Values Rising
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Of all the stories we’ve printed on the real estate and credit crisis, one of our own favorites was a dispatch by our Julie Satow that ran on page one under the headline, “Gold Value of Apartments Sinks.” The date was January 3, 2008, a moment when many were starting to get nervous about real estate but hadn’t yet put it into words. Indeed, the headline ran over a story about how in the just-ended quarter, the prices of Manhattan apartments was soaring.
“The average sale price jumped 17.6% over the prior year quarter, to $1.44 million, while the average price a square foot increased 18.2%, to a record $1,180,” is the way Ms. Satow characterized Prudential Douglas Elliman’s assessment back then. Her story was barely on the news-stands when the real estate industry sent word that it was not happy with her dispatch. How could we run a headline about sinking values over a story about a report on rising prices?
Well, by headlining the story in terms of the gold value of apartments, we were crediting as newsworthy the declining value in terms of the greatest historical marker of value. As things turned out, within months the whole press corps was writing about a crisis in the housing markets and some lending institutions were in trouble. It was but one of the many reminders we’ve had in a long life in newspaper work that it pays for the newspaperman or woman to keep his or her eye on the gold price, the more so when others fail to keep it in mind.
We mention that long preamble by way of noting the dispatch this morning from our Candace Taylor, who reports that there is suddenly an uptick in the gold-value of some New York estate. The data are still sketchy, and the analysts Ms. Taylor has spoken with don’t all agree on what it means. But we’ve learned to harken to these kinds of things. The dollar of late has been gaining in value — that is, the price of gold in dollars has been falling. And if one factors that in to the kinds of indexes real estate analysts use and sees an uptick in the gold value of homes, well, those of us who are long on New York real estate find it encouraging.
