We found 9,508 listings

THat number is not accurate because it includes duplicate listings and listings in contract. Use the box at Urban Digs. Noah specifically filters out duplicates and listings UC.

UD currently projects 9,191 listings. Of course, we will never know the EXACT number of listings since Manhattan is one of the only markets in the U.S. with no official MLS.

9,225 still represents quite a surge.

Some sucker had to fall into it, so I'm glad it's you:

Sales in Manhattan
We found 9,225 listings with an address

If you press the "has address" button.

No matter - the difference is immaterial.

The "exact" number will never be known because it changes daily. But the "very close" number - however you count it - shows a 3 year inventory.

CRASH.

Maybe Mehmed Oz would like to buy some of them.

PS: MLS is no more accurate than streeteasy.

How is an official MLS no more accurate than a private website?

"How is an official MLS no more accurate than a private website?"

B/c in this case, they get their data from the same place.

In any case, what's the difference between 9225 listings & 9191 listings, if only 250 are being absorbed per month?

Niente.

don't be so bullish guys... remember the meltdown occurred only 6 months ago... anybody can use their credit cards/go on starvation diet to come up with 9-12 months of carrying cost of their apts... wait till 9-09 after all the nycers shut their eyes and go to the beach for the summer.... then the bills gotz to be paid :)

debt is a jealous mistress. divorce isn't disappearing. everyone dies. there will always be a supply of apartments for sale. could the supply start to fall somewhat as prices deteriorate? of course. but anyone who thinks that anything like most of the apartments for sale are not in the 'have to sell' category is a little nutty. demand is they key to this market, not supply.

"debt is a jealous mistress."

Oh Billy Shakes, move over!

Anyway you slice this, assuming no increases in absorption - which is now even more likely given that BofA is going back to the TARP to cover more Merrill Lynch losses - you will soon have a 5-year supply of apartments on the market, with no one buying.

That bodes badly for prices. What sold for $1 million at the peak I had previously predicted would sell for $500,000. We could in fact see 1998 prices, which would be $250,000.

It happened in Japan....

DEC saw 688 closed sales, down from 1,127 a year earlier.

use closed sales, not contracts signed. And also, I would NOT look into my contracts signed data as anything other than trends. Because I dont have a direct feed with internal systems, and use SE for data, keep in mind that many brokers leave their webad as ACTIVE to try to get more calls even AFTER a contract has been signed. You will get something like this from the broker, "Oh, that unit JUST went into contract but I have one just like it I can show you"....

Anyway, I had a weekly average made for that chart on UD.com, to smooth out the spikes that resulted from little to no data on weekends. So monitor trends only.

We dont use CONTRACTS SIGNED, although you can just to see how the number comes out, because we dont know what % of those may never close for whatever reason, and send the listing back onto the market.

They used closed sales from month prior.

TOTAL ACTIVE INVENTORY / TOTAL CLOSED SALES MONTH PRIOR

Stevejhx - have to disagree with you for Manhattan that MLS is not more accurate than SE. SE crawls for updates and sometimes misses updates. Whereas ROLEX system is where brokers directly add/edit/update/close their properties for inclusion with rest of the brokerage community. If a contract is signed, they dont want brokers calling anymore and will update internally rather quickly. In this respect, the internal system is the first data taker. SE tries to catch everything via direct feed with brokerage or webcrawl, and that opens up to more technical problems to catch everything accurately.

But no question, SE has been doing a very good job given the scope of data and # of sources of data.

"use closed sales, not contracts signed."

Sorry, UD, have to disagree with you on that one. Closed sales is a past indicator, not an indicator of absorption. Those closed sales could have been agreed 6 to 12 months ago. Means nothing with respect to today's inventory.

"keep in mind that many brokers leave their webad as ACTIVE to try to get more calls even AFTER a contract has been signed."

True. Which is why look at the information weekly, as over time that normals out.

.....****we interrupt your regulary scheduled program to bring you a live report from StreetEasy with stevejhx****.....(ahem)....(drum roll)...(slight pause)..."YES WE FOUND 9,508 LISTINGS"....gasp, women fainting, men weeping.

what do you mean "WE" found?....what do you have little elves running around from building to building??

you are a cartoon character...

I don't mean "We," steveF. If you press the button STREETEASY is what comes back with "We."

Not me. This website. Must be run by Keebler.

"you are a cartoon character..."

stevejhx - its ok, I too thought that contracts signed would be the better metric to use for more real time, but that is NOT how appraisers do it or how absorption rate is defined.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&defl=en&q=define:absorption+rate&sa=X&oi=glossary_definition&ct=title

NOW, we can look at CONTRACTS SIGNED to get a more forward looking idea of how much higher or lower the AR will go in the coming months, but it wont be entirely accurate because we wont know what deals dont ever get to closing. Plus we dont know what FSBO's or deals outside of the collected CS data close. So we may have MORE actual closings than contracts signed. And also the data picking up contracts signed is IFFY AT BEST!

Looking at OLR, 1 of 4 internal brokerage systems for Manhattan, the period of 12/18/2008 to 1/15/2009, shows 324 CONTRACTS SIGNED. But that is 29 days...so add a few more for normal months and then do the math. This tells us that the AR come FEB or MAR will be signifcantly higher because its about 50% less than the # used for month of DEC..But lets see. OLR also tells me that 392 properties SOLD/CLOSED for the same period, so you can see what I mean.

True that new dev dynamic paints a misleading picture as contracts signed a year ago close today and that adds to closings but not to the CS form of this calculation.

But in general, the calculation is widely used by diving total active inventory by properties sold the month prior.

"The ratio of the number of properties in an area that have been sold against the number available."

That's the "contract rate."

If you want to use your metric - which I still disagree with for the reasons below - you will have to use the full inventory figure, not the "not in contract" figure.

Then, you must recall 4 very important differences in NYC from other places: first that it is not a "time is of the essence" state, meaning that real estate transactions take a very long time to perfect. Second is the prevalence of co-ops, which are also much slower to close. Third is the overweight of new development here. Fourth, there was a sudden and precipitous fall in the number of units going into contract starting in September. Therefore, past figures are irrelevant to what is happening today. If the rate were steady it would be, but that is not the case.

Jonathan Miller uses new contracts signed.

FYI - I asked JM why appraisers used CLOSED SALES and not contracts signed to calculate absorption rates and here is his reponse:

"Because the contracts signed universe is a small fraction of the closed sale universe.

Its meaningless without the majority of the transactions and the fact that its collection is more random. The reliance on contracts as a market barometer is one of the most over hyped and misapplied data points, not for its accuracy, but for its quantity. When people collect contract data its random and thin. If I could get contract data in the same amount as closed data, I would do that in a heartbeat."

I agree..contract signed data is very iffy! I only follow for trends, nothing more.

I agree that under normal market conditions the closed sales indicator is more accurate, and I've always used it in the past myself. But since Lehman the world changed. In 6-9 months it will probably be valid again. Just not right now.

i agree, except w 6-9 months part...this will be a multi-year pressured market

"this will be a multi-year pressured market"

Absolutely, except I think that closings figure will be far more accurate in 6 to 9 months. In the meantime, a good approximation might be the average of new contracts and closings, assuming that the actual absorption rate is somewhere in between.

I still think you're looking at a 5-year supply coming up.

UD, I think this might play into your point. I sold closed on the sale of an apt on 12/31/08 - FSBO. It's not showing up in streeteasy. Will that ever become part of the data?