2013 Officially Unseats 2007 As Luxury Real Estate Boom Year

Curbed New York

by Hana R. Alberts

[Clockwise from top left: 10 Madison Square West’s penthouse, in contract for $36.5 million; long-stalled, Ismael Leyva-designed Upper East Side condo development The Charles, whose 29 units will go on the market “in a few days”; 18 Gramercy Park’spenthouse, which Houston Rockets owner Leslie Alexander bought in a record-setting sale for downtown Manhattan: $42 million.]

New stats from Olshan Realty confirm market trends: the sheer number and magnitude of 2013’s sales have blown 2007’s figures out of the water—making this year a record-setter already. The Wall Street Journalcites new, stratospheric-sounding stats. Out of all the real estate deals that have gone into contract this year—and remember, we’re only nine months in—$8 billion of them were made up of $4 million-plus sales. To be precise, the 907 apartments in contract for more than $4 million so far this year marks a 40 percent increase over 2007’s totals. All of 2007… and there are still three months left to go. In general, for apartments of all sizes, 79 percent more contracts were signed this year than last, and one-third of buyers made purchases based solely on floorplans and renderings in developments that’ll take years to complete. The WSJ’s vaguely punny headline, “Megadeals Are No Big Deal,” seems, well, spot-on.