006?"

<>

And is malraux wrong about Case-Shiller? It's completely immaterial to Manhattan, is it not?

Let me get this straight, weasel boy -

In earlier threads, you have CITED the Case Shiller index/report as being worthy of bolstering your arguments regarding Manhattan real estate comps, including starting your own thread on streeteasy.com titled by you "HOME PRICES FALL 14.4% IN PAST YEAR, CASE-SHILLER SAYS"

And NOW, you're ATTACKING the Case Schiller index report as having LITTLE or NOTHING to do with Manhattan real estate comps in any way, shape, or form, and claimimg "...Therefore, it (Case Shiller) is not indicative of Manhattan at all."

You're pathetic.

steve, were you wrong when you said Miami and Manhattan are the same?

malraux, you surprise me. It's one thing to say that property prices are falling everywhere, and it's quite another to extrapolate an index for a particular market when none of the data are taken from that market.

I did the former; you did the latter. You SPECIFICALLY said "But the factual reality is that Case Schiller indicates prices for the first four months of this year in prime Manhattan have probably not dropped or risen, and if they have, the amount in either direction is miniscule."

Admit that your whole analysis is wrong because virtually none of the C-S data are taken from Manhattan since there are virtually no single-family homes here, and the C-S data reach as far as Pennsylvania, upstate New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.

You have never seen me make such an argument.

First, JM, I never said that Miami and Manhattan were the same. I have consistently said that prices spiraled out of control in both places, but for entirely different reasons. And I hold to that. In Miami there was a lot of speculation and bad loans; here it was a Wall Street orgy giving themselves bonuses on financing all that speculation and bad loans.

And I hold to that.

So the very first (sarcstic) line in your very own Case Shiller thread, after you give the link to the Case Shiller study you're quoting -

"...Thankfully, this will NEVER touch Manhattan because we're immune from market forces and Case-Shiller doesn't include condominiums..." is NOT to be read by streeteasy.com readers as an 'extrapolation of this index for a particular market?' So you're NOT talking AT ALL about Manhattan real estate in that thread, by just real estate in the broadest possible generalities?

LMAO.

And I hold to that.

The Case Shiller index cannot be used for Manhattan since the index does NOT include apartments. Take it with a pound of salt.

Oh, malraux, weasel-boy! You can't even admit that you were sadly, sadly wrong!

"...Thankfully, this will NEVER touch Manhattan because we're immune from market forces and Case-Shiller doesn't include condominiums..." is EXACTLY what I said it was "it's one thing to say that property prices are falling everywhere..." which is what I said.

I said that we are not immune from this contagion; you say that we are, and base your "analysis" on an index that includes no data from the market you are extrapolating for!

Weasel-boy! You can't even admit that you said "But the factual reality is that Case Schiller indicates prices for the first four months of this year in prime Manhattan have probably not dropped or risen, and if they have, the amount in either direction is miniscule."

When it says NOTHING like that at all.

Just fess up, Weasel-Boy: C-S contains virtually no data for Manhattan.

"I never said that Miami and Manhattan were the same."

You have either a blatant disregard for the truth or you have a split personality. Which one is it?

"You have either a blatant disregard for the truth or you have a split personality."

Show me precisely what you're referring to, because what I said that the reason prices spiraled out of control in the two cities were different, but that the effect was the same: overpriced housing. If that is what you call saying "Miami and Manhattan were the same," then so be it. I don't. I call it that the effect is the same, the cause is different.

You and Weasel-Boy Malraux are just going to have to face up to the truth of what I and others have been saying.

"Show me precisely what you're referring to"

If you are going to back pedal on this one what's the use? If the shoe fits weasel-boy, you can wear it.

weasel-boy:

I agree that you "...said that we (as Manhattanites, I assume) are not immune from this contagion..."

And to back up that assertion you quoted Case Shiller, and started out your thread with it.

