I have a soft spot for anecdotal journalism, like yesterday’s great NYT
piece from Josh Barbanel, featuring not only a $30 million
apartment which the developer won’t allow would-be buyers to inspect, but also
a $16.5 million 2-bedroom apartment on the second floor of the Dakota Building,
on Central Park West.
But today’s news from the Real Estate Board of New York is really impressive:
the average New York City apartment has gone
up 23% in the past year, while the median apartment went up 20%. Median
price per square foot was up 28%.
In other words, we could have a 20% property-market crash in New York City,
and still only be back to where we were at what everybody else seems
to think was the top of the market, in the first quarter of 2006. But as I’ve
said, I
think that unlikely.