WORLD PROPERTY CHANNEL ®

(NEW YORK, NY) -- It isn't often that seven separate apartment and condominium  industry watchers in Manhattan agree unanimously on any subject but this time around it was no contest. 

Manhattan skyline

Manhattan apartment and condo prices have declined for the second straight quarter and expect to fall even more at year end.

Buyers are grabbing the bargain-priced properties in the biggest sales increase in 13 years. The number of sales jumped 46 percent from the second quarter, the biggest third quarter increase since 1996.

Corcoran Group and PropertyShark.com say the median price for apartments  has dropped 18 percent from this time last year.

Data by Brown Harris Stevens and Halstead Property LLC show the fall level is 14 percent.

StreetEasy.com puts the dip at 12 percent.

Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate and Miller Samuel Inc. say the third-quarter slide at 8.4 percent brought the media price to $850,000.

Jonathan Miller

"We're turning the corner but we are not at a bottom," Jonathan Miller, president, Miller Samuel Inc. appraisers, told Bloomberg News.

Miller says about 6,000 apartments in new developments haven't even been listed for sale yet.
The number of apartments for sale declined 4.6 percent from the previous year to 8,389 listings in the third quarter.

 It was the first year over year decline in sales inventory since the fourth quarter of 2007, Miller says. The 10- year average is 7,142 apartments listed for sale in each quarter.
 
Studio apartment prices fell 6 percent from a year earlier to a median of $399,000. One-bedrooms dropped 11 percent to $645,000; two-bedrooms fell 23 percent to $1.18 million and three-bedrooms dropped 41 percent to $2.25 million.

Broadway & 89th St., NYC

Four bedroom apartments plunged 49 percent to a median of $5.18 million, reflecting, in part, a decline in luxury sales.  Those sales declined 16 percent. The luxury segment is defined as the top ten percent of co-op and condo sales.

About 2,900 cooperative apartments were listed with price cuts, a 77 percent increase from a year earlier. There were also 2,400 condo listings with price cuts, 72 percent more than last year, StreetEasy said.

In midtown, condo owners sliced an average of 8.3 percent off their asking price, while downtown owners trimmed 8.4 percent.

Many buyers shunned new buildings. Sales in new developments plunged 65 percent from last year, making new construction only 19 percent of the sales market in the third quarter, according to StreetEasy.

Manhattan Midetown

On the Upper East Side, the median price of existing co- ops fell 6 percent to $741,000, according to Corcoran and PropertyShark.com. Condominiums in the area fell 6 percent, to a median of $1.15 million. On the Upper West Side, co-op re- sales slid 15 percent to a median of $744,000, and condos climbed 9 percent to a median of $1.29 million.

The average price per square foot of condos on the Upper East Side fell 10 percent in the third quarter to $1,249, according to Halstead and Brown Harris, both owned by Terra Holdings LLC.

The average price per square foot of condominiums on the Upper West side also fell 10 percent, to $1,306. Sales at 15 Central Park West figure into that decline, with seven closings there in the third quarter, compared with 23 the same time last year, Gregory Heym, chief economist for Terra Holdings, told Bloomberg News. 

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