Market Firming up threat 2020 version

I like it - thank you. Linking to old thread here: https://streeteasy.com/talk/discussion/45391-new-new-market-firming-up-threat

Stills waiting for someone to make good on these threats.

Lol, I do think this is the third iteration of that typo. But thank you, stache.

You beat me to it 30! But I liked that he kept the a threat alive.

Just heard about a developer taking an 18% haircut on an apartment in a brand new small condo on the upper east side; seems as if developer desperately needed the contract to declare the condo plan effective. Talking in the $5M range.

https://newyorkyimby.com/2020/01/new-york-yimbys-2020-construction-report-shows-36467-new-residential-unit-filings-a-7-1-jump.html

Here's the first open house report from Fritz Frigans. It's a bit long, however I think most will find the information interesting;

Good morning Halstead Open House Index subscribers and supporters,

Happy New Year to all of you! Here is the first report of 2020. What do you think, how did it go? Did we get a January bump? You better believe it! No, you do not need to believe it – with your data and my report you will KNOW it!

We received 201 surveys for this past weekend and the average attendance for all of NYC jumped to 4.48 per open house. Compare this to last year, on January 6, 2019, when we recorded attendance of 4.21 per open house. Last weekend in 2019 the average was 3.23 (but from only 44 surveys submitted) and the weekend prior it was 2.07. The average for all weekends in December 2019 was 2.53 – so this past weekend represents a 77% increase in traffic! Are the bonus people out - looking for real estate?

18 open houses reported zero traffic, which is just 8.9%. Not bad. If you anticipate a very slow open house in the future, I recommend two books to read, to help you grow your business. “Crucial Conversations” – excellent book on hard stake negotiations. “365 Thank Yous: The Year a Simple Act of Daily gratitude Changed My Life”– book recommend also by Ninja Selling to inspire you how, what and to whom to write thank you notes each day.

The most visited open house was reported by Phyllis Gallaway from Sotheby’s. She greeted 41 parties at her first open house for a 2BR co-op at 1725 York Avenue on the Upper East Side. Here, in her own words: “Apt is triple mint, priced to sell and has very low maintenance- also a financially sound building. I had an assistant at the showing, a bit difficult with the crowd, but doable. Yes to offers. Beautiful home!!!”

There were 4306 open houses last weekend in NYC and, in my estimate, 5106 prospective buyers were hopping from one to another. Here is the dataset. Let’s check the action in each borough:

Manhattan – the average jumped to 3.97 per open house. Without that one record open house, the average would have stood at 3.72. Last year, on January 6, 2019, the Manhattan average was 3.80. In all weekends of December 2019, the average was 2.33. Two busy open houses in East Village with 13.50 average (small sample). Central and West Village was busy with 5.00. Upper East Side (4.74) and Upper West Side (4.34) above the average, although, if we remove that one record open house, UES would be below the average with just 3.78. Midtown West (2.33) and Chelsea (2.33) started the year slow. See the rest below.

Brooklyn – the average jumped to 6.47 from 34 open houses received. Last year we recorded 5.95 in Brooklyn from 42 open houses submitted for January 6, 2019 weekend. The average for all weekends in December in Brooklyn was 3.13, so this is a 206% jump in traffic, compared to the December average! Cobble Hill/Carroll Gardens (10.25) and Fort Greene/Clinton Hill (10.00) led the averages. Crown Heights (8.00) and Williamsburg (7.67) not bad either, but beware of small sample sizes. Bed Stuy was below the average with 4.50. See the rest below.

Keith Burkhardt
The Burkhardt Group

'Frigan'

Thank you to Fritz for putting in the effort on these, the agents that participate and Keith for sharing! Good stuff

It seems like the undocumented QE (should one interpret as illegal QE?) starts taking effect.

Looking at the Olshan Market Report I see no signs of improvement this month in the "Luxury" Market over previous year(s).

