Apr. 30, 2008 - O - d - y - s - s - e - y ends at 714 Broadway with 4th floor closing

Apr. 27, 2008 - new Manhattan loft listings + closed sales in last 7 days

• there were 26 lofts reported as new to the market in the last 7 days and only 8 as sold
• 15 of the 26 new ones are offered under $2mm, while 5 of the 8 closed sales were under $2mm
  
• only 2 of the 26 new loft listings are in new development, and 2 of the 8 closed sales were in new development
  
• there are (still) 500 lofts reported as available for sale, leading me to wonder why this metric in our system does not work (it has not changed in 4 weeks...)
  
  

  By price	New = 26	Sold = 8
  $500k to $999k	5	2
  $1mm to $1.99mm	10	3
  $2mm to $2.99mm	4	1
  $3mm to $3.99mm	3	1
  $4mm to $4.99mm	1
  $5mm+	3	1

  
  
  

  By neighborhood	New = 26	Sold = 8
  Battery Park City
  Chelsea	3	2
  Clinton		1
  East Village		1
  Financial District	2
  Flatiron	5
  Gramercy	2
  Greenwich Village	2	1
  Kips Bay		1
  Little Italy	1
  Lower East Side
  Murray Hill
  Midtown West
  SoHo	1	1
  Tribeca	7
  Turtle Bay	1
  Upper East Side
  Upper West Side	1
  West Village	1	1

  
  New loft listings in new developments

  45 John Street	1
  67 Murray Street (Griffen Lofts)	1

  
  Sold lofts in new developments

          

  420 West 25 Street (Loft 25)	1
  344 Bowery	1

  
  For information about how I get this stuff and why I slice it as I do, see methodology for New + Sold in The Last Seven Days.
  
  The new data point(?) is Loft Inventory; see my March 30 review for some commentary about (some of) the weakness of this number.
  

Apr. 22, 2008 - waiting for the final number for Steiner sale / looks like a premium

Apr. 20, 2008 - new Manhattan loft listings, closed sales + inventory in last 7 days

• there were 34 lofts reported as new to the market in the last 7 days and only 14 as sold
• 19 of the 34 new ones are offered under $3mm, while 7 of the 14 closed sales were between $1mm and $2mm
  
• only 6 of the 34 new loft listings are in new development, and 4 of the 14 closed sales were in new development
  
• there are (still) 500 lofts reported as available for sale, leading me to wonder why this metric in our system does not work (it has not changed in 3 weeks...)
  
  

   

  By price	New = 34	Sold = 14
  $500k to $999k	3	3
  $1mm to $1.99mm	13	7
  $2mm to $2.99mm	6	1
  $3mm to $3.99mm	3	2
  $4mm to $4.99mm	4
  $5mm+	5	1

  
  
  

   

  By neighborhood	New = 34	Sold = 14
  Battery Park City
  Chelsea	5	3
  Clinton	1
  East Village	2	2
  Financial District		1
  Flatiron	6
  Gramercy
  Greenwich Village	4	1
  Kips Bay
  Little Italy	1
  Lower East Side
  Murray Hill	1	2
  Midtown West
  SoHo	4	1
  Tribeca	4	2
  Turtle Bay	2
  Upper East Side	1	1
  Upper West Side
  West Village	3	1

  
  
  New loft listings in new developments

  1 Seventh Av South	2
  127 Madison Avenue (m127)	1
  44 Mercer Street	3

  
  
  Sold lofts in new developments        

  124 West 24 Street	1
  420 West 25 Street (Loft 25)	1
  127 Madison Avenue (m127)	1
  72 Mercer Street	1

  
  For information about how I get this stuff and why I slice it as I do, see methodology for New + Sold in The Last Seven Days.
  
  The new data point(?) is Loft Inventory; see my March 30 review for some commentary about (some of) the weakness of this number.
  

