(Bloomberg) -- Manhattan's luxury-home market is coming to the end of its best year on record.
There were 1,877 contracts signed at $4 million and above this year, the most in data going back to 2006, brokerage Olshan Realty Inc. said in a report Wednesday. That was almost three times the number of deals in 2020 and twice as many as in 2019.
The totals for both contracts and dollar value -- $15.9 billion -- were nearly 30% more than the highest years of 2013 to 2015, Olshan data show.
Purchases also got more lavish: With buyers seeking more space for working from home during the pandemic, the average size of luxury condo deals in 2020 and 2021 was 2,900 square feet (269 square meters) -- 5% bigger than in the previous seven years.
It was a stark turnaround for a market that had been straining under a mountain of unsold inventory. With the emergence of vaccines, New Yorkers who fled the city during the lockdown of 2020 returned in droves, “riding the wave of lower prices, low interest rates, a surging stock market and the belief that New York would come back,” Donna Olshan, president of the brokerage, said in the report.
Covid-19's highly transmissible omicron variant is the biggest headwind for the market at the moment, making it hard to gauge if 2022 will be another boom year, Olshan said.
©2021 Bloomberg L.P.
Essential Business Intelligence, Continuous LIVE TV, Sharp Market Insights, Practical Personal Finance Advice and Latest Stories — On NDTV Profit.
