By Ben Fractenberg
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN — Manhattan's famously sky high home prices plunged by nearly 10 percent in the first three months of this year, according to a report by realtors Douglas Elliman and Miller Samuel Inc.
The 9.9 percent fall from this time last year took the average price for a Big Apple home down to $782,071.
The drop was largely blamed on the removal of the federal homeowners tax credit.
Slumping condo sales were also a factor, along with new development deals being at their lowest rate in nearly seven years, the report said.
Overall sale numbers, however, stayed steady, buoyed by co-op deals which jumped 28.7 percent over the same period last year. Co-op inventory also rose by five percent with more sellers looking to take advantage of the improving market.
"The co-op and condo market seemed to be polar opposites this quarter," Miller Samuel's president Jonathan Miller told Bloomberg.
"The disparity between the two forms of ownership is probably temporary, but clearly was a primary cause of the overall decline in price indicators compared to last year."