I feel like your average top quintile working stiff buyers will be buoyed by the current stock market to do a bit more asset rebalancing. If I were in the market today I may consider buying in the spring. This suggests this spring may be a good time. OTOH sellers might push more properties out.

properties > 3-4M will have problems for another 5 years MINIMUM.

not sure why the brokers don't announce the good news here, last weekend's open houses were extremely crowded. i visited a couple of overpriced listings, all of them got at least 10 visitors during first half hour of their open houses

Well, Anton, some of my traffic has gone from "people who aren't going to buy for a year educating themselves about the market" to "people who aren't going to buy for six months educating themselves about the market." It's an improvement but nothing to particularly shout from the rooftops about. We have low interest rates and a hot stock market, but still need more consumer confidence-slash-rising rents to really get buyers off the fence.

What's needed to get buyers off the fence are lower prices. Much of the inventory out there is still priced at aspirational levels.

This is very anecdotal and of course take it with a grain of salt. This is the busiest January we've experienced in 11 years, and I don't have a quantifiable explanation. We're currently negotiating several deals, and should have two townhouses in contract by end of week. I've also spoken to about 9 new buyers over the last two weeks.

It will be interesting to see what the next quarter's numbers bring. It feels good to have made 30% in the s&p in 2019...

Keith Burkhardt
TBG

What has been very surprising, I've never had more new client calls over the course of two weeks, ever.

thoth,
I have noticed a number of the same brokers who are saying activity is up because prices are down are still pricing their own listings at all time record highs.

Ali,
Is it possible that it's really the same buyers who just think we are closer to a market correction?

I think people have heard the market is soft and are out looking for the “deals”. They will quickly retreat when they notice pricing is still aspirational.

We are having daily showings at this point and actually received an offer last week. We rejected it out of hand because we felt the purchase was too much of a stretch for the buyer such that we actually felt we were doing them a service in turning them down, but even if we did not feel that way, the board would have.

Indicators are definitely better than last year using urbandigs data but I would like to see Streeteasy condo index which is 3 months old contract’s signed closing data.

Rents continuing to go up will eventually have a positive impact on resales in $1000-1800 per square ft.

MCR,
Was that potential purchaser represented by a Buyer's Broker?

@30yrs - No buyer’s broker. I think this prospective buyer would be well served by engaging one.

30Y: Unfortunately, that's just human nature - a very common phenomenon, not limited to real estate.

It's just odd to me that people are trying to come up with all sorts of factors that could attract buyers except for the most obvious one.

300,
The Corcoran Q4 report paints a different picture:
"Fourth Quarter 2019 sales fell just 2% annually to 2,717 closings, bringing the 2019 total to 11,660 transactions. Despite a 1% uptick in resale co-op and an 11% boost in new development sales, closings still fell this quarter due to a 13% drop in resale condo sales. Signed contracts, however, were level with 2018 for a third consecutive quarter—improving 1% annually to nearly 2,500 contracts—suggesting that demand, after four years of declines, may finally have stabilized."
https://inhabit.corcoran.com/new-york-city-quarterly-reports-2019/

And I'll note that the "may have finally stabilized" line is just a spin on "declines in volume may have plateaued" because there is certainly no evidence that price declines have.

The first quarter report 2020 will tell the tale. However in the present moment, business is quite good for us.

Curious if you real estate bears were also bearish on equities last year? Obviously when you look at the outflows from the stock market the majority of people were.

Keith

A good friend of mine after being crazy bearish for many years just signed a contract using Keith. And she ended up spending $400-500k more than what she was initially thinking should be enough to get her a nice apartment.

A lot of my bearishness on real estate is political, so I'm not bearish on equities. I was pretty much fully invested last year (except we bought a small weekend place outside of the city).

Congrats on your weekend house!

Have another friend who decided not to buy mid last year but he is actively looking now. Bank stocks being strong has put a lot of money into banker’s pockets as vesting takes place in a week or two from now.

Of course, the two friends I mentioned are buying resales.

Pricing listings at all time record highs looks like a reasonable move now. During QE1~QE3, it tool about 2 years to completely destroy buyers' confidence. If the current undocumented (political correct form of illegal) QE4 can last till end of 2020, buyer confidence will be destroyed again and there would be a new round of melt up.

