Source: RealtyTrac via Rampage
Yesterday, we directed our ire at bad automobile data. Today, its housing’s turn.
I was running through my early morning sites one day last week in preparation for preparing my daily reads posting, when I saw this headline at the Washington Post: “8 in 10 Manhattan home sales are all-cash.”
That can’t possibly be right, can it? It struck me as way off the data I’m familiar with in New York City. Anecdotes are never a substitute for hard data, but this headline failed my sniff test.
Whenever I am stymied by a housing question, I reach out to Jonathan Miller, of Miller Samuel. He is my rabbi for all things residential real estate. He too thought the numbers were off, and came up with a reason why:
The reason the Realtytrac 80% figure jumped out at me was the fact that co-ops account for about 60% of sales and have the highest concentration of entry level and middle class demographics in Manhattan. I was very skeptical that virtually all the market-majority co-op buyers were paying all-cash, especially in the tepid economy we are stuck with.
The data Miller uses show that Manhattan all-cash home sales weren’t 80 percent of residential sales — they were continues here . . .