So in earlier threads, you have CITED the Case Shiller index/report as being worthy of bolstering your arguments regarding Manhattan real estate comps, including starting your own thread on streeteasy.com titled by you "HOME PRICES FALL 14.4% IN PAST YEAR, CASE-SHILLER SAYS"

And NOW, you're ATTACKING the Case Schiller index report as having LITTLE or NOTHING to do with Manhattan real estate comps in any way, shape, or form, and claimimg "...Therefore, it (Case Shiller) is not indicative of Manhattan at all."

Same song,
different verse,
A little bit louder,
a little bit worse....

"If you are going to back pedal on this one what's the use?"

No, I told you what I said. So that I said something else, weasel-boy.

malraux, malraux, malraux. I used the Case Shiller index to state that prices are falling everywhere, and we would not be immune to that.

I CLEARLY said in my post to that Case Shiller does NOT include Manhattan.

It is NOT an "extrapolation of this index for a particular market?"

I did not say that "the factual reality is that Case Schiller indicates prices for the first four months of this year in prime Manhattan have probably not dropped or risen."

It says no such thing because it CAN'T since it does not include Manhattan. Please admit that.

Please admit that what I said was that real estate everywhere was falling, and that we would not be exempt. Since that's what it clearly says.

Oh, weasel-boy. When I'm wrong I admit it. You and JuiceMan should try a little of that tonic.

"So that I said something else, weasel-boy" = "Show that"

OOOPS!

"I used the Case Shiller index to state that prices are falling everywhere....."

"and we (meaning Manhattan, I assume?) would not be immune to that."

So in earlier threads, you have CITED the Case Shiller index/report as being worthy of bolstering your arguments regarding Manhattan real estate, including starting your own thread on streeteasy.com titled by you "HOME PRICES FALL 14.4% IN PAST YEAR, CASE-SHILLER SAYS"

And NOW, you're ATTACKING the Case Schiller index report as having LITTLE or NOTHING to do with Manhattan real estate comps in any way, shape, or form, and claimimg "...Therefore, it (Case Shiller) is not indicative of Manhattan at all."

Therefore, you used Case Shiller to bolster your argument that prices will fall in Mnahttan, or to put it another way, it is indeed an "extrapolation of this index for a particular market."

Q.E.D.

ROTFLMAO

"extrapolation of this index for a particular market."

Not.

You made a very specific argument - should I quote it again? - "that Case Schiller indicates prices for the first four months of this year in prime Manhattan have probably not dropped or risen."

Says no such thing.

I said that housing everywhere is falling - using Case Shiller to prove that - and that we would not be immune. I NEVER extrapolated price data from Case Shiller, and have taken people to task on that on a regular basis. Same thing with the federal government data: they only include conforming loans, and therefore there is little information on Manhattan.

Poor, poor malraux. First you use software to try to write something in Portuguese, then you base a sweeping statement on a false premise that you refuse to admit, and then, to top it all off, you're trying to shove words down my mouth when I have repeatedly said the exact opposite.

Poor, poor malraux. Weasel-boy, admit that C-S does not include Manhattan data, so your initial post is incorrect.

Pretty please.

"I said that housing everywhere is falling..."

"...using Case Shiller to prove that..."

"...and that we would not be immune"

So in earlier threads, you have CITED the Case Shiller index/report as being worthy of bolstering your arguments regarding Manhattan real estate, including starting your own thread on streeteasy.com titled by you "HOME PRICES FALL 14.4% IN PAST YEAR, CASE-SHILLER SAYS"

And NOW, you're ATTACKING the Case Schiller index report as having LITTLE or NOTHING to do with Manhattan real estate comps in any way, shape, or form, and claimimg "...Therefore, it (Case Shiller) is not indicative of Manhattan at all."

No matter how thin you slice it, it's still bologna, weasel-boy.

LMAO

Oh, malraux, after the eah incident I promised to be nice, but you make it very difficult.

