New York Co-op and Condo Sales Hit 32-Year High

Stick a fork in New York? Not so fast. Despite the coronavirus pandemic's two-year hit to the city's real estate market, and despite the spike in Omicron infections at the end of last year, the New York City sales market ended 2021 on a giddy note, Brick Underground reports. Fourth quarter sales of Manhattan co-ops and condos rose to their highest annual fourth quarter total in 32 years, according to a new Elliman Report prepared by the appraisal firm Miller Samuel. The quarter saw more deals involving bidding wars than since early 2018. (Sales in the third quarter also hit a 32-year high.)

Prospective sellers will be encouraged to know that the buyer's market of 2020 and early 2021 is a fading memory. Prices for apartments are back up to pre-pandemic levels — and few sellers in the fourth quarter slashed prices. More than seven out of 10 sales saw no change in the asking price while the property was on the market, according to Jonathan Miller, president of  Miller Samuel and the author of the report.

The number of sales of Manhattan apartments increased a whopping 86.4% over the fourth quarter of 2020, according to the report. The median sales price was up 11% to $1.17 million, beating the fourth quarters of 2020 and 2019, and the number of people buying new condos nearly doubled from the same period two years ago, Meanwhile, the median sales price for Manhattan co-ops ($800,000) was up 6.4%, Miller says, a result of buyers going for larger, and therefore more expensive, apartments.

The city’s galloping year-end sales numbers are perhaps the final word to everyone who said New York City was toast. Frederick Warburg Peters, chief executive at recently merged Coldwell Banker Warburg, put the fourth-quarter sales numbers in perspective: “Those pundits who predicted the demise of the city turned out to be wrong.”