Apr. 18, 2008 - quick sale at 244 Madison

Apr. 15, 2008 - why so hard to count Manhattan residential real estate sales?

lost some forest for some trees?
I got so caught up in micro-'analysis' yesterday (Mothra v. Godzilla, or the epic battle over Manhattan sales volume reports) that I did not get around to considering the factors that make it so hard to get accurate numbers about something as 'simple' as counting the number of coops and condos in Manhattan that closed between January 1 and March 31.

legitimate reasons for counting things not in city records
The Real Deal ran a piece yesterday that delves into some of the complexity. (Of course, once a firm starts making adjustments, they need to be consistent in doing so to have 'the best' numbers.)

• filing delays (close before end of quarter, filed with city after; can be a factor on either end but especially significant with December holiday delays in filings being recorded)
• managing agent data not (yet) in city records
• "non-legitimate" transfers recorded on ACRIS but not removed (close family transfers, or inter-corporate affiliate deals)

Let's see how this can work, particularly for firms like Miller Samuel and Terra Holdings that have access to managing agent information for buildings being managed by friendly source (Douglas Elliman for MS; Halstead and Brown Harris for Terra) and information from agents in firms that do a lot of transactions (again, both firms), especially if those firms are on-site sales agents for new developments.

Douglas Elliman Property Management reports that X deals were due to close on Monday, March 31 in buildings they manage, or the new developments group at PruDE reports that XX deals were due to close in their buildings that same day. Miller Samuel's report hit the press for publication on Wednesday, April 2, so the press had to have the report on Tuesday, April 1, so Miller Samuel had to cook-and-clean the report by (not later) than March 31. As these X and XX deals could not be recorded with the city by March 31 under any circumstances, no one other than principals and agents in the deals would know about them -- and the PruDE organization is not sharing non-public information with competitors such as Terra. (Maybe this period for anticipated-deals-we-can't-prove-closed is as long as a week.)

Miller Samuel is an appraisal firm. They may include deals that they have done a bank appraisal for, if they are confident that the closing  dates are fixed. (I have no idea if they do.)

Of course, the same is true for the Terra firms and their possible sources of information. They could (legitimately) include as Q1 transactions, deals that are closed-but-unknown-to-the-outside-world. (I think Terra has an affiliate or subsidiary relationship with an appraisal firm, but I am not so certain of this to identify who I think it is.)

So this is how firms can 'over count' deals in a quarter that are not yet public information. But this practice of adjustments creates data issues in future quarters.

data cops earn their dough
Again, I have no idea how well firms police their databases, but if a firm included X + XX deals as Q1 deals because they were told they had closed but to be recorded after March 31, they need to take those deals out of the Q2 report to be issued in 3 months, or they will have double-counted. For Q1 purposes, this may be especially a problem in over-counting deals that closed but to be recorded after December 31 if they already included them in Q407 reports. This may be especially difficult to adjust for if the deals expected to be closed at the end of the quarter did not close as planned, but ended up closing 6 or 8 weeks later -- long enough afterwards that people forgot they had already been counted.

non-deal deals (for these purposes, at least)
Then, there are the phantom deals that are really reflected in city records as property transfers but are not arm's length deals between unaffiliated buyers and sellers. I doubt these are a significant part of the ACRIS numbers in any quarter, but if an owner passes title in a condo to children or grandchildren for estate planning purposes, that does not reflect demand for Manhattan real estate, just family business. Same thing if a condo buyer who bought through a  corporation wants to change ownership to personal names (or vice versa). Or a coop owner who creates a residential real estate trust (with the coop's OK, of course). Or (heaven forfend) a bank takes title to a condo in a foreclosure. You get the idea.

track, adjust, repeat
One would like to believe that careful reporting firms track this stuff carefully and understand what adjustments they make, measure over time whether the adjustments prove out, and have systems in place to avoid double-counting. Not to say anything negative about Terra, but Miller Samuel has been publicly issuing these reports for 14 years, they provide historical data for comparison (for an apples-to-apples comparison), they have a huge distribution to various kinds of market professionals interested in Manhattan real estate (so they can count on being 'caught' if their data prove unreliable) -- not to mention that Jonathan Miller has been a voice in the wilderness for several years (at least) complaining about distortions in the mortgage approval and syndication process, so I have a high degree of confidence that he acts consistently in his reporting in this arena. (Again, nothing bad intended about Terra here; I just don't know what i don't know about them.)

a 3rd voice chimes in on The Number
Interesting that The Real Deal quoted a competing appraisal firm by name about the Q1 numbers. While Jeffrey Jackson, chairman of appraisal firm Mitchell, Maxwell & Jackson, did not reveal the numbers his firm has for Q108, he did tell The Real Deal "his own data agrees more closely with Miller Samuel's lower figure of 2,282 first quarter sales". I wonder if Jackson would have made a public quote in the absence of Mothra publicly attacking Godzilla....

