This month, I am combining a market check-in with my new development updates.
Some main market views:

• Two bedroom / One-bath units are just about back to 2008 numbers.

  They should surpass them by end of the Spring.

• Cooperative One bedroom pricing has vastly improved, but still has a way to go overall.
• Downtown pricing for all sized apartments has moved beyond 2007-2008.

  Shockingly low inventory, especially in condominiums and in better buildings, has created a frenzy.

Large apartments are simply disappearing.

$1500-1800 per square foot is a new normal, where $1000-1200 was in 2007.

We are bringing a new unit to market today, which will likely see a feature in tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal, in one of the top Greenwich Village cooperatives, that will fit right into this picture.

We already have request for access and are just live today.
And then we move to New Developments.
Last month, we had the pleasure of visiting the 150 charles sales office last month, which is now 70% sold in just six weeks.

Shocking!
56 leonard, is also in contract to the same degree after about a month of marketing.

That was a fun story.

I had visited their sales office in 2008 right before things imploded, a gorgeous and interesting design done by Herzog & DeMeuron, who designed 40 Bond, the Bird’s Nest of 2008 Beijing notoriety, among other buildings which earned them the Pritzker Prize.

The sales office for Leonard street opened the day Lehman Brothers went under.

Timing was not a good omen, and things were shuttered for all of this time.

56 Leonard Street in Tribeca

These are design-forward ideas which buyers have snapped up at a rate which just defies logic.
Except that the logic is there:
1) No inventory
2) Foreign buyers believe strongly in the stability of the NYC market.

Parking money in design they can understand and admire is a solid investment, provided the currency is US and not Euro.
There are many more reasons why buyers are flocking here, and we haven’t even covered New Yorkers, who are pleased if they bought smaller apartments in 2007 and want to upgrade.

Their condominiums in Tribeca have appreciated, they can sell them to other apartment shoppers, and park themselves in larger, albeit more expensive, units in the neighborhood, if they can win the bids.
Other recent re-visits for me have included Manhattan House, which appears weekly in the New York Times magazine as an advertisement.

Manhattan House proves the power of patience and timing.

They are selling briskly now, despite similar setbacks to the rest of New Developments in 2008/2009.
New developments I’ve covered in the last few months are coming officially to market, and we are meeting with developers who only wish they had their buildings ready now- but will not have them until a year from this Spring, even for market.

They are projecting $1500-1800 per square foot for less prime areas, and we are exploring to see if the current sales data will support those projections.
Further, we are seeing more inventory coming on the market recently, but as Jonathan Miller put it in this terrific article, the sponge is hardly getting wet, referring to the lack of inventory to be absorbed.
We haven’t even discussed the lack of multi-family buildings for investors, who are finding serious competition for truly low returns.

Bloomberg had a wonderful article yesterday showing the popularity even of small walk-up buildings for large investment outfits.
In all, it’s a very heated time for the marketplace.

Buyers must come out guns blazing, and sellers should be heartened by the frenzy, although we hope that we can aid in tempering any temptation to be overly greedy in their pricing desires.
More to come next month!