Average Manhattan apartment report

Sales to reach $24 bn this year

NEW YORK, Dec 17, (AFP): The price of an average apartment in the New York borough of Manhattan has passed the $1 million mark for the first time, according to a study published Wednesday.

The median price — at the midpoint of all sales prices — is now $1.1 million, up 11 percent in a year, said the CityRealty website, which reports on real estate data.

Prices in Manhattan have surged by 60 percent over the past 10 years.

The mean price — the average of all sales prices — is now $1.9 million, up 5.5 percent from last year and 72 percent from 2005.

Total real estate sales in Manhattan this year should reach $24 billion, a 4.2 percent year-on-year increase, according to CityRealty’s projections.

Some 190 Manhattan apartments were sold this year for more than $10 million, a slight decline from the 214 sold in 2014.

The borough’s market is traditionally composed of co-ops, in which apartment owners become shareholders with a voice in the corporation that owns their building, and condominiums, or “condos,” where the owner has a right to use common areas but has less of a voice in building rules or practices.

Condos accounted for a majority of the new construction this year.

But 57 percent of sales were of co-ops, with condos accounting for the remaining sales.

According to CityRealty, the average price per square foot of a Manhattan condo was $1,732 ($18,530 per square meter), a 5 percent rise from 2014. The site did not publish a corresponding figure for co-ops.

The price of new construction was higher, at $2,073 a square foot, though this was down by 5.4 percent from the previous year.

Certain sought-after addresses went for far more than that, notably the new One57 development, a 1,000-foot-high (300 meter) luxury apartment tower on 57th Street in midtown Manhattan.

The average cost per square foot of the 26 apartments sold there this year was $5,149.

But the most expensive address in all Manhattan was 15 Central Park West, a building completed in 2008 that overlooks the world’s most famous park.

Continued from Page 30 The most notable example is National Bank of Abu Dhabi, which saw government deposits plunge by $13bn in the 12 months to October as sovereigns looked to shore up their finances.

The sharp decline in liquidity has had a calamitous effect on new bond placements with Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank the biggest casualty - the issuer had to pull a deal after announcing price thoughts in

September.

“Everyone has been talking about it non-stop since it happened,” said an analyst.

Other deals have struggled, with books more often than not just about fully subscribed.

“Liquidity is tightening across the GCC with reduction in the growth rate of deposits, even while credit growth is still high in some countries,” said Nitish Bhojnagarwala, a bank analyst in Moody’s Dubai office.

Bhojnagarwala cited Qatar as one place where credit growth is particularly high, reaching into the double digits.