More Inside Baseball, I know. But it drives me nuts when I can't reconcile 'simple' numbers.

Especially when the numbers reported are so specific -- 2,282 from Miller Samuel, not 2,281 or 2,283. As the Terra guy told his troops (as quoted in The Real Deal):

the numbers are not presented "as hard fact, but as an indication of the scope of the report."

Apr. 15, 2008 - 13 Jay Street closed but much appreciated

[n]o pix or floor plan yet on the web, but they are bragging about the kitchen (fully integrated??) and coffee bar (state of the art) but not about a triple mint renovation, or some such. Perhaps it is beautifully done (renovated), perhaps the pix will show beautiful finishes. But they are leading with the location on "one of TriBeCa's sweetest, most treasured and sought after blocks".

Apr. 14, 2008 - Mothra v. Godzilla, or the epic battle over Manhattan sales volume reports

I have consistently compiled data from both public record and reliable industry sources using the same methodology since 1994. These numbers represent the overall Manhattan market and reporting discrepancies could be for a number of reasons, including timing of when the data was polled and which neighborhoods are included in the report. I stand by my numbers and the methodology used to compile them.

too much Inside Baseball?
If the topic of the minutiae in reporting Manhattan real estate data is too geeky, too detailed, then stop reading here. (I don't know the provenance of the term Inside Baseball, but it is used to separate the geeks and Sabre-metricians who measure and count everything from those who just enjoy the game, without slide rules or their modern equivalents; noting wrong with either approach, they're just different.) I am about to launch into a long but meandering and too-confusing analysis, which is the best I can do at blog-speed today. (Before we get into a Hillary-as-RockyI-or-as-RockyIII thing, I have no idea if Godzilla beat Mothra in the movie, or if there were sequels; my point is that we are all getting crushed.)

Anybody who has paid any attention to the periodic reports from the major real estate firms about residential sales activity knows that they are always different. While this is not news in the sense of being new, it is news in the sense that someone should figure out and explain why (though we are so far from that world). Barbanel describes (and quotes) from Greg Heym's 'internal' Halstead and BHS memo, with Heym saying:

[the Miller Samuel] report was incorrect and “missing almost 600 sales, which were available for anyone to view” in the city’s online records.

As The Miller says on his blog, he does not describe other firm's reports as "incorrect" when they differ from his reported data. He also says that "there are many other more important issues to deal with these days" (in his comments), but I happen to agree with Heym and Barbanel that this data point is very important for market psychology: were there 34.3% fewer buyers closing Q108 than Q107 as The Miller reports, or only 1% fewer as Terra reports?

up close to the Madding Crowd
I gather that out in America local Realtor® boards report actual sales data on periodic real time bases without much difficulty or controversy. It is still baffling to me that we can't do this in Manhattan, though it is clear that we cannot do this in Manhattan.

The Miller has his methodology and I have no reason to doubt that he has used the same method since 1994 -- long before coop sales were publicly reported. One of the great things about his reports has always been that they are consistent, and reported in a track-able historical manner. Indeed, on his firm's website, one can slice and dice a lot of different data sets from past years. He has been as transparent as anyone -- indeed, more transparent than anyone -- for years.

That is not to say that Terra's reports are less valid, but to acknowledge that they are different and that it is not so easy to compare their data over time.

Take the 2,857 Q108 sales reported by Terra, a result described as in Heym's memo as "available for anyone to view" in City records (meow!). Terra says that is off 1% year-over-year, so the Q107 base line was about 2,571 (2,857 - 286 = 2,571). Stay with me for a minute, please....

