If you bought a townhouse in Manhattan a decade ago and recently sold it, you’re probably laughing your way to the bank right now.
Median townhouse prices surged almost 60% from $3.12 million in 2007 to $4.97 million in 2016, according to an analysis released Thursday of Manhattan’s townhouse market over the past decade by Douglas Elliman Real Estate and appraisal firm Miller Samuel.
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In the luxury townhouse market, defined as the top 10% of sales, the gains were even higher. Median prices increased by $4.35 million from $14.99 million to $19.35 million in that same 10-year period.
These gains came despite a barrage of signs that the market has been struggling more recently. Townhouse prices dropped 5.3% last year as political and economic uncertainty and lower Wall Street bonuses curbed demand, with sales falling nearly 11% to 306 closings in 2016 compared with the year before.
At the same time, the average number of days a property spent on the market more than doubled from 74 to 164, while the listing discount (the change from final listing price to contract price) almost tripled from 3.9% to 10.7%.
These tricky market conditions led to some "aspirationally" priced townhouses being pulled from the market after languishing there for some time, according to the report. Indeed, listing inventory fell 10.7% in 2016 from the previous year to 411.
"This was the third slowest paced townhouse market in a dozen years," said Jonathan Miller, chief executive of Miller Samuel and author of the report.
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At 124, the most townhouse sales last year were north of Central Park, in neighborhoods including Harlem and Washington Heights, where median prices were lower than any other part of Manhattan, at $2.1 million.