Wall St Bonus effect on Selling a Condo

January for most investment banks, February to March for some foreign banks here. Everything is in the bank by march end everywhere.

best time to sell is NOW - don't wait b/c prices are going to keep going down. You wait you lose 50% on what you could get now.

Generally best selling periods are spring or fall. Most people are away during summer and winter.

I wouldn't count on Wall Street Bonuses to have any effect for 07'. Bankers are usually people who make smart investments. In the current real estate cycle buying an apartment is probably a much worse investment than the Dow or S&P which is up 11% on the year vs. real estate which is down. I'd guess Wall Street will hold off on real estate. As mentioned earlier you will probably be better off selling now.
Bloomberg just reported

"Malpass of Bear Stearns Says Fed May Raise Rates on Inflation "

that's a bad sign...

Wall streeters don't buy little studios with their big bucks.

''People realize that the resale market for a studio is not as good,'' said Diane Ramirez, the president of the Halstead Property Company. ''So they try to stretch to afford a one-bedroom.''

It sounds like you should just perhaps shoot yourself and let your heirs sort out how to get somebody to take your apartment.

"Bankers are usually people who make smart investments". If bankers always made smart investments then we'd all be rich. Bankers sound as if they always make smart investments...that's how they make $$.

Bankers find out their bonuses around December so would have an idea of what they could afford. For those who are buying, they'd most likely go with condos as wall st bonu $$ doesn't meet definition of 'income' by many coops boards. And I agree with the above posted, they're not going to buy studios.

as someone who worked on wall street - I can say that bonuses on wall street are divied up between all players - the support staff and those not on the front lines could, in theory, use their extra 10-20K they get from their bonus to finally buy an apartment... although I witnessed a young friend of mine from the trading floor in 2005 walk away from being a buyer in horror after checking out the prices of studios - 450K for the kind of place she was renting

Well between "Big Bonuses Seen Again for Wall St.":http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/07/business/07wall.html and the insane, like wowza, "$16 BIL SACHS OF LOOT":http://www.nypost.com/seven/12132006/news/regionalnews/16_bil_sachs_of_loot_regionalnews_roddy_boyd_and_zachary_kouwe.htm.

I would definitely think that real estate will be a huge beneficiary. No doubt the "you're gonna loose your money if you buy NY real estate" types will all be saying otherwise. We'll see.

I call broker babble

As someone else mentioned, bonuses are NOT just paid to traders. The support staff might well be looking at studios.

But that top 0.1% with the million dollar payouts will be looking for higher end, larger stuff. Not than $1million goes that far anymore anyway, but there you go...

There is always 'flow on' from any change in the market. This means that if the top places are going for more because the bonuses are high, then there is flow on to the lower places for everyone else in the market too.

Actually, bonus money has zero effect on real effect on sales or prices. http://www.nyobserver.com/20061127/20061127_Tom_Acitelli_finance_thelab.asp

To the person who posted the link above - did you actually read the article before posting it!!!

From your own article:

"The Wall Street bonuses appear to affect Manhattan apartment prices much more strongly than they do sales. The psychological boost from the bonuses every year, coupled with the usually slow winter sales season (read: slim pickings on the sales market), typically send springtime prices upward."

It is not about the Volume, it is about the price.

Bonus money affects both sales and prices, From the top to the bottom.

ome sales dropped from 2003 to 2004, and then from 2004 to 2005. And they look like they’ll drop from 2005 to 2006.

But that’s whole years. What about the first halves of the years—those halves supposedly most impacted by Wall Street bonuses, which are generally awarded from December into March?

Advertisement
A bigger bonus season doesn’t mean bigger sales volume.

In the first six months of 2003 and 2004, despite widely varied bonuses the years before ($8.6 billion in 2002 versus $15.8 billion in 2003), the number of sales floated around 4,070, according to Miller Samuel. From the first half of 2005 through the first half of 2006, sales dropped by 270—despite 2005 being a record year for Wall Street bonuses, nearly $3 billion above the 2004 total.