Bloomberg on the 3Q 2010 Reports
Bloomberg quotes the Prudential economist as follows: “What it suggests to me is not that there was a sharp drop-off in pricing, because there wasn’t,” said Jonathan Miller, the president of Miller Samuel. “It’s a shift in the mix. We had a drop in upper-end sales activity.” Sounds right to me. Except in a few [...]
WSJ on 3Q 2010 Reports
The third quarter reports are mostly out as of today, and although they aren’t supposed to be publicly released until tomorrow, the WSJ has jumped the gun with this story. I have just begun to review the reports, but according to the WSJ: Median prices in the Hamptons fell 22.7% in the quarter from the [...]
Real Deal on Fall Price Reductions
The Real Deal notes correctly that: Roughly 20 out of about 250 of the Hamptons’ most expensive listings currently on the market have reduced their asking prices by 10 percent or more in the last month alone, according to Streeteasy.com, including one Meadow Lane home in Southampton that slashed its asking price last month by [...]
WSJ – 10 Reasons to buy a Home
Some of the Journal’s reasoning is not relevant to second home owners. But the investment hedging potential of a home should be interesting to all: 6. It offers some inflation protection. No, it’s not perfect. But studies by Professor Karl “Chip” Case (of Case-Shiller), and others, suggest that over the long-term housing has tended to [...]
Home Price Bubble Chart
Via the big picture, a beautiful chart showing the housing bubble as illustrated by fluctuations in Case-Shiller Indices. I think the Hamptons are likely pretty similar to the broader New York Metro data shown on the chart — we’re down around 25% now from the high of 2007 — up from about 30% down at [...]
Income Inequality
Here’s the best visual explanation I can imagine for why prices have risen so much in the Hamptons over the last 20 years, note that this chart is adjusted for inflation! You can click on the chart to see it better. Source, here.
Wall Street Journal on Prudentials 2Q 2010 Report
The increase in high-end purchasing is noted: In the first quarter this year, Chief Executive Jonathan Miller of Miller Samuel said that there was an unusually high number of sales in the luxury market. In the second quarter, there was more of a normal sales mix.
Bloomberg on 2Q 2010 Volume Increase
They get it right, making the connection between the volume spike and improvement on Wall Street: Hamptons, New York, home sales more than doubled in the second quarter from a year earlier, solidifying a turnaround after two years of Wall Street reluctance to splurge on beachfront property. Transactions climbed to 479 in the towns on [...]
Property Wire on the Corcoran 2Q 2010 Report
They note that volume is way up — double over 1Q 2010 and make the connection to new hiring on Wall Street: New York’s financial companies added 6,800 jobs between the end of February and May, the largest three month increase since 2008. The industry’s year end bonuses gained an estimated 17% to $20.3 billion [...]
Gridlock = Good for Markets?
Apparently markets like gridlock. Maybe because the inability to make new policies is inherently stabilizing and markets love stability? Obama already presided over the biggest rally during the start of a presidency since Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s. Bets on Intrade show a 54 percent chance Republicans will take control of the House, enabling [...]
