A few factors drive price: consumer confidence, supply, demand.
According to a Bloomberg News article this week, there’s a lack of inventory of luxury housing, and prices are robust. Well, no kidding! This was predicted by yours truly (OK, and a few others) a few years ago when the development world took a dive in the wake of the credit crunch and no one was building anything new. Most of the “luxury” inventory consists of only a few types of product, and ironically, there is very little of it in Manhattan – one of the most expensive cities on the globe. If you own one of these — new development, prime location large homes on Central Park, Park and Fifth Avenues, penthouses, townhouses, and large downtown lofts — then you have a trophy.
Owners of these types of properties are generally financially sound enough to only sell when they want to. They can weather a bad market and sell when the market is more favorable. Developers who time this market right have a huge advantage to sit on their inventory, and wait for their number. And wait, they have.
If you’re lucky enough to be able to afford a trophy you should buy it because it wasn’t too long ago that talk of $2,000 per square foot on 57th Street was the stuff of a fiction novel. Now a developer is claiming $10,000 per foot for a building with a view.
To be continued…
Shaun Osher is the founder and CEO of CORE.