WHILE politics dominates the national news landscape in the very beginning of this New Year, crime took precedence locally as we exited 2020. In addition to shootings and beatings there was even a little white collar varietal thrown into the mix with the SEC charging an LIC man with insider trading for a cool mil.
Not touched upon in local headlines was the torpor in our local real estate market if actual sales are any guide. As we surmised back in May:
“don’t expect to see many transactions over the next year“
LICtalk Strategic Insights
and now we’ll share some data that we believe very much encapsulates the slowdown. With over 500 units, most of which are fairly basic, the Citylights Building has a large enough universe to act as a proxy for non-new apartment sales in LIC1. In 2017/18/19 there were 25/19/35 apartment sales completed. In 2020 there were 16, and only six of those were in the back half of the year, leading to a current annualized run rate of 12 per year. Do I think we’ll see a pickup anytime soon? Yes, come the Spring I expect sellers to begin capitulating to the new reality and start cutting prices. At which time they’ll be met with buyers who have been in abeyance due to the pandemic, and who are ready to get on with their lives – for a discount – as things start to thaw. Where prices clear at that time I’ll stick with my prediction of 20-25% off the top. That’s how I sees it.
Violent Start To The New Year: 7 Wounded, 1 Killed in Multiple Shootings Across NYC – incld’g one in LIC
Random Attacker Punches Elderly Man In LIC – the streets are not so friendly these days
LIC Man Charged With Insider Trading, Also Tipped Off Local LIC Couple – …neither is The Street
Tronox CEO Quinn Steps Down In Insider Trading Case – ruh-roh
- new sales are a completely different beast and the data sets unreliable in terms of the actual timing due to the closings being very lumpy based on new development regulations [↩]
Anonymous says
January 11, 2021 at 1:46 pm“Amazon is pledging to invest more than $2 billion over the next five years toward affordable housing in three cities where it has major operations.”
But still, we don’t want them in Long Island City because they are run by the second richest person in the world, JVB doesn’t like their business model and our politicians don’t like opportunity for their people.