Wednesday, January 29, 2020

Halstead Open House Index - report from weekend of January 19, 2020



Good morning Halstead Open House Index subscribers and contributors!

Here is the summary of results from the open house on January 18-19:

We received 245 replies (hi everyone: do I sense a fatigue in participation? How do we increase the number of replies we receive each week? I have some of you e-mailing your results to me. Sorry, you need to complete the survey. I am just too busy to enter the results in for you. If you enjoy reading my weekly reports and find them useful, the least you can do is to submit your data after you hold an open house, fair?). Last year on January 20, 2019, we received 228 responses.

These are the numbers. The average attendance for all of NYC last weekend was 4.17. Significant drop from the weekend before when we recorded 5.35. It has occurred to me that there was just incredible weather over the weekend of January 12th, which must have contributed to the much larger open houses attendance. Last year on the same weekend we recorded 3.45 per open house, so this is still much stronger.

19 open houses reported zero attendance, this is just 7.7% of all open houses. Remember, when the percentage of zero open houses falls below 10%, it appears the weekend was good. I suggest using time productively to a) land another exclusive within the building or b) read or listen to some interesting strategies on how to find buyers in this buyers’ market.

Not one, but four open houses reported the record traffic this week. The magical number was 15. There were 15 parties that showed up at the following open houses: 170 w 81st street by Konstantin Zaliznyak of Triplemint, 54 E 8th Street by Abe Rosenberg of Halstead, 304 W 88th St by Kay Moon of Douglas Elliman and 7 4th Place in Brooklyn by Ari Harkov’s team of Halstead. You can see details about each property in the dataset link. Here is from Abe Rosenberg, in his own words: “Thank you Fritz, What I can say is , price, location & condition matter. Our photography is almost like condo-new construction in the heart ❤️ of the village. There are certainly negatives, we had 2 open houses first was 22 , last week 15 and I have a good planning to come to my third on Sunday. Finally, I’m expecting an offer today.” And here is from Ari Harkov, in his own words: “Good morning, The property is a top floor renovated coop with a roof deck on a beautiful block in Carroll Gardens. We’ve had excellent traffic the first few weekends. We have a number of buyers circling but no offers in hand as of yet.”

There were 5415 open houses held in the City last weekend, and, per my unscientific method, roughly 5976 buyers were hopping from one open house to another. Let’s check the action in each borough:

Manhattan – we received 193 open houses in Manhattan. The average attendance dropped to 3.98, from 5.02 reported the weekend earlier. Busy in Chelsea (5.88 – surprise!), Central & West Village (5.75), Flatiron (5.00) and East Village (5.67). Beware of small samples in East Village and Flatiron. Upper East Side was below the average with 3.93 (Excellent 55 replies were received from UES), UWS better than the average with 4.77 from 31 open houses. Midtown East and Midtown West were identical this week with 3.09. See the rest of Manhattan below.

Brooklyn – the average dropped to 5.44, from 6.68 the weekend before. Last year we recorded 5.54 on the same weekend. We received 34 replies from Brooklyn (why can’t we get Brooklyn to 100+ participation?). Strong in Park Slope (6.60) and Williamsburg (6.40) and Cobble Hill (8.67), but beware of small sample sizes across the board. See the rest of Brooklyn below.

Bronx – the average dipped to 2.75 (last weekend it was 3.75), from just 8 open houses received. See details below.

Queens - the average dropped to 5.43, from 7.50 the weekend earlier. Just 7 open houses arrived from Queens.

Staten Island – no open houses down there.

Size – Multi-unit buildings saw strong attendance (5.80), as well as 3BR apartments (5.30). The slowest were 5BRs (2.25), JR4s (3.00) and 4BRs (3.33).

Price – the best attendance was in $2M-$3M range, the worst in $3M+ range.

Condition – the wrecks again on top with 6.09 average.

First Open House – 29 first open houses reported attendance of 6.86. Compare this attendance at your “stale” open houses with 3.81. 80% premium for being the first this weekend.

By Appointment Only – just 2.90 parties attended By Appointment Only, vs. 4.28 for the “normal” open houses.

This is all for today. The weather for this Saturday is rain and sunny on Sunday, but warm both days. Plan your open houses well and best of luck to you! May all your buyers come prepared, qualified with strong pre-approval letters and a lot of cash! Last year, on January 27, the average attendance in NYC was 4.22, in Manhattan 4.04 and in Brooklyn 4.93. Are we going to do better this year?

Encourage your colleagues in the industry to participate. The more data we get, the more reliable these statistics will be, and the more useful to you. Lastly, another reminder to report the total number of parties who attended, not just the number of bodies. A couple attending with their broker is 3 humans, but one party, for the purpose of our analysis. Big thank you to all of you who regularly and patiently submit your numbers.

PS: Do not forget to check my reports on my blog at https://halsteadopenhouseindex.blogspot.com/. You can easily view the reports from previous weeks and leave comments. Also, check the link to dataset.

Best regards,

Fritz Frigan
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