Average Manhattan apartment now costs over $1 million: report

New York: The price of an average apartment in the New York borough of Manhattan has passed the $1 million mark for the first time, according to a study published Wednesday. [caption id=“attachment_2548810” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Up, up and away/ Reuters[/caption] The median price – at the midpoint of all sales prices – is now $1.1 million, up 11 percent in a year, said the CityRealty website, which reports on real estate data. Prices in Manhattan have surged by 60 percent over the past 10 years. The mean price – the average of all sales prices – is now $1.9 million, up 5.5 percent from last year and 72 percent from 2005. Total real estate sales in Manhattan this year should reach $24 billion, a 4.2 percent year-on-year increase, according to CityRealty’s projections. Some 190 Manhattan apartments were sold this year for more than $10 million, a slight decline from the 214 sold in 2014. The borough’s market is traditionally composed of co-ops, in which apartment owners become shareholders with a voice in the corporation that owns their building, and condominiums, or “condos,” where the owner has a right to use common areas but has less of a voice in building rules or practices. Condos accounted for a majority of the new construction this year. But 57 percent of sales were of co-ops, with condos accounting for the remaining sales. According to CityRealty, the average price per square foot of a Manhattan condo was $1,732 ($18,530 per square meter), a 5 percent rise from 2014. The site did not publish a corresponding figure for co-ops. The price of new construction was higher, at $2,073 a square foot, though this was down by 5.4 percent from the previous year. Certain sought-after addresses went for far more than that, notably the new One57 development, a 1,000-foot-high (300 meter) luxury apartment tower on 57th Street in midtown Manhattan. The average cost per square foot of the 26 apartments sold there this year was $5,149. But the most expensive address in all Manhattan was 15 Central Park West, a building completed in 2008 that overlooks the world’s most famous park. The six apartments there that changed hands this year sold for an average of $6,292 per square foot. AFP