All Up: 10-Year Manhattan Apartment Price Trend

In the past decade, the price of the average Manhattan apartment has surged by nearly $1 million, a threefold increase to $1.3 million, a new report says.

The report, an analysis of Manhattan apartment sales by Miller Samuel, an appraisal company, and Prudential Douglas Elliman, a real estate firm, illustrates the seemingly endless increase in housing prices over the past 10 years, especially between 2000 and 2005. Despite the financial slowdown after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, and a national cooling of the housing market, Manhattan has attained levels that may have been considered unfathomable 10 years ago.

"Three-hundred dollars a foot 10 years ago was the number — that was the Manhattan number," an author of the report, Jonathan Miller, said. In 2006, the average price per square foot of a condo or a co-op was $1,031 — the first time the price had reached that high, and a 214% increase over 1997.

Both the average and median sales prices have increased by more than 200%, with the average Manhattan apartment selling for $1.3 million last year, compared with $431,000 10 years ago.

Through the growth period, condos have captured an increasingly large portion of the market; in 1997, they accounted for 36% of all sales for the borough, compared with just shy of 50% last year.

As prices have skyrocketed, the average size of an apartment has actually fallen over the same time period, by 4.6%, to about 1,255 square feet.

Apartment prices have seen fluctuating rates of growth over the past decade, but a negative sign has never preceded the numbers. Through 2004 and 2005, the average sales price of an apartment in the borough grew 18.1% and 21.6%, respectively, though in 2006 that increase was only 6.1%, the lowest since 2002.

Mr. Miller attributed this to buyers' reaction to a national cooling of the housing market, as they were cautious in late 2005 and the early months of 2006. Once it became apparent that the city housing market would likely defy the national trend, sales picked up and the number of apartments on the market fell.

"The market made this transition from double-digit frenzied price growth to single-digit growth," Mr. Miller said. In addition to the slower rates of price increases, there were other signs of the market decelerating lately, including an average sale time of 145 days in 2006 — the longest wait in the past decade.