NY Times: Looking for Bottom in N.Y. Real Estate

25 or 40%... are they talking from peak? or some other point....

I love the quote -- 'no one should have to pay well over a million for a standard 1 bed (paraphrase) I think it's ridiculous to pay a 1/2million for an average 1 bedroomm. Also I wish they would include potential buyers perspective in these articles.

From peak.

They're in denial. 50% is minimum, and it will be w/i 2 years. That will bring your average 2-bedroom 2-bath luxury apartment down to the $600,000 range, about where rents would have them.

They would then become affordable.

Perfitz, you can try all the insults you want... but its pretty clear which putz is ACTUALLY getting his a** reamed now.

Everybody read your RE predictions.... and they get funnier each month.

you can email the writer at trogers5@nyc.rr.com

Seriously, Perfitz, you must be so absolutely screwed that now you're even lashing out at me without provocation... you didn't even try and argue Steve's point....

i will never forget petrfitz arguing with me last year that back then, it was the best time EVER, in Manhattan's ENTIRE history of existence, to buy real estate.

that thread simply cracks me up.

post the link! post the link!

I recently posted the thread where petrfitz said he was "extremely bullish" on Manhattan real estate in 2008.

Especially the Lower East Side - REZONING!

Yeah - from trash to crash.

LOL

http://www.streeteasy.com/nyc/talk/discussion/4206-mortgage-stops-lending-

still too funny.

rotfl

Another one of my favorite people from the relatively olden days, 8 months ago:

"LICComment An Alt A mortgage provider in California folds and this is dco's evidence that all financing everywhere has dried up and the market in NYC will crash 50% or more. Genius."

lol, petrfitz now thinks renters might not be losers:

"You dont get it do you? That is why you are a renter."

Attention all sellers:

There is a lot of latent buying interest.

You just need to price in line with current rents - say 12 X.

You can, indeed, sell your apartment. (And then you can buy another perhaps larger one at 12 X rent.)

“I’m not disagreeing with you that values are coming down,” said Pamela Liebman, the president of the Corcoran Group. But, she said, “there’s no way the Manhattan market is dropping to those levels that are being talked about. Certain apartments might, but as a whole it will not happen.”

Yeah, Pam....and no one thought the Dow was going back down to 1997 levels and that Citigroup would become a penny-stock, and that every single investment bank has disappeared or become a bank-holding company. Puh-leez!

iMom, nice to have you back, as well.

Glad you didn't buy that co-op?

steve, I wish I could say I feel guilty, but the schadenfreude is awesome!

There is pleny of financing available for buyers with good credits and down payments, at very low historical rates, and NYC real estate is not down 50%. But other than that, I'm glad steve considers me one of his favorite people.

"There is pleny of financing available for buyers with good credit"

No there's not.

"and down payments"

With the Dow at 6500?

"at very low historical rates"

Not for nonconforming jumbos.

"and NYC real estate is not down 50%"

Yet.

> There is pleny of financing available for buyers with good credits and down payments

I don't disagree, the problem is this description fits a LOT less people than it used to.... and never fit most of the buyers anyway. So this don't help very much...

And not at these prices, skewed as they are for people making a half a million a year or more.

For the most part, they're gone.

This paragraph is the one that is particularly disturbing to me:

"The degree and rate of recovery will be influenced by various factors. A Goldman Sachs analysis of the New York City condo market published in early January addressed the possibility that pay cuts in the financial industry or a significant departure of affluent residents could reduce incomes to their pre-Wall Street boom levels of two decades ago. If per-capita incomes were to revert to twice the national average (versus more recent measures of three times the national average), condo prices would need to fall by 58 percent to match the price-to-income ratios of the late 1990s, before the run-up in the real estate market, according to the analysis."

Uhhhh. "...pre-Wall Street boom levels of two decades ago." That sounds quite a bit further than most have been speculating.

I also laughed at the fact that all of the people commenting about how the market won't fall more than about 30% ALL had a serious stake in keeping people buying apartments.

Seriously. Who the hell is willing to believe ANYONE who derives a paycheck from whether you buy or not about the market?

I hear these hedge/mutual/whatever fund managers all saying (well, those that aren't bear fund managers, anyway) this is a great time to buy and things are drastically oversold and I hear every real estate broker under the sun spouting off B.S. about serious declines not happening here. Does this extreme conflict of interest strike anyone else the wrong way?

Why are most people even considering taking advice from someone who has a livelihood staked so much in LYING TO YOU. If they told the truth, they'd be out of a fugging job. Yet, when they talk about how things are okay, people eat it up. It's ridiculous.

"Uhhhh. "...pre-Wall Street boom levels of two decades ago." That sounds quite a bit further than most have been speculating. "

Not really, since that is like the 20th stroy in a mjor publication to quote from that Goldman report, and this is probably the 100th thread on Streeteasy alone to quote from it.

I didn't mean Streeteasy folks. I'm talking about the "experts." The article states that a 40% decline from peak would put us at 2002 levels. I'm no math expert, but that seems to only put us 1/3 of the way back to the timeframe the Goldman report states.

Unless NYC real estate tanked sometime between 1989 and 2002 (in which case, why say 20 years ago would be the lows?), I would gather that going back to the 20 year ago price level would be quite a bit more than 40% decline...

Either way, none of it spells anything good for prices around here.

You have to love it when they ask a broker to spin his market “I’m not disagreeing with you that values are coming down,” said Pamela Liebman, the president of the Corcoran Group. But, she said, “there’s no way the Manhattan market is dropping to those levels that are being talked about. Certain apartments might, but as a whole it will not happen.”

These are the same putzes who said we would not be declining AT ALL.

So, did they all suddenly get doctorates in economics that gives them the insight into this market decline that they did not have before?

These people are scum.