That current 2,857 number seems to include all of Manhattan, as the constant footnote in the Q108 Halstead report says Terra numbers have included Northern Manhattan since Q307, and that current comparative data has been adjusted to reflect this change but that the reports from earlier quarters have not been changed. However, the Q107 Halstead report (i.e., before Northern Manhattan was included) reports 2,657 sales (see p7 of 8 in the report). This year-old number without Northern Manhattan (2,657) is larger than the entire Manhattan number implied for that same year-old number as the base line for measuring change from this year's quarter (2,857 less 1%).

If you follow that, you'll see that the data comparison -- on Terra's terms -- breaks down. If you can't follow that, it's my fault.

Let's try this another way.... Remember that Heym says his number (2,857) is "available for anyone to view" in City records. Barbanel in the Times went to City records. He found that "a review of closing documents filed by last Wednesday, nine days after the end of the quarter, showed that the number of sales was roughly flat compared with the same quarter a year ago." That statement is (1) seemingly consistent with Terra's thrust, and (2) different from The Miller's conclusion about the drop in volume. But Barbanel went on to report

"They [Q108 sales] fell, but by less than 1 percent, or a decline of 11 sales out of nearly 3,500 sales reported in April 2007."

1% sounds like Terra, but nearly 3,500 sales sounds like The Miller. Did Terra under count Q107 by 800+ sales?? According to Barbanel's review of City records, yes. Evidently, it is harder to simply "count" on ACRIS than Terra implies.

playing nice together
The sad fact is that it ridiculously difficult to measure Manhattan real estate and that apparently professional people come up with different answers. Personally, I like to use The Miller analysis for trends because he is the most transparent, has been doing it the longest, and presents the easiest stuff to work with. I can't say if it makes a difference that he is an appraiser, while Heym works for a holding company that owns 2 residential real estate brokerage firms.

The sadder fact is that a critically interesting question (was sales volume flat or did it drop a lot?) has different answers depending on who you talk to. We will have to wait for more data to get a handle on this, even though that future data is guaranteed to differ in different reports.

Oy.

Apr. 13, 2008 - new Manhattan loft listings, closed sales + inventory in last 7 days

• there were 25 lofts reported as new to the market in the last 7 days and only 11 as sold
• 14 of the 25 new ones are offered under $2mm, while 9 of the 11 closed sales were between $1mm and $3mm
  
• only 3 of the 25 new loft listings are in new development, and 3 of the 11 closed sales were in new development
  
• there are (still) 500 lofts reported as available for sale, leading me to question this metric in our system (more on that later...)
  
  

   

  By price	New = 25	Sold = 11
  $500k to $999k	6	1
  $1mm to $1.99mm	8	4
  $2mm to $2.99mm	2	5
  $3mm to $3.99mm	4	1
  $4mm to $4.99mm	2
  $5mm+	3

  
  
  

   

  By neighborhood	New = 25	Sold = 11
  Battery Park City
  Chelsea	4	1
  Clinton
  East Village	2	2
  Financial District	1	1
  Flatiron	4
  Gramercy	2	1
  Greenwich Village
  Kips Bay	1
  Little Italy
  Lower East Side
  Murray Hill	1
  Midtown West
  SoHo	4	3
  Tribeca	3	2
  Turtle Bay
  Upper East Side
  Upper West Side
  West Village	3	1

  
  New loft listings in new developments

  290 Mulberry Street	2
  311 West Broadway (Soho Mews)	1

  
  Sold lofts in new developments

          

  209 East 2 Street	1
  119 Chambers Street	2

  
  For information about how I get this stuff and why I slice it as I do, see methodology for New + Sold in The Last Seven Days.
  
  The new data point(?) is Loft Inventory; see my March 30 review for some commentary about (some of) the weakness of this number.
  

Apr. 12, 2008 - "one of the finest and most honest broker-bloggers ...

© Sandy Mattingly 2008

Apr. 11, 2008 - Q108 Manhattan market reports / more on lofts

Apr. 11, 2008 - Q1 Manhattan market reports highlight high prices + major caveats

Interesting that the two firms that report median sales price for lofts showed year-over-year declines but also (joined by the third firm report) an increase in average price per loft foot. Logically, they found that the mix of lofts sold changed from somewhat larger lofts a year ago to somewhat smaller lofts in this past quarter.