Reading this thread is like watching Little Orphan Annie.

Yes it's bizarre. 300 and TBG are either delusional or are seriously overestimating the reach of these SE Forums when it comes to representing the strength of the NYC market.

Meanwhile Anton seems to have gotten lost on his way to the ZeroHedge comments section...

Reno, I called upto 40 percent down in my ultra-luxury thread. And appx 30 percent down has actually happened from peak ask / trades. I called low rates and that has happened. Who is delusional? You can keep enjoying whatever your living arrangements are. Nothing wrong with renting.

Please post what your predictions were and how they fared.

Here is my ultra-luxury prediction thread.
https://streeteasy.com/talk/discussion/43143-price-prediction-for-ultra-luxury

Bank are singing to you “rude boy... take it take it 2.5 percent 10/1 arm”.

“Is you big enough”?

I'm not talking about your ultra-lux prediction, I'm talking about your prediction that the $1500-1800 sqft "mid-range" market won't see any compression whatsoever, which is plainly wrong.

Post your past prediction links, how they fared, and what you think is going to happen in the next one year (please use a credible index of prices - I think Street Easy condo index is probably the best one) and show us your record unless you just want to be a "rude boy".

ToRenoOrNotToReno, don't underestimate the FED. They can create another huge bubble that you had never seen.

We already experienced how buyer confidence were completely destroyed in 2012~2014, and they were overbidding like there was no tomorrow back then.

Open house report from Fritz Frigan:

Good afternoon Halstead Open House Index tribe!

How is everyone feeling? Some uptick in the buyers’ activity? Now that more buyers entered the market?

Well, the results from the last weekend certainly point that way! The average attendance in NYC jumped to 5.35 per open house, from 4.48 the weekend before. This is 19% more traffic. 7 open houses reported traffic of 20+ attendees and 28 open houses reported 10+. Check the dataset here for more specifics. Last year, on the weekend of January 13 the average traffic was just 4.08. We received 254 replies (disappointing). There were a total of 5684 open houses held across the city.

15 open houses reported zero attendance. This is just 5.9% you guys should seriously consider the pricing. My take is that, on the weekend when 5.35 people on average attend open houses, and you attract zero – the verdict is: you seem to be grossly overpriced. The market is merciless.

The most visited open house award goes this week to Michael Carroll of BHS this week. His open house at 245 West 74th Street, a 2BR for $1.5M, attracted 29 visitors. Yes, it was his first open house for this property. Here, in his own words: “245 West 74th St #5C – It’s a gorgeous apartment that the sellers wanted to present and price to attract the absolute most number of visitors. They’ve chosen their next home in the neighborhood and are motivated to sell. We also prayed for sunny skies and spring-like temperatures and it worked. We’ve had multiple offers and have just called for best-and-final numbers this afternoon. I worked with a colleague who met visitors in the lobby and gave an overview of the listing.” In fact, 11 out of top 14 most visited open houses this last weekend, were the first open houses. 38 open houses in the sample of 254 were the first. A lot of new product entered the market, as expected.

There were 8056 prospective buyers hopping from one open house to another, in my very unscientific estimate. Here is the dataset. Let’s check the action in each borough:

Manhattan – the average attendances leaped to 5.02, from 3.97 the weekend prior. Last year, on the same weekend, Manhattan traffic was just 3.45. Are we seeing a rebound in buyer’s appetite? Washington Heights (8.60), Battery Park/Financial District (7.50), East Village (6.75), Central & West Village (6.67), Upper West Side (6.32) and Upper East Side (5.61) led the pack. But beware of small sample sizes in Battery Park (2), Washington Heights (5), East Village (4). Harlem was slow (2.92), Midtown West too (2.63). Midtown East below the average with 3.13. See the rest below. We received 202 replies from Manhattan.

