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Craig Warga/Bloomberg
Researcher Michael Slattery says nearly every neighborhood in every borough of New York saw an increase in home buying since last year.
Home buying has become New Yorkers’ favorite pastime.
Marking a six-year high, $ 11.3 billion in New York City home sales transactions were completed in the third quarter, up a whopping 32% from 2012, according to a report from the Real Estate Board of New York.
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“Almost every neighborhood in each borough saw activity increase from a year ago,” Michael Slattery, the board’s senior vice president for research, told the Daily News.
Rising interest rates played a part in the home sales boom as buyers jumped off the fence to snatch up properties over the summer before borrowing grew too costly.
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But the surge is also a testament to an improving city economy and rising rents, which are pushing tenants to become buyers.
“With so little new rental housing being built and the demand for this housing unabated, rents are only going to rise,” Slattery said. “These factors have made renters want to be owners.”
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The number of home sales citywide in the quarter surged 28% compared with last year, to 14,073. The average sales price rose 3% to $ 806,000.
Craig Warga/Bloomberg
The home sales boom was fueled by buyers hoping to take advantage of lower interest rates, and tenants that wanted to become owners amid the city’s rising rents.
The rush to buy spread beyond Manhattan and prime areas of Brooklyn, where activity is generally concentrated.
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Sales in both Brooklyn and Queens for one- to three-family homes hit postrecession highs.
An especially hot market — condos in Flushing, Queens. The number of condo sales there more than doubled to 192 in the third quarter compared with last year. The average price of a condo surged 14% to $ 508,000.
The upper East Side also sizzled as co-op sales jumped 44%. The average sale price of an upper East Side co-op increased 8% to $ 1.5 million.
With the exception of Staten Island, every borough saw prices grow when compared with last year.
The average sale price of a home in Manhattan rose 2% from last year’s third quarter, to $ 1,404,000. In Brooklyn, the average sale price rose by 4%, to $ 645,000.
Queens homebuyers paid an average price of $ 431,000, up 5%. In the Bronx, the average sale price was $ 358,000, up 4%.
In Staten Island, the average sale price was $ 417,000, down 1% from 2012.
