It’s no secret that NYC’s housing market lately has been a disaster, but not only are many of us still are choosing to stay put, other people are also trying to find their own corner of the city with residents in 52 of the 100 largest U.S. cities saying they’d rather be living here.
Thankfully, Street Easy is lending buyers a helping hand. They recently released a report in which they analyzed local NYC neighborhoods regarding price cuts and the total number of days homes have spent on the market from Q3 2021 to Q3 2022 in order to find out which areas are currently best for home searching.
In these NYC neighborhoods, buyers would most likely have the “upper hand” in negotiation, but being NYC is the second most unaffordable city for buying a starter home, buyers would have to have the budget to manage elevated monthly payments due to higher mortgage rates.
According to the report, 5 of the top 10 neighborhoods are in Manhattan and include Morningside Heights, Tribeca, the Lower East Side, Central Harlem, and Gramercy Park. Median days on market in these areas have increased by an average of 29 days in Q3 compared to one year ago.
Price cuts are also increasingly becoming more common in these areas, rising the most in Central Harlem, and sellers who had become accustomed to bidding wars with multiple above-ask offers in the spring are now having to negotiate more with buyers.
When it comes to Brooklyn, the several neighborhoods that found their way onto the list contained higher concentrations of single or multi-family homes, and include East New York, Bensonhurst, Greenpoint, and Crown Heights.
In Bensonhurst, for example, 35% of the neighborhood’s listings cut prices in Q3 and spent 63 days on the market, a 17 day increase compared to last year. Here, typical listings consist of four bedroom houses–two more than a typical NYC home.
The only Queens neighborhood that made the cut was Rego Park. The market here remains more competitive as this borough offers relatively affordable listings as compared to Manhattan and Brooklyn, with a median asking price of $639K, 35% below the citywide median of $980K.
31% of listings in Rego Park cut prices in Q3, and a typical listing spent 77 days on the market, an increase of exactly three weeks from a year ago.
So, while it’s likely not the best time to be purchasing a home, at least the data shows that things seem to be taking a turn for the better (albeit slowly).