Upper East Side Real Estate Prices Increasing at Higher Rate Than Borough: Report

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — The real estate boom in New York City may be slowing down, at least according to a StreetEasy report analyzing real estate data from July. The report's main finding: real estate prices are going up, but at the slowest rate in years.

But that's not the case on the Upper East Side, the report found.

On the Upper East Side the median resale price for homes was $1.95 million, which represents a year-over-year increase of 13 percent. In July 2015 the median price was $1.72 million, a year-over-year increase of 8.2 percent.

The median rent in July 2016 was $2,999, 1.7 percent higher than last year. The tipping point decreased 11.6 percent to a value of 8.6, meaning that a prospective homeowner should buy if they planned on living in the area that many years. The decreasing tipping point shows that while year-over-year prices increased in July, the area is actually becoming more buyer-friendly.

Across the entire borough of Manhattan real estate prices increased just 2 percent year-over-year in July, which was the mildest increase since April 2012, according to the report. The median resale price for Manhattan in July was $994,458.

Compared to the borough-wide numbers, resale prices in the Upper East Side are rising at a greater rate, and the average sale price is much higher.

"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," reads the report.

The study also used StreetEasy's metric "tipping point" to suggest that the market is more buyer-friendly than years past. 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.

Photo: Shutterstock