Uptown Manhattan Real Estate Prices Soar

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Uptown Manhattan home price up 349.3 pct from 1995

By Ilaina Jonas

NEW YORK, Feb 23 (Reuters) - In uptown Manhattan, condo and co-op apartments sold for a median price of $305,490 in 2004 -- up a whopping 349.3 percent from $68,000 in 1995 -- according to a real estate report released on Wednesday.

And the 2004 price is up 32.8 percent from $230,000 in 2003.

Those figures shatter an urban dream that came true often enough in the past: Someone willing to venture far north of the nosebleed street numbers -- north of 116th Street on Manhattan's West Side or 96th Street on the East Side -- had a good shot of finding an apartment to buy for a bargain price.

No longer.

Price tags on apartments in uptown neighborhoods, including Harlem, East Harlem, Hamilton/Morningside Heights, Washington Heights, Fort George and Inwood, have grown so rapidly that for the first time, they have been included in the Prudential Douglas Elliman Manhattan Market Report's 10-year study.

"There are no neighborhoods in all of Manhattan that haven't been appreciating," said Dottie Herman, chief executive of Prudential Douglas Elliman, which has sponsored a report on Manhattan prices for the past 10 years.

From 1995 to 2004, uptown home prices grew at a rate that was double that of the more traditional real estate market to the south -- below 116th Street on the Upper West Side and below 96th Street on the Upper East Side.

Uptown housing demand has been driven largely by the increase in housing prices to the south over the past five years, according to the report.

Low mortgage rates and a short supply of homes for sale have pushed up prices to record levels.

THE BOOM AND THE BOOMERS

Baby boomers, and their taste for spending, real estate and excitement have also helped ratchet up the prices in Manhattan, Herman said.

"They live longer," she said. "They buy multiple homes. They're inheriting money. They're not a Depression mentality. At 50, they think they're young so they continue to buy. Their kids are now of age, and they buy for their kids. They're believers in real estate."

Jonathan Miller, president and chief executive of Miller Samuel, the real estate appraisal firm that authored the report, said Manhattan's popularity is the payoff from a quality of life campaign started in the early 1990s.

"It's been a long haul," Miller said. "That correlates directly with the fortunes of housing stock. If you pay attention to crime and general quality of life, then people will want to live here."

The rest of Manhattan experienced a 222.7 percent increase in the price of apartments over the past decade -- to $655,000 in 2004 from $203,000 in 1995 -- and up 15.9 percent from $565,000 in 2003.

In Hamilton/Morningside Heights, the median sales price -- the mid-point of all sales prices in the survey -- rose 83.4 percent to $195,000 in 2004 from $106,313 a year earlier, while the median Fort George sales price rose 34.9 percent to $340,000 in 2004 from $252,000 in 2003.

In uptown Manhattan, the average sales price for 2004 was $358,657 -- up 333.7 percent from $82,693 in 1995 -- and up 36.9 percent from $261,951 in 2003.

WHERE $1 MILLION IS 'AVERAGE'

Overall, the average sales price of a co-op and condo apartment on the entire island surpassed $1 million for the first time to $1,004,232 in 2004 -- up 140.5 percent from the average of $417,585 in the previous decade -- and 18.1 percent higher than 2003's average of $850,340.

In 2004, the average price per square foot set a record of $767 per square foot for residential real estate versus $324 per square foot in 1995 -- and above $672 a square foot in 2003.

The median sales price exceeded $600,000 for the first time in 2004 and reached $605,859 -- up 192 percent from $207,500 in the previous decade -- and up 22.4 percent from $495,000 in 2003.