I may come back to this price data another day, but I also want to address now the much more than maddening differences in the firms' sales numbers.

why can't we all just count along?
Curbed posted a small item yesterday about the differences between the Miller  Samuel number of sales for Q108 (2,282, down a sobering 34.3% YOY) compared to the Terra Holdings reported sales (2,857, down an exceedingly modest 1%). I posted a question this morning to Jonathan Miller on his blog about this, and will update this when (if) I hear an official explanation from the Miller Samuel 'side'. But the Terra Holdings side is throwing some smack, if Curbed is accurately quoting an actual internal memo from the Chief Economist for Terra, Greg Heym:

One of the reports showed 2,282 closings, a figure we know to be incorrect. Our report was based on 2,857 closings, 99% of which were verified through public records available through the ACRIS system (the remaining 1% is through managing agents).

We understand that this discrepancy has caused some confusion, so please keep the following in mind when speaking with your clients and customers:

· Our report includes all sales in Manhattan which are verified by our Research Department either through the NYC Dept of Finance (using ACRIS), or by the managing agent of the building. Our market reports have never been based on only our company’s sales, and have always contained every public record available at the time the report was issued.

Therefore, our reports are the most comprehensive and accurate in the industry.

· The firm reporting the 34% decline in sales has not been able to explain why their report is missing almost 600 sales, which were available for anyone to view on the ACRIS homepage.

Apr. 10, 2008 - why a gag rule within REBNY about specific listings?

Apr. 9, 2008 - end of an era for Manhattan Loft Guy / a new day dawns?

Apr. 7, 2008 - more bad 2d floor news / 135 Watts back + lower / is it the tea?

[The original post:]

135 Watts Street, 2d floor is back on the Manhattan loft market today, after a contract being signed on March 28, according to the inter-firm data base. That's gotta hurt, as it has been on the market since December starting at $3.695mm, and bouncing up and down a bit to the current $3.05mm. I hit it in an open house review a month ago:
 

Apr. 7, 2008 - past the point of pain at 32 West 18 Street w new price drop

Apr. 6, 2008 - new Manhattan loft listings, closed sales + inventory in last 7 days

• there were 50 lofts reported as new to the market in the last 7 days and 20 as sold
• 32 of the 50 new ones are offered between $1mm and $3mm, while 15 of the 20 closed sales were under $3mm
  
• only 4 of the 50 new loft listings are in new development, and 5 of the 20 closed sales were in new development
  
• there are (still) 500 lofts reported as available for sale, despite the  (typical) imbalance between lofts new to market and lofts sold
  
  

   

  By price	New = 50	Sold = 20
  $500k to $999k	6	4
  $1mm to $1.99mm	18	6
  $2mm to $2.99mm	14	5
  $3mm to $3.99mm	6	3
  $4mm to $4.99mm	2
  $5mm+	4	2

  
  
  

   

  By neighborhood	New = 50	Sold = 20
  Battery Park City
  Chelsea	4	1
  Clinton		2
  East Village
  Financial District	6	5
  Flatiron	4
  Gramercy	3	2
  Greenwich Village	8	2
  Kips Bay	1
  Little Italy
  Lower East Side	1
  Murray Hill	1
  Midtown West		1
  SoHo	3	3
  Tribeca	7	2
  Turtle Bay		1
  Upper East Side		1
  Upper West Side	7
  West Village	5

  
  New loft listings in new developments

  420 West 25 Street (Loft 25)	1
  15 East 26 Street (15 Madison Sq No)	1
  243 West 60 Street (Adagio)	2

  
  Sold lofts in new developments

          

  421 West 54 Street (Hit Factory)	2
  20 West Street (Downtown Club)	3

  
  For information about how I get this stuff and why I slice it as I do, see methodology for New + Sold in The Last Seven Days.
  
  The new data point from last week is Loft Inventory; see that review for some commentary about the weakness of this number.
  

Apr. 3, 2008 - 40 years ago

Apr. 3, 2008 - ... 3 (more) french hens ... 2 (more) price drops (477 Broome + 28 West 38 St)

Apr. 2, 2008 - 'nother new one at 138 Duane