Too Much of a Reach?

TO those who say it can’t happen here, Joshua Kahr, the founder of Kahr Real Estate Services, an advisory firm, offered some sobering thoughts on the potential collapse of the Manhattan real estate market in a recent newsletter. He recently visited Hong Kong, Singapore, Calgary, Miami, Phoenix, Denver and Washington. “In every single one of those markets,” he said, “the locals will give you their... [more]

TO those who say it can’t happen here, Joshua Kahr, the founder of Kahr Real Estate Services, an advisory firm, offered some sobering thoughts on the potential collapse of the Manhattan real estate market in a recent newsletter. He recently visited Hong Kong, Singapore, Calgary, Miami, Phoenix, Denver and Washington. “In every single one of those markets,” he said, “the locals will give you their reasons why their market won’t be as affected as much by the global credit meltdown as everyone else’s will be. Unfortunately, they can’t all be right. Research has shown that everyone thinks that they are better than average.” Mr. Kahr provides an illustration, a table of Manhattan condo prices that reminds readers that it took four years, until 1993, for prices to hit bottom from the peak in 1989, and another four years for the market to claw its way back to the 1989 level. In this context, a recent listing of a town house at 26 West 76th Street, on a leafy block just off Central Park, may be a powerful example of the audacity of hope. The asking price for the gutted and rebuilt 1890s building is $25 million, about 60 percent more than the most expensive town house ever sold on the Upper West Side. Adam Gordon, a developer, bought the 25-foot-wide house for $5.8 million in 2006. He emptied the building of tenants, rebuilt the entrance and added Juliet balconies and a full-width four-story extension. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/realestate/07deal3.html?ref=realestate [less]