Brooklyn – the average jumped to 6.68, from 6.47 the weekend earlier. Last year on the same weekend Brooklyn reported 7.34. Park Slope strong with 9.33. See the rest below and beware of small sample sizes. I am thinking of removing Bushwick. We hardly ever get any response from that Brooklyn neighborhood. We received 38 replies from Brooklyn, last year it was 44.

Certainly not specific to the New York City market. However, the headline data has been pretty good for the general housing market. Two markets I follow, Vail, Colorado and Palm Beach county Florida I've been strong.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/17/us-housing-starts-december-2019.html

Keith Burkhardt
TBG

We’ve got a new offer and it is in the ballpark (meaning overall loss on the apartment due to our taste-specific renovation - cost of which it was not unforeseeable we’d have to absorb - is reasonable/acceptable to us given our spending preferences).

And just for the record I'm not emotional about this, I fully accept whatever direction the market is going in. The reality is, making short-term predictions is next to near impossible for anyone, so I don't. But I guess if you make enough predictions and then eventually get one right, you become a market Oracle.

What we do know, based on a few years of data, the market has been softening since about the end of 2015. How much further it will fall in general or particular segments may fall (or rise) over the next year? Your guess is as good as mine.

However I will continue to observe trends to try to understand where we stand and where things may be heading. As I stated, we're seeing a lot of activity in the current market which is translating into deals getting done in our small world, The Burkhardt Group.

Remember I'm on record in the real deal circa 2007, stating I was starting the Burkhart Group to offer people a discounted rental commission model as I was stepping back from the sales game. The Burkhardt Group began representing buyers in early 2009. I didn't figure out the impending crash on my own, I'm certainly not that smart. But along with reading quite a few contrarian financial blogs, we were looking for a home in Connecticut New Jersey or northern Westchester. I was seeing those markets start to collapse, and considering the frenzy in NYC, thought it was a good time to pull back.

Keith Burkhardt
TBG

Meet your next Mayor?
https://nypost.com/2020/01/20/brooklyn-borough-president-eric-adams-tells-new-new-yorkers-go-back-to-iowa/

That's appalling. On MLK Day! The wolves of hate are out there, and he of all NYC public figures should know better than to fan the flames.

I've lived in a place where leaders spew that kind of hate. It's best to do as he says and not wait around.

Mrs George (a third generation NYC resident) and I are actually looking more at Connecticut compared to when I first came on these boards. There are some amazing deals in backcountry Greenwich but it's hard to find a house small enough. Also I'd love to be on the water but am concerned that sea level rise will affect any property without some elevation. There are 600+ properties for sale in Greenwich alone, so that's plenty of pickings.

I hope you're kidding George. Really, throw in the towel because one fringe, misguided wacko spews some hate? I'm sure if you did a little bit of checking of the news, you'd find some wonderful and powerful articles and speeches that took place on MLK day that would encourage and lift us all up. Not try and divide us.

I think there are a lot of great reasons to move to Connecticut, Greenwich or Litchfield. But the above reference article is not one of them.

Keith Burkhardt
TBG

belongs to the people that was here

Did this clown finish high school?

George, What is the cap rate (Return on equity) in Greenwich with flat prices and say 2-3 percent declining prices?

Apparently DeBlasio had no problem with Adams statement. Perhaps because the plan is for Bill DeBlasio and wife Chirlane McCray are planning on endorsing Adams Mayoral bid in return for him handing over the Brooklyn Borough President's job to her.
https://patch.com/new-york/parkslope/de-blasio-pushes-wife-chirlane-mccray-next-bk-prez-report

I haven't gotten far enough to calculate the full costs or a cap rate. I'm less concerned about falling prices if I spend $2.5m than $5m. I also need to understand maintenance better. But I know that taxes overall are lower, I can have a live-in mommy's helper, and I can have those separate cages I mentioned in another thread.

