Manhattan Market Dashboard
Active Inventory — 4,897
New Listings — 127
Signed Contracts — 166
30-Day Contract Pace — 860
Median Days on Market
Under $1M — 79 days
$1M–$2M — 80 days
$2M–$4M — 78 days
$4M+ — 87 days
30-Year Fixed Mortgage Rate — 6.65%
The Market Dashboard uses the most current figures available from sources we can verify.
What I Notice
Manhattan inventory fell another 5.6% last week and is now 18.8% below where it was a year ago. New listings dropped to just 127, the lowest weekly influx of the season, while signed contracts fell 14% for the week and 17% from last year. Some of this is what we expect in the middle of August, but the continuing decline in inventory is worth watching. We are going into the fall market with considerably fewer apartments for sale than we had a year ago.
A New Life for the Flatiron Building
I saw something this week about the Flatiron Building that I found interesting. The conversion from offices to luxury apartments isn’t even finished yet, but 18 of the 22 apartments that have been publicly offered are already spoken for. Some of the prices are extraordinary, including apartments well above $20 million, so this certainly isn’t an answer to New York’s housing shortage, what interested me was the building itself.
The Flatiron Building was completed in 1902. For more than 120 years, we’ve thought of it as an office building and, more importantly, as one of those iconic buildings that simply belongs to New York. Now, people are going to live there!
We’ve been talking for several years about converting New York office buildings to residential use. Most of that conversation has understandably been about how many apartments can be created and whether conversions can help with the housing shortage. The Flatiron Building made me think about it a little differently.
New York has always been very good at finding new uses for old buildings. Neighborhoods change, the way we work changes and the way people want to live changes. Buildings that were designed for one purpose sometimes outlive the purpose for which they were built, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they have outlived their usefulness.
There is something I like about the idea that the Flatiron Building can become something entirely different without becoming any less a part of New York.
A hundred years from now, people will probably still turn around to look at it when they walk down Fifth Avenue.
They’ll just know that someone lives upstairs.
Think Beyond The Deal,
George