New York property market bouncing back

The New York housing market seems to have a new spring in its step after months of crisis with sales doubling in the first three months of 2010 compared to this time last year, data showed Friday.

In the first quarter of the year the number of apartments sold in the city rose by 99.5 percent, according to figures from the Prudential Elliman real estate agency.

But despite the rising numbers of sales, prices remain relatively low compared with the boom years before the US housing market collapsed, according to two other agencies Corcoran and Halstead.

The "Big Apple" has some of highest real estate prices in the world.Currently an average Manhattan apartment costs around 820,000 dollars, or about 10,000 dollars per square meter, about 10 percent less than a year ago.

Even if the United States seems to be climbing out of the economic crisis which has paralyzed the property market since 2008, experts remained wary.

"The market is definitely recovering, with stabilized prices and a spring sales boom, but this is not yet the big turn. I am cautious," Douglas Elliman, executive vice president of Ariel Cohen, told AFP.

"We have a lot of foreign buyers, including Asian and European, because of the strong euro.

"The property market is also being bouyed by recent rises on Wall Street and the current low interest rates on mortgage loans offered by banks.

By AFP