Sunday, November 29, 2009

Double Dip Hits NYC Real Estate

NyPo reports:

Just when New Yorkers thought housing prices here might have finally hit bottom, there's fresh evidence of a nasty double dip recession for Gotham's residential real estate -- which some feel can drag down already shredded housing prices by another 10 percent-to-15 percent...

After showing slight improvement beginning in the spring, housing prices in New York dipped in September, according to research from S&P/Case-Shiller, which reported last week that its housing price index for the city slipped to 174.38 from 174.89 in August, after posting four straight months of improved prices.

In addition, Stan Humphries, chief economist at Zillow.com, a real estate research firm, appeared to back up this gloomy forecast with his own expectation of a double-dip recession for metro New York housing prices.

"A classic W-shaped recovery is a decline followed by an increase followed by another decline. Arguably, while the metro New York level has been in positive territory slightly, it does look like a W-shaped recovery."

Humphries expects metro New York home prices to plummet because the rising tide of foreclosures drags down prices and because the constellation of economic problems that sparked the initial housing downturn have not yet been resolved.

Meanwhile, New York City's unemployment rate came in at 10.3 percent in September for the second straight month, higher than the state and national level.

The housing price decline coupled with the nasty unemployment rate has resulted in a 13 percent jump in pre-foreclosure condominium court filings -- known as lis pendens -- in the third quarter across the city compared to the previous quarter, according to preliminary statistics from PropertyShark.com.

Initial notices of default on condo mortgages are up more than threefold over the last four years -- a trend that foreshadows more pressure on local housing prices.

The fresh wave of local price declines is likely to be steep and long lasting, a range of experts told The Post. PropertyShark CEO Bill Staniford forecasts housing prices will plummet another 10 percent-to-15 percent in the next six months -- deepening the already steep 25 percent slump from the top of the market.

"It seemed as though the market was starting to come back, but . . . it certainly looks in New York City like another wave of distress is coming," said Staniford, adding, "This wave is worse than the first, which happened over a year ago."

Read the full article here.

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