Manhattan's Home Bidding Wars Gain Steam With Economic Recovery: Bloomberg

The purchases of Manhattan co-ops and condos totaled 3,585, the most for a first quarter in more than three decades of record-keeping by appraiser Miller Samuel, Bloomberg reports.
“The [housing] market is not as frenzied as it was, but the market pace is unusually fast,” Miller Samuel concluded. “It’s still blistering, really.”
The deals jumped 46% year on year as the office goers looked to rejoin as the economy gradually recovered from the pandemic.
The competition was intense in the luxury market, which saw its second-highest rate of bidding wars in the five years since Miller Samuel and brokerage Douglas Elliman Real Estate had been tracking.
Purchases above the asking price comprised 9.3% of all transactions, a four-year record and up from 3% in Q1.
The inventory was down 4.4% from a year earlier to 6,906 apartments available in Q1.
At the current pace of deals, it would take 5.8 months to sell those homes, well below the 10-year average of about eight months.
The median price of deals closed in Q1 was $1.19 million, up 11% Y/Y.
Buyers bought 47% of the deals in cash, in line with the market’s average signifying that the rising mortgage rates would not ruin demand.
Coldwell Banker Warburg saw more apartments hit the market in the spring when buyers usually came out of hibernation. Demand may be incredibly high among shoppers looking to lock in rates before climbing further.