I have taken many people to task over using those indices, you included. My argument was and is that everywhere where real estate had risen astronomically it was falling, and it would be no different here. Did I use the Case-Shiller index to say how much real estate in Manhattan would fall by?

Never.

I've used a lot of work by Dr. Shiller, including his 12x annual rent formula, and his affordability charts, and his index, for comparative purposes, and I stand by them all. Using the general ratios provided by the data, comparing Manhattan to them, exactly as is appropriate.

You're arguing that just because I don't think the C-S data show one thing (prices are astronomically high in many markets), that I can't think that they show something else (that there was a specific price movement in Manhattan proved by those data).

Just admit that C-S does not include Manhattan data, so your initial post is incorrect.

Pretty please.

Let's try that sentence again:

"You're arguing that just because I think the C-S data show one thing (prices are astronomically high in many markets), that I can't think that they show something else (that there was a specific price movement in Manhattan proved by those data)."

Thank you. I need an editor!

Let's try that sentence yet again:

"You're arguing that just because I think the C-S data show one thing (prices are astronomically high in many markets), that I can't think that they don't show something else (that there was a specific price movement in Manhattan proved by those data)."

Thank you. I need an editor!

And to be more specific, malraux, what I have always said is that real estate trends to the mean, so if, for example, Las Vegas shows a very high rent-to-buy ratio and it starts to fall, and New York City shows a very high rent-to-buy ratio, then it will fall, as well.

Never once did I say that Case Shiller was showing anything about the behavior of Manhattan prices. What I said - and say - is that if it happened elsewhere and the conditions are similar or identical here, then it will happen here.

Now please just admit that C-S does not include Manhattan data, so your initial post is incorrect.

Pretty please.

weasel-boy

You're beginning to get a wee bit verklempt, judging by those last three posts.

Stay on point -

"I said that housing everywhere is falling..."

"...using Case Shiller to prove that..."

"...and that we would not be immune"

So in earlier threads, you have CITED the Case Shiller index/report as being worthy of bolstering your arguments regarding Manhattan real estate, including starting your own thread on streeteasy.com titled by you "HOME PRICES FALL 14.4% IN PAST YEAR, CASE-SHILLER SAYS"

And NOW, you're ATTACKING the Case Schiller index report as having LITTLE or NOTHING to do with Manhattan real estate comps in any way, shape, or form, and claimimg "...Therefore, it (Case Shiller) is not indicative of Manhattan at all."

Now try to stay calm, and chill out.

Malraux, you keep repeating yourself.

Now, any credibility you might have had, is lost.

I'm not ATTACKING (to use your shout) the Case Shiller index at all. What I'm saying is true: it contains almost no data on Manhattan, so to extrapolate price movements in Manhattan from it is a false argument.

Sorry you can't admit that.

And I have CITED (to use your shout) the Case Shiller index insofar as it is relevant: I used a similar technique by following the price of the same or a similar apartment over time, mostly from

http://350bleecker.com/policy/sales.html

because I used to live there and am familiar with the apartments, and found that - lo and behold! - what Case Shiller showed had happened elsewhere in the country had indeed happened here in Manhattan as well.

Ergo, my argument runs, if real estate prices skyrocketed elsewhere were collapsing, since they had indeed skyrocketed here as well, they would indeed collapse here as well.

And I made that argument not only by applying the Case Shiller methodology to property here, but also Dr. Shiller's 12x annual rent data, the 40x monthly rent / 28% total housing expense ratios, the collapse of Wall Street jobs therefore price-to-income ratios.

They all say the same thing.

You have limited yourself to "verklempt," and refuse to admit that your initial post is plainly wrong.

Nice!

