How the Lower East Side and Chinatown Are Holding up in a Slowing Housing Market

LOWER EAST SIDE, 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 median asking price of a house in the Lower East Side in July was $1,029,000, a 20.1 percent increase from last year. The median asking rent was $3,300, an increase of a 4.8 percent from last year. The neighborhood's tipping point was 4.6 years, a 12.5 percent increase from last year, meaning the Lower East Side became less buyer-friendly over the past year.

The median asking price of a Chinatown house in July was $1,207,444, but StreetEasy did not calculate the difference from last year's median asking price. The median asking rent was $2,863, a 10.1 percent increase from last year. The tipping point was 8.3 years, a 67.2 percent increase from last year, meaning Chinatown became substantially less buyer-friendly than it was 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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