As for potentially leaving the city, we started seriously thinking about it last year. It's down to several factors. I was badly whacked by NY tax last year. Childcare is extraordinarily expensive since au pairs aren't practical. The quality of life is deteriorating - recently a bum on the subway exposed himself to my kid, and homelessness is at a record high. And, as mentioned, I have direct experience with race-baiting warriors like this guy and how they tear apart communities and kill jobs and real estate markets. No desire to repeat that experience. I also have several friends who have decamped for similar reasons. Manhattan has gotten so expensive that even multi-millionaires can't afford it.

Suburbs are definitely cheaper than NYC if they suit your life style and you are willing to commute. There are many much cheaper ones than Greenwich CT if you put your kids in private school.

https://www.theonion.com/report-nations-gentrified-neighborhoods-threatened-by-1819569723

@30 absolutely best article ever!

"When you have a bejeweled, buckle-shoed duke willing to pay 11 or 12 times the asking price for a block of renovated brownstones—and usually up front with satchels of solid gold guineas—hardworking white-collar people who only make a few hundred thousand dollars a year simply cannot compete," Kennedy said. "If this trend continues, these exclusive, vibrant communities with their sidewalk cafés and faux dive bars will soon be a thing of the past."

The Onion rarely disappoints. As for that politician, I would love to know how he responds to challenges from Native Americans.

A Ramones onesie!

https://www.wsj.com/articles/market-value-of-new-york-real-estate-shows-signs-of-weakening-11579442400

If what Adams means is to repel investors, that's a good idea indeed. We need to first stabilize the RE market after all these years' craziness

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/american-housing-has-gone-insane/605005/

Sometimes I get the feeling I'm in the last household in Manhattan which physically goes shopping 3 or 4 times a week.

Sorry wrong thread.

Good article, if Adams can heavily tax the out-of-state investors and foreign plutocrats, he will gain much votes

https://ny.curbed.com/2020/1/23/21077832/market-report-luxury-condos-manhattan-prices-streeteasy

https://streeteasy.com/blog/q4-2019-streeteasy-market-reports/#_edn2

"Manhattan’s sales market remained sluggish. Home prices fell 3.7% — the slowest pace of 2019 — to $1,086,217, according to the StreetEasy Manhattan Price Index [ii]. Meanwhile, total sales inventory rose 3%, and homes lingered on the market for 96 days, 10 more than last year. Prospective Manhattan buyers are still in the driver’s seat, with significant negotiating power and a huge inventory of homes to choose from."

Just like “all politics are local” one’s view of the market is very local. In my building an apt that had been on the market for over 7 months just sold at a 2014 price. Another apt several floors lower and smaller than mine just rented for more than my apt. Thus I think the rental market remains strong but the sell market is still soft.

Just like “all politics are local” one’s view of the market is very local. In my building an apt that had been on the market for over 7 months just sold at a 2014 price. Another apt several floors lower and smaller than mine just rented for more than my apt. Thus I think the rental market remains strong but the sell market is still soft.

Just like “all politics are local” one’s view of the market is very local. In my building an apt that had been on the market for over 7 months just sold at a 2014 price. Another apt several floors lower and smaller than mine just rented for more than my apt. Thus I think the rental market remains strong but the sell market is still soft.

It’s definitely not as bad as I feared for my tiny segment. I am seeing listing go into contract regularly at 2014 prices. Not great, but not out of the realm of real estate market fluctuations. Curious to see whether this is just bonus money bump in activity or whether it will continue into Feb and March.

For my usual benchmark of Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village prices are definitively higher. However my problem in continuing to use this as my benchmark is that since the June 2019 Rent Regulations changes there are about half the units listed as being available. There are 2 issues with this: First is that I have not been able to ascertain what they are doing with the below market units (are they warehousing them? At first they said they would be but then backtracked on that, but then where are they?). So is it that on average new lease numbers have actually gone down?
Secondly, the reason it was such a good indicator of the market was that with such a large supply they absolutely needed to rent units at whatever the current market price was. At significantly less supply I think that diminishes my argument of how good a representation they are.

