How Gramercy Is Holding up in a Slowing Housing Market

GRAMERCY, MANHATTAN — The Manhattan housing market showed signs of slowing down its frenzied growth of the past three years in July, according to new monthly data from StreetEasy.

The Gramercy Park neighborhood still had a high median asking price for houses at $1.1 million in July, an increase of 12.4 percent from last year. The median asking rent in July was $3,600, an increase of 2.5 percent from last year. As for the median tipping point of a house in Gramercy Park, in July it was 5.1 years, an increase of 1 percent, meaning Gramercy Park became very slightly less buyer-friendly over the year.

Murray Hill's median asking price was lower than Gramercy Park's at $885,000, an increase of 16.1 percent from last year. The median asking rent was $3,500, just a 0.1 percent increase from last year. The tipping point in Murray Hill was 4.5 years, a 2.4 percent increase from last year.

In Kips Bay, the median asking price in July was $739,000, a 5.7 percent increase from last year. The median asking rent was $3,300, which marked no change from last year. The tipping point was 3.3 years, a 2.2 percent decrease from last year.

The tipping point of a neighborhood is the number of years you'd have to spend in a home for it to be worth buying instead of renting.

The Manhattan housing market in general is becoming more of a buyer's market as the rise in prices steadies after the past few years of prices rising at lightning speed. According to StreetEasy, the growth of housing prices slowed in July, and houses spent substantially longer on the market than they did last year.

"Though prices are still climbing, sellers will need to continue to level expectations amid a less competitive market, while buyers have the opportunity to negotiate asking prices down even further amid slowing price growth and homes spending more time on the market," said StreetEasy's analysis of the data.

Manhattan's median resale price was $994,458 in July, a 2 percent increase since July 2015, and the slowest pace of growth since April 2012. Homes in Manhattan sold in a median of 62 days, which was up 13 days from last year. And while in July of 2015, Manhattan sellers received a median of 100 percent of their asking price, this year they received just 97.7 percent of the asking price.

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