Insane Apartment Prices on the Gilded Isle

CityRealty has come out with its annual Year-End Manhattan Market Report, and there can no longer be any doubt that this city has gone bull-goose loony. Let us count the reasons:

• For the first time, the average price of an apartment, including co-ops and condos, has topped $2 million, rising in the past year from $1.9 to $2.2 million.

• New development condo sales shot up in 2016 in both number of closings and average price, which was a record-setting $4.9 million. This figure got a boost from such super-luxe buildings as the 96-story condo tower at 432 Park Avenue, where 52 of the 75 apartments sold this year fetched more than $10 million. A neighborhood amenity like the High Line can also cause prices to spike.

• The average price of a Manhattan apartment almost doubled in the past decade.

In closing, the report offers a rare dollop of sanity: CityRealty predicts that the average prices for condos will actually go down in 2017, for the first time in five years.