A simile I often use to the market for an apartment is that it's like a queue where the person at the head is the one who will spend the most money and diminishing as you go back in the queue. So in the case where there are constantly new people being added to the queue you can always have new people jumping to the front. But if it's the case of bonus money, the pool starts as full at the beginning of the year and then gradually diminishes as the year goes on. So if that's the case and the person standing at the front of your queue buys elsewhere, by definition the person behind them will be willing to pay less. My point being that the answer to MCR's question of whether this is a change in market momentum or an uptick in activity from bonuses is very important.

Sidenote to MCR:
I'm pretty sure I wrote a response to you in some thread recently that there were a number of years where "seasonality" had shifted from "Spring and a little bit of Fall" to this "Big spike in January and then gradually diminishing" in the past.

@30yrs - Yes, it was that response that motivated us to accept one of the multiple offers that came in this month!

harlembuyer, is the unit you mentioned sold by Pete? 2014 price is at or near historic peak, actually excellent

458 West 23rd St Garden
https://streeteasy.com/sale/1029270
03/12/2014
#GRGF
$1,703,000
Recorded Closing

01/21/2020 Price decreased by 19% $1,575,000 ↓
09/25/2019 Price decreased by 15% $1,950,000 ↓
05/16/2019 Listed by Corcoran $2,300,000

55 Wall St #835
https://streeteasy.com/building/cipriani-club-residences-at-55-wall/835
10/31/2006 sold $711,192
11/7/2019 sold $550,000
01/15/2020 asking $495,000

Last week I believe we saw a dip in the numbers, some improvement this week. I don't know what's going on, perhaps 30s point about January, or an actual improvement in the market.

But we are swamped with new clients along with appointment requests. I wouldn't say it's overwhelmingly translating into deals getting done, however we have submitted the number of offers (many times toll contracts are already out). And we're currently in negotiations on 3 deals (after a few signed contracts last week).

With thanks to Fritz Frigan of Halstead for putting this open house report together. If your broker or agent get in touch and submit your information!

'Good morning Halstead Open House Index subscribers and contributors!

It is Thursday, which means my open house report is hitting your inbox…….right now! What happened last weekend?

The numbers are in! The average attendance in NYC jumped again – to 5.23 per open house. January saw total see-saw attendance: first weekend 4.48, 2nd weekend 5.35, 3rd weekend 4.17 and this last weekend 5.23. (See the chart on the bottom, comparing January 2020 vs. January 2019). Last year, on January 27, 2019, the average attendance stood at 4.22. We received 258 reports, the most this year, but still far from good old days when I sometimes received over 400 replies. Short of me paying you, any ideas on how to increase the participation?

28 open houses reported zero attendance, this is 10%. Not bad. When this number hits over 15%, it will be the sign of slow weekends.

The largest attendance mention this week goes to Peter Grazioli of Halstead’s Brooklyn office. He reported 55 parties at his first open house for a multi-unit building in Park Slope for $2,500,000. Yes, his first open house. 10 open houses reported attendance larger than 20 and one reported 37!

According to my analysis, roughly 7861 prospective buyers were hopping from one open house to another last weekend. Here's the dataset. Let’s check what happened in each borough:

Manhattan – the average jumped to 4.90, from 3.98 the weekend before. Huge 23% increase in traffic in Manhattan. (don’t ask me why. If you sort data in the Dataset by area, you will notice a number of open houses reporting 20+ attendance in Manhattan). Large attendance in Other Upper Manhattan Areas (20.00) and Soho & Tribeca (13.00), but from just 2 and 3 open houses reported, respectively. Remember my old saying: beware of small samples! Washington Heights (8.29) above the average, and so were Other Downtown Areas (6.86) and Chelsea (6.00). Interesting that UES (5.36) beat UWS (4.83) again. I wonder if the buyers are finding better values on UES and this drives the traffic? Opinions? Slow in Gramercy Park area (2.67) and Midtown East (2.77). See the rest below. Last year on January 27, 2019, Halstead Index recorded 4.04 for Manhattan.

