The declining Manhattan residential real estate market will likely continue as the national unemployment rate skyrocketed to 7.2%, the highest since 1993.
Part of those numbers have hit close to the Big Apple, as the landscape of Wall Street has been obliterated with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and the disappearance of Bear Stearns Cos. and Merrill Lynch & Co. through distressed sales.
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With the ranks of those Wall Streeters thinned out, buyers of Manhattan real estate have dwindled away. Even one of the last Wall Street players standing, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., said in a report Jan. 8 that Manhattan residential "prices would need to decline by 35%-44% to return to the valuation levels seen in the 1995-1999 period, before the start of the recent boom."
Is the claim simply alarmist or realistic? It's probably a bit of both. A fall of that magnitude would allude to a continued contracting
economy weakened by more job losses and a sliding stock market -- a scenario New Yorkers who own a piece of the Big Apple likely don't want to see. - Gerald Magpily
See Wall Street article
See New York Times article
See TheDeal.com: Finance Layoffs: Bank of America, Fidelity, Carlyle and more
