The Market Report: August 2024

Despite the summer heat wave in New York City, it’s unsurprising that several sectors of our city’s real estate market remained cooler this past month. Just yesterday a property marketing campaign to city real estate agents promoted a “Summer Sleeper Tour” of lingering properties, all promoted as well-priced, nice-looking and if not for the time of year, catchers. From the looks of them, it seems like many are.

 

Mid-summer tends to be a slower activity period of the year. We attribute this year’s pace to the seasonal habits of summer travel, weekends away and the current interest rate environment that has created a stalemate for many sellers who are reluctant to leave their current homes for others at higher rates. Less inventory is keeping buyers on the hunt longer and slowing sales. We see these as greater factors than election year concerns, which exist but often get inflated by the general media.

 

Property inventory was down from last month, in both Manhattan and Brooklyn; it remains historically low, though relatively flat year-over-year. As we went into last August, the market then didn’t present much greater inventory for buyers to choose from. However, as we noted in our past reports, at the end of the first quarter of this year, construction filings were up dramatically (19,819 new residential and hotel units, more than doubling what the city saw the same quarter last year with 9,138 filings).

 

We rounded out this last quarter with the same trend, with 14,795 filings for residential and hotel units, making for one of the highest quarterly counts of the decade. The horizons look up for new inventory with a long view on the next 3-4 years, as developers continue to bet on the residential market. But much of this inventory is a ways out.

 

Faced with lower activity and lower inventory, there are immediate opportunities for both buyers and sellers as we round out the summer in the next month. For both buyers and sellers who are on the hunt for the next purchase, we await the direction the Fed will take on rates moving into fall. For sellers, we saw a spike in deals in the spring, and the same will likely be true come fall. So, prepare now for listing your property and proper pricing to be ahead of the curve with competition.

 

For buyers, look now at inventory. There might be a sleeper out there with your name on it. If the right property for you isn’t currently on the market, starting the hunt now means having the knowledge to beat out your competition with educated pricing when they decide to get back from their summer breaks. There are several sectors of properties in both Manhattan and Brooklyn that remain tight and will remain so. Waiting another year isn’t likely to change that.

 

Manhattan Market Activity

Highlighting our market's past 30 days.