By Olivia Scheck
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN — The average price of a Manhattan apartment rose 7 percent from last quarter, but it's still a far cry from the prices during the first quarter of 2009, according to a report prepared for Prudential Douglas Elliman.
Apartments in the borough now cost $1.4 million on average, an increase over last quarter's $1.3 million average, Elliman said.
But the prices mark a 22 decrease from the first quarter of 2009, where averages hovered around $1.8 million.
Sixty percent of the apartments that were sold during the first quarter of 2010 cost less than $1 million — a price tag that qualifies as "lower end" in the borough — according to a report from the Corcoran Group.
The percentage of apartments that sold for less than $1 million was up 4 percentage points from the first quarter of 2009, the report stated.
Jonathan J. Miller, president of the appraisal firm that prepared the Elliman report, attributed the high percentage of lower-end apartment sales to decreased availability of "jumbo" mortgage loans — those worth more than $729,750.
"You are clearly seeing high-end sales… but you're not seeing the same volume of those transactions that you were,” Miller explained. “The terms [for jumbo mortgages] are much more onerous than they are on the lower price mortgages."
Miller also pointed to a behavioral trend that may be of interest to New Yorkers looking to sell property.
"Since the beginning of the year," Miller explained, "there's been this new sort of behavior by buyers… that they're more likely to buy properties that are priced close to market value…[These] are the properties that are actually selling."
