May sees a slowdown in NYC home sales: report

Spring in New York typically brings a busy homebuying season — but in May 2022, it doesn’t seem like many locals had that usual spring in their step.

The latest report from Douglas Elliman shows that, due to a lack in inventory and rising mortgage rates, activity in Manhattan and Brooklyn slowed down. (The report spans wide, including data from Long Island, Westchester and parts of Connecticut — but doesn’t include tallies from the city’s three other boroughs.)

In Manhattan, the number of newly signed contracts for co-ops slipped by 6.9% year-over-year to 671 inked deals in May from 721 in May 2021. Condos, meanwhile, only made a modest 2% gain in the same time span, rising to 556 contracts from 545 the year prior. As for one- to three-family homes — including single-family townhouses — May 2022 saw a total of 27, or 10 more than last May.

Across all three of these property types, deals fell year-over-year to 1,254 from 1,283.

In April, according to a market report from the listings portal StreetEasy that uses different metrics, home sales moved fast. That month, the median city home spent 46 days listed for sale, 20 days fewer than in April 2021. That also came with increased prices. In April, the median asking price for a home in the city rose to $995,000 — a nearly 5% year-over-year climb. And in Manhattan alone, a total of 1,525 units entered contract that month, a number that hadn’t been seen since May 2013. At that time, StreetEasy noted, there was good inventory — a total of 19,000 homes for sale in the city, just shy of the 2019 high of 20,735 when the market was slow.

In May, according to Elliman, there were 953 new listings for all three of these housing types, up less than 1% year-over-year from 948 last May.

Across the East River, signed contracts for Brooklyn single-family homes, condos and co-ops fell annually for the first time in three months — though new listings posted a slight 1.7% increase to 241 from 237 year-over-year.

Contracts for co-ops in the borough of Kings fell 6.3% to 177 from 189, while for condos they slipped 6% annually to 299 from 318. Even bigger, the decline in contracts signed for one- to three-family residences: a 13.2% drop to 165 from 190.

“The narrative of ‘low supply is retraining sales’ is now combined with ‘the spike in rates is also creating a drag on demand,’ the report’s author, appraiser Jonathan Miller of Miller Samuel told Crain’s. “It accelerates the affordability challenge that low supply has created.”