Brooklyn – the number jumped to 9.73, from 5.44 the weekend prior. But primarily thanks to that record open house from Peter. Without it the Brooklyn average would have been still very strong 7.92 per open house. Super strong in Park Slope (15.71) (we know why), and Bed Stuy (11.67). Slow(er) in Fort Greene (5.33). See the rest below and again, beware of small sample sizes. We received just 26 replies from Brooklyn. Last year, on the same weekend, Brooklyn reported 4.93."

Last week I see no dip at all, instead a big jump. In all overpriced open houses I saw, the sign-in lists had 20+ people. Buyer confidence is being destroyed by the undocumented QE.

Anton -- why are you going to overpriced open houses?

I start this comment by noting that I very much appreciate Anton's participation in SE forums, so I mean no disrespect. Quite the contrary, the sophistication of Russia's disinformation campaign efforts continues to impress me. I imagine a talented individual who is tasked with NY and is just entertaining themselves, as well as the rest of us. Please do carry on.

P.S. - We all have moved on from Boris and appreciate the 21st century screen name update. There are a few language slips that are are tells, bu no worries, very few people are following. Seriously, very few.

Is MCR Moose or Svirrel?

https://therealdeal.com/2020/01/30/slowing-sales-and-tumbling-prices-a-decade-in-manhattan-townhouse-sales/

@30yrs - Ha! Not terribly happy to be up at this hour.
@Anton: 我 说错了。你好草你吗。

For the one of you reading this: Anton has evolved. The language slips are deliberate and apparently not ones that Russians would make. The poster clearly has an agenda, but is misguided in thinking that whatever it is will work with this crowd.

I find news headlines interesting, "slowing Sale's, tumbling prices".

However when you actually read the article, you see townhouse prices are up almost 25% since 2010...

MCR -- lol. That made me literally laugh out loud.

ToRenoOrNotToReno, coz some one (probably 30?) suggested people go to open houses for fun, so I tried to follow

In the highly unlikely event Anton is legit, I feel bad that my comment in Chinese was a bit harsh. Consider it a typo to the extent I misspelled the rare form of alpaca I intended. :)

That's probably how this coronavirus thing started when some gweilo ordered in Wuhan.

Yes, those tones matter, and when inputting via pinyin, proofreading is incredibly important. I am infamous for typos, but at least in English they don’t change the meaning in the drastic way they do in Chinese. I did actually feel quite bad when I read my own egregious typo this morning vs what I had intended to write because I actually do enjoy Anton’s participation. The last three characters in the Chinese I wrote are “cao ni ma.” The phrase has polar opposite meanings depending on tone/character. My intent was “hello comrade,” but what I wrote was worse than “go eff yourself.” Mercifully I am fairly confident Anton cannot read (or speak) Chinese, but I cannot discount the remote possibility that someone who might come across this can. Apologies for both the profanity and the lengthy digression.

People overreact to these simple slips of the tongue. Like the time I was eating breakfast with my ex-wife and I meant to say "Can you please pass the butter?" but by mistake it came out "You f*cking bitch you ruined my life."

So urban digs RESALES statistics which now include any continue to look good on a YOY basis. On absolute basis, ok but not great.
Supply +4% YOY
Pending Sales +29% YOY
Market Pulse 0.4 (25% YOY)

Sorry typo

So urban digs RESALES statistics, which now include more than 5y old developments, continue to look good on a YOY basis. On absolute basis, ok but not great.
Supply +4% YOY
Pending Sales +29% YOY
Market Pulse 0.4 (25% YOY)

The gaming of streeteasy by sponsors of new developments w/r/t closings is despicable.

https://robbreport.com/shelter/new-construction/a-pin-in-the-bubble-how-the-real-estate-market-may-burst-in-the-2020s-2887703/

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/31/realestate/pricing-your-apartment-in-a-slow-market.html

What a poor piece of journalism, referring to the Robb report. Here's what the CEO of Warburg has to say about the current market, not just a selective quote;

https://www.forbes.com/sites/fredpeters/2020/01/02/new-york-city-real-estate-in-q4-2019-the-market-has-begun-to-approach-stasis-after-a-number-of-years-of-decline/