And, malraux, as evidence of what I actually said rather than what you want people to think I said so you can avoid admitting that you were wrong, go to:

http://www.streeteasy.com/nyc/talk/discussion/3365-poll-growing-majority-avoid-buying-homes

where you will see what has always been my argument, from which I do not deviate today:

stevejhx: actually, spunkster - though i appreciate your newfound moderation - in the short-term real estate prices tend to be very stead because real-estate isn't highly liquid. So you're kind of right there, but not quite. In the medium- to long-term, however, it's pretty safe to say prices always return to the mean like all other assets, and since they're so much above the mean according to Case Schiller - which admittedly doesn't take Manhattan into account - they MUST fall.

If you look at the Case-Schiller index it was at 185 when the crash started; 100 was the mean from about 1900. If you only include the post-WWII period, the mean was around 110 - factoring out the war and the depression and premodern times at the beginning of the last century - which would mean that prices, on the whole would have to fall 41% (75/185). They will probably overshoot because falling asset prices almost always do (else the moving average would change, which it hasn't since 1945); hence my prediction.

Anyway you look at these data that I can see, there's no way to go but down.

stevejhx: verain, I specifically said I don't know if there is collusion and I wasn't accusing anyone of anything. Can I be clearer?

KISS, I base that figure on the 12x annual rent ratio, using today's rents. I live in an apartment that costs about $4,500 to rent. Across the street a nearly identical apartment sells for $1.1 million or more. Using a 30-year fixed jumbo nonconforming loan rate of 7.5% (if you can get one!), 20% down, that gives me total mortgage payments of $6,153. Add in (non-abated) property taxes of $1,000 and common charges of $1,000 per month, that gives me total monthly costs of $8,153, or 81% more to buy than to rent virtually identical apartments. That would mean that that property would have to fall by 45% in value for the monthly cost to buy it to equal the monthly cost to rent it.

It happens that prices have doubled since 2004 - not necessarily medians, but using a Case-Schiller like index of following the price of the same apartment over time. If you go here:

http://350bleecker.com/policy/sales.html

you will see an excellent source of information tracking apartment sales over time at the building I used to live in. Here are two virtually identical apartments:

10/06/07 5K $775,000
11/05/03 4R $425,000

The price rose 82% from the end of 2003 through the end of 2007. Returning to that value will require a fall of half that amount, percentage-wise. Approximately the same ratio as where I currently live in Chelsea and the place across the street.

I've done this for dozens of apartments - compare virtually identical sales and rentals - and it always comes out the same: right now it is on average about twice as expensive to own as to rent. Today's rents indicate that prices have to fall to 2004 levels to be in long-term equilibrium, which is 12x annual rent = purchase price. That is the ratio that brings the 40x annual rent / 28% total housing expenses into equilibrium; they are the same figure just calculated slightly differently.

Unless incomes rise suddenly, which since Wall Street is decimated I doubt will happen. Rents are nearly 100% correlated to incomes, property prices are nearly 100% correlated to rents. Over time.

But they're way out of whack right now.

To return to those prices would therefore require a 50% decrease from today. You can see that that's approximately what the apartment across the street would have to fall for today's rents to be equal to today's purchase prices.

weasel-boy

Listen to yoursel. Calm down. Chill.

There is no need to do anything but repeat myself, because I can stay on point and don't have to spew all over these boards.

So, once again, in earlier threads, YOU have cited the Case Shiller index/report as being worthy of bolstering your arguments regarding Manhattan real estate, including starting your own thread on streeteasy.com titled by you "HOME PRICES FALL 14.4% IN PAST YEAR, CASE-SHILLER SAYS"

And NOW, you're ATTACKING the Case Schiller index report as having LITTLE or NOTHING to do with Manhattan real estate comps in any way, shape, or form, and claimimg "...Therefore, it (Case Shiller) is not indicative of Manhattan at all.

Your vehemence is unseemly. Stop whining.

Malraux, denial is more than a river.

That's AA. Denial is also one of psychology's "Primitive defenses," indicative of borderline personality disorder.

Here's another: "splitting," where someone is viewed as all good or all bad. I, alas, am all bad in your mind.

