Who to listen to?

A: IT DEPENDS ON WHAT YOU WANT TO HEAR.

It’s that time again. All the responsible communicators of our industry analyze the “quarterly reports”, and educate the consumer about where things are……supposedly. The problem is that none of them reflect the same parameters of information.

CORE is the first company that started a Realtime Report that reflects CONTRACT SIGNED data, and not CLOSED SALES data. Simply, this means we reflect data from a specific time in the market when deals are being consummated, not data from a broad time period from months (or years) ago on negotiated deals that happen to close in the same period. This is why we see a lot of data that trails the market by as much as a year or more, and remains inconsistent to what brokers, buyers, and sellers are experiencing in Real Time!

Here’s this past Quarter’s Realtime Report.

Going up or down?

It seems as if every time I open the paper or go online there’s a story about how terrible the real estate market is and how we’re all doomed! Well, the mass media has been waiting to cover this story for many years. Some even wrote about the crash 5 years before the market peaked. Could they have had that much foresight? (See the definition of sar-casm in Webster’s).

Just this week alone NY Magazine published a story about “The Bust of Williamsburg” and The Observer covered the “Condo Doom” of all the supposed stalled projects in Williamsburg and Greenpoint. I know of a few of these mentioned that are far from stalled! The line between news and entertainment seems more blurry than ever.

On the other side of the coin, I find it interesting that the talk amongst my peers seems to be of rebound and exciting opportunity. Some are even Twittering RT@Corcoran_Group CEO Pam Liebman: “In June, Manhattan had 11 deals over $5M. Brooklyn had numerous sales over $1M & several townhouse sales in Cobble Hill” and RT@Corcoran_Group Corcoran CEO Pam Liebman: “There has been a LOT of pent-up demand that couldn’t wait anymore to take advantage of lower (home) prices.” and RT@Halstead Get em’ while they’re hot! Brooklyn Brownstones are flying off the shelf!

I am most intrigued by those who have no agenda. Matthew Barron is one of those people and he releases a monthly newsletter called Perspectives. This month he contends that “the current environment is the perfect time to consider investing in NYC real estate”. Read more here… Perspectives July 09.