Liberal journalists are scrambling these days to tell us that nothing is wrong in our center cities. They’re urging us to look away from the lockdown-ravaged main streets, looted-and-burned-down shops, and plywood-covered hotels and to behold instead the picturesque neighborhoods where they live and the long lines for trendy cupcakes.
But markets don’t lie.
People in the United States are moving out of downtown, fleeing for the exurbs, the suburbs, or at least the outer boroughs. And home prices show it.
In Manhattan, home prices are down more than 5% compared to last February, according to home-buying site Zillow, which rates Manhattan’s housing market as cold. Travel up the Hudson River a bit, though, and you’ll find the more bucolic Putnam, Ulster, and Dutchess counties with “hot” and “very hot” markets, with prices up in both places more than 3% year-over-year.
Looked at another way: More Manhattanites than ever are trying to sell their apartments. Listings of co-ops surged by 68% year-over-year, and condos for sale increased 30%. They weren’t all selling. It’s a different market in Greenwich, Connecticut, just a bit up I-95 or the commuter rail, where contracts on single-family homes tripled compared to last year, as did sales in Brooklyn.
So, maybe everyone in Manhattan moved to Brooklyn, and everyone in Brooklyn sold their homes to rich, desperate Manhattanites and moved upstate New York or to Connecticut.
In Washington, D.C., homes are languishing, while in the outer suburbs (where social distancing comes naturally and antifa doesn’t roam), houses stay on the market for only a few days.
