[Ooh, look at the pretty colors. This week, chartman Jonathan Miller breaks out the big palette for a look at the price volatility of studios to 4+ BRs over the last two years. The details from Miller below. Click on the image to expand.]
In this week's chart, I looked at the last two years of Manhattan sales by quarter, plotting the average sales price per quarter against the prior quarter results. I know, (I really do know), that a prior quarter comparison does not take into account seasonal changes in prices and that smaller data sets show more volatility (e.g., 4-bedrooms have fewer sales).
However, I have made so much of the shift in apartment mix each quarter that I simply wanted to show patterns of volatility, if any. In other words, which segments of the market have been more volatile in terms of pricing and correlate this with the type of apartment (ie studio, 1-bedroom, 2-bedroom, etc.). The chart loosely shows a general pattern in price volatility by size. Larger units seem to show more fluctuation and are more likely to show a negative change than smaller units.
The results have nothing to do with long-term appreciation, though. I think a future extension of this idea would be to correlate this with mortgage rates and Wall Street bonuses to see how this external influence affects the volatility of the different size segments.
· Percent Average Price Volatility [Miller Samuel]