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Tuesday, January 9, 2007
Open House attendance soars
The sidewalks were strewn with the discarded Christmas trees of 2006 this weekend. It was one reminder that the holiday season has ended. Yet another sign was that people were out in force, enjoying the unusually warm weather, by participating in Sunday's ritual of the Open House once again. The attendance there is often the first bounce that brokers get about their properties and the marketplace's momentum. It's the kind of 'shoe-leather' impression that provides a surprisingly accurate read; and the kind of market report that a broker blog can do best too. Indeed, as I arrived at the office, the morning coffee chatter was from agents who spoke about big turnouts at their properties this weekend.
Corcoran agent Mathew Mackay had an exceptional first week on the market at his open house in the West Village for a one bedroom condo priced at $875,000— over 60 interested parties showed up. Susan Singer's team reported over 25 parties at each of her northern Manhattan properties on Riverside Drive; and a Gramercy studio had multiple bids after 6 months on market. Kathleen Manikowski had over 25 at her West Side one bedroom. Reid Price and Brett Miles hosted 16 and tendered offers at their Chelsea garden condo priced at just under $2 million. Virtually all the agents I spoke with, experienced relatively high traffic this weekend in every price category. It would have been more typical to have 5 to 10 parties show up since last Summer; so this is indeed a wind shift.
In a related story in the NY Times today, mortgage applications are up as interest rates take a dip and people realize that with good selection and continued access to the money to buy them with, it is a real buying opportunity. Analyzing the researched market metrics can tell us something about where the market has been, but my experience is that this is a fairly straight forward indicator of where the market is going. I think that we're in for a very bust first quarter of the year. Wanna see some properties?
reader comments:
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