Then, related, is "black and white thinking," such as "you CITED Shiller and you're ATTACKING Shiller, but you can't do both at the same time!"

Another is "magical thinking," such as that real estate prices always go up.

And "projective identification," whereby you assign untrue motives to another person, and then act as if those untrue motives were real.

You might want to look these up, see how they apply to you and get the necessary assistance.

Since I do not engage in black-and-white thinking, let me reexplain: I use Case-Shiller and their methodology where it is applicable, such as in the prevalence of unsustainable price increases over time. I don't use it where it not applicable, such as claiming that it implies any past movement in Manhattan real-estate prices, because it includes no data about Manhattan.

It does include data about price movements everywhere, and when the methodology is applied to Manhattan, although the index itself contains no data on Manhattan, the unsustainable trend is verified.

"Your vehemence is unseemly. Stop whining."

Really? I thought I was being so pleasant. I think that might be .... projective identification!

Wow!

Interesting, weasel-boy.

I see the curbed monitors removed and edited reams and reams of your posts last night.

Even they must have thought that you were out of control.

LMAO

No, malraux, no one has edited any of my posts. No one has contacted me from streeteasy. No one has stopped me from posting.

Sorry.

Sorry, too, that you simply can't bring yourself to admit that your initial post in this thread is absolutely, positively inaccurate, because the Case Shiller index does not include data from Manhattan. Sorry, as well, that you simply can't bring yourself to admit that what I did with the Case Shiller index - duplicate it using properties in Manhattan - is perfectly valid for comparison purposes.

I feel very sorry for you.

NOT to stick-up for Steve, but, I think what he was trying to say was that the CS report use as a guidline-housing is down across the country, and anyone who thinks that Manhattan is immune or THAT IT IS DIFFERENT THIS TIME, should watch for those comments and RUN. Manhattan is not immune and will most likely be the last market to decline. And, yes there are many reasons why one can argue that Manhattan is different, only time will tell.

dledven, that is exactly correct. C-S contains no data on Manhattan since it only counts single-family homes, which is an immaterial inventory in Manhattan. Nonetheless, if we look at how CS has behaved in markets that are sinking, and compare what happened over that same time to what happened in Manhattan using the CS methodology, and we see that things here happened as they did elsewhere, then it's perfectly valid to assume that what is happening there will happen here.

That's what I did. malraux understands that. What malraux can't do is bring himself to admit that his initial post, "that Case Schiller indicates prices for the first four months of this year in prime Manhattan have probably not dropped or risen," is completely fabricated and untrue, since C-S contain no data from Manhattan.

Instead, I'm vilified by malraux, vverain, ccdevi, Sneaky Pete, JuiceMan and the like. Rather, they attack me personally (which is fine) but they don't put up any numbers, any theory to support their views.

They can't even admit they're wrong.

Hmmm, I'm concerned. malraux has still not admitted that the opening post - "prime Manhattan prices have probably been pretty close to neither rising nor falling since the beginning of the this year, and in the past 12 months have fallen less than 5%" - is unsupported by the Case Shiller index, which only counts single-family homes.

Yes the tone here has changed. Nobody's talking about the inherent value of marble countertops anymore, and why they make an apartment so much more appealing.

Now everybody's talking about how low to bid on an apartment. Or trying to prove that "prime Manhattan prices have probably been pretty close to neither rising nor falling since the beginning of the this year, and in the past 12 months have fallen less than 5%" by using an index that doesn't include Manhattan.

I'm glad I've done my part.

Still no sign of malraux. I hope he didn't deliberately injure himself after not being able to admit to himself that the Case Shiller index does not support his position on the relative prices of PRIME Manhattan properties (as he calls them) because the Case Shiller index only counts single-family homes....

Hmmm, still no malraux....

Hmmm....

Hmmm, weasel-boy can't admit that his theory was wrong.

