It’s important when reflecting on the sales results to consider that over 71.2% of all sales were for properties priced below $250,000 while just over 7.3% were priced at or above $500,000.
The results indicate that the government’s tax gimmick (second and final expiration is upon us) is driving a surge of phony demand and bringing a renewal of speculative animal spirits but the effect will likely be temporary.
Such stimulus is far more relevant to property prices of low level than those in areas like Hoboken where shadow inventory is bulging and buyers have completely disappeared.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Friday, April 16, 2010
Without Wall Street employment, where is Hoboken RE.ality?
Wall Street Work Force Falls to 16-Year Low
Reuters - Apr 16, 2010
NEW YORK - Wall Street shed 1,200 jobs in March, in a third straight month of job cuts that pushed employment in New York City's key banking and investment industry to its lowest level since October 1993, the New York state Department of Labor said on Thursday.
The city's jobless rate managed to edge down in March, easing 0.02 percentage point to 10 percent, while the state's jobless rate fell the same amount to 8.6 percent, the Labor Department said.
Total employment on Wall Street, New York City's most important industry, fell to 156,000 in March from February, James Brown, an analyst with the state's Department of Labor, said by telephone. Employment in the city's banking and securities industry in October 1993 had been at 155,000.
Wall Street employment had peaked in December 2000 at 200,300 jobs.
Wall Street is the bedrock industry for both New York City and New York state.
Securities and commodities companies generate about 12 percent of the city's taxes. Those companies account for 15 percent of the state's tax collections, down from 20 percent before the credit crunch, state officials say.
Brown said the three-month string of declines may reflect the end of severance payments, because workers are not counted as unemployed until their severance runs out.
"It's reasonable to assume that at least some of it is people coming off severance," Brown said, noting companies often time layoffs for the end or beginning of a year.
In the previous downturn, Wall Street bottomed out with a headcount of 159,000 in April 2003, Brown said.
Despite the job losses on Wall Street, banks and credit intermediation companies added 500 jobs, perhaps driven by the rise in refinancings and debt work-outs, Brown said. (Reporting by Joan Gralla; Editing by Leslie Adler)
Copyright 2010 by Reuters. All rights reserved.
Reuters - Apr 16, 2010
NEW YORK - Wall Street shed 1,200 jobs in March, in a third straight month of job cuts that pushed employment in New York City's key banking and investment industry to its lowest level since October 1993, the New York state Department of Labor said on Thursday.
The city's jobless rate managed to edge down in March, easing 0.02 percentage point to 10 percent, while the state's jobless rate fell the same amount to 8.6 percent, the Labor Department said.
Total employment on Wall Street, New York City's most important industry, fell to 156,000 in March from February, James Brown, an analyst with the state's Department of Labor, said by telephone. Employment in the city's banking and securities industry in October 1993 had been at 155,000.
Wall Street employment had peaked in December 2000 at 200,300 jobs.
Wall Street is the bedrock industry for both New York City and New York state.
Securities and commodities companies generate about 12 percent of the city's taxes. Those companies account for 15 percent of the state's tax collections, down from 20 percent before the credit crunch, state officials say.
Brown said the three-month string of declines may reflect the end of severance payments, because workers are not counted as unemployed until their severance runs out.
"It's reasonable to assume that at least some of it is people coming off severance," Brown said, noting companies often time layoffs for the end or beginning of a year.
In the previous downturn, Wall Street bottomed out with a headcount of 159,000 in April 2003, Brown said.
Despite the job losses on Wall Street, banks and credit intermediation companies added 500 jobs, perhaps driven by the rise in refinancings and debt work-outs, Brown said. (Reporting by Joan Gralla; Editing by Leslie Adler)
Copyright 2010 by Reuters. All rights reserved.
Friday, April 9, 2010
The Richer Can Only Delay Longer - Not Avoid!
If Wall Street delayed the foreclosure process in Greenwich, Hartsdale and Short Hills, somebody forgot to tell the owners of those stately real estate properties.
The argument that the well-to-do continue doing well just doesn't hold a lot of water. They are about to file bankruptcies en masse.
Meanwhile, we have rose-colored RE professionals who vouch that Hoboken is on much sturdier footing with state support that has all but disappeared, schools being shut down for "renovation," property taxes that have yet to be standardized and a rent-to-buy ratio that continues to drop.
I want a front row seat in state court when they are pulled into one of the largest lawsuits to hit the NRA... oops, that should read NAR. Maybe there's little difference between the two!
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