The Buyers are not Buying

Although the Manhattan Real Estate market is holding up better than markets in most of the rest of the country, it is still not healthy. Indeed, the patient is likely to get sicker in the near term. According to a recent study, just 1.9% of Americans plan to buy a home in the next six months, down from 2.6% a year ago. This percentage is probably much lower in Manhattan, mainly due to the fact that apartment prices have held up better.


Los Angeles, Miami, San Diego and San Francisco all have seen annual declines of more than 26 percent. Prices in New York have fallen approximately 7% percent since September 2007. With massive layoffs of Wall Street (Citibank alone is cutting more than 50,000 jobs), there is bound to be a heavy influx of new inventory hitting the market in early 2009. All told, it does not look pretty! Hopefully, there will be better news to report after the holidays. Enjoy your turkey!