Hey weasel-boy, why don't you take a look at dco's post here:

http://www.streeteasy.com/nyc/talk/discussion/4081-rent-or-buy-just-posted-you-do-the-math

and tell us how you would make money - no, never mind, forget that: break even on a cash-flow basis - on those two units, using real long-term financing and standard leverage. (Oh, sorry, vverain thinks that real estate isn't leveraged.)

steve, you have posted multiple times on just about every thread over the past few days and have said nothing new. Give it a rest. It's boring. I'm all for a good debate but you have commandeered this board for your own personal shitfest. You have no reason to listen to me but I'm asking you to please pick a couple threads or start your own. Give some other folks a chance to weigh in and spark some new and interesting discussions.

Nope, not on every thread. For the most part just on the ones that I start.

Sorry you don't like the discussions. Which one don't you like? That 23% of all listings have had a price reduction? That it's 15% in the super-luxury category?

Or that the National Association of Realtors' chief economist said that the real estate bubble would last another 10 years?

Or that weasel-boy can't admit that he made a mistake because the Case Shiller index proves nothing about Manhattan?

Or the actual carnage on Wall Street versus your rose-colored glasses prediction?

That's entirely new stuff, all very compelling.

The old stuff was published by dco, but it yet again proved what you deny - that it's twice as expensive to buy as to rent?

No JuiceMan, if you don't want to read it don't, but I'll keep on posting it. You don't like it because it's all true. What you said just a few months could not happen in Manhattan is happening before your very eyes for all the reasons I said it would. Sorry.

There are times when I don't post for days or weeks. But the season is ripe....

And BTW, JuiceMan, you can take credit for all my postings these past 2 days, after your pathetic posting about Diane Rodriguez on CNBC, and saying, essentially, "Are you implying that someone on the OBAMA ELECTION TEAM is lying?"

It was pathetic.

Just like weasel-boy's not admitting that Case Shiller is unrelated to Manhattan. Boy he tried to take me to task when I wouldn't make a ridiculous bet on where prices would be in a year - who would? - but when his back's to the fire, he's mighty silent.

Just pathetic.

Poor malraux. JuiceMan asked me to admit that I said that in 2006 inventory didn't reach 8,000, which according to the data I had it hadn't, but he showed me other data which proved I was wrong & so I admitted it, but malraux can't do the same.

And JuiceMan - Jonathan Miller? - can't hold malraux to the same standard.

Pathetic.

So, JuiceMan, you don't want to hold yourself and malraux to the same standard you hold me to?

The real estate market today is dead. Look at the price cuts.

i'm up at 1.25am. don't ask why. (i'll confess to you that i'm a loser.)

i've taken a second to tabulate steve's responses on this thread alone. before the posts start counting off how many DAYS ago a person posted, it counts the number of HOURS ago the person posted. steve posted 17 hours ago. then 14 hours ago. then 13, 11, 9, 8, 7, 6, 4, 3 hours ago. let me repeat that: as of 1.30am, steve posted at the following times:
17 hours ago
13 hours ago
11 hours ago
9 hours ago
8 hours ago
7 hours ago
6 hours ago
4 hours ago
3 hours ago
and that's the last one, which comes to about 14 hours of continuous posting, and puts him in bed at approximately 10.30pm.

my question is: who the f is this loser that is POSTING pretty much ALL DAY LONG. i haven't even counted the OTHER threads he's posting on. so this guy seems to be on here ALL friggin day. STEVE, what do you do? are you a student? do you have a job? do you have a life? do you have any friends? do you have a clue? do you have any sense of what a loser you are? do you live all day on your soapbox? do you have a mother? do you spend all your days locked up in your fire island mansion eating spam and eggs? what the hell are you? are you like charles dickens -- paid by the word? are you human? do eat babies?

please refer to the new thread "Stevehjx posts all day long.........................."
for a full update.

Didn't think so JM, malraux.