The chatter about the market?high prices, lots of deals in contract, bidding wars?isn't yet reflected in the hard numbers of Manhattan co-op and condo sales. The Journal crunched those numbers of closed sales for the past year and found that in the second quarter, the median price is only up 0.2 percent and the number of sales up 0.7 percent, essentially flat. Buyers, still a bit scarred by the market upheaval of the past few years, are taking it slow with their deals and are especially cautious about not paying more for real estate than it's worth. All of which is?unusually logical behavior, for the Manhattan real estate world.
As for all those high-priced deals that are rumored to be happening now, they simply haven't shown up in the data yet. Some might appear in the third quarter, but many others, for new developments, won't have any affect on the market numbers until those developments begin closings in 2014 or 2015.
· Despite High-Price Talk, Manhattan Housing Market Is Flat [WSJ]
· Market Analysis coverage [Curbed]
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