Good News/Bad News

The good news is that the Manhattan real estate market is crashing. The bad news is that it’s not crashing enough:

The cost of a apartment remains steep, according to two real estate reports released today for the final quarter of 2006. The average price was about $1.2 million. That’s 3 to 5 percent higher than a year ago, but 3 to 5 percent below the third quarter of 2006.

Prices tend to slip at the end of the year, explained Jonathan Miller of the residential appraisal firm Miller Samuel. “But we saw a real uptick in transactions in the fourth quarter, which is unusual,” he said.

Sellers came down in their pricing last quarter by nearly 4 percent, Miller said. “They had been pricing their listings as if the market were still appreciating at a 20 percent clip, instead of at a single-digit clip. Anecdotally our impression always was there was a lot of money on the sidelines.” Potential buyers who had decided to wait saw their rents rise.