Hey everyone, it's James at Yoreevo, New York's #1 commission rebate brokerage with our April 2024 Manhattan Market Update. And like we were forecasting last month, April looks pretty good on a headline basis, but that is deceiving. If we look on a year-over-year basis, the number of contracts signed, we're up 13%, but that's a function of very easy comparisons. If we go back to last year, you can see that March was very strong, April was very weak, and then May was very strong. So the increase is just a function of that easier comparison in April of 2023. When we strip that out and we compare to normalized levels of demand, you'll see that things actually slowed down. We are down about 5% versus this 2017 to 2019 average, and we've been decelerating or declining since January. Not surprisingly, that has coincided with an increase in rates, which we will get to in a second. But overall, you could summarize the market as okay, just not quite as strong as it was earlier this year, when rates were lower. No real surprise there. On the inventory front, we are down 2%. That is a continued decline, but it is a bit less of a decline than we saw last month when the decline was about 5%. That's really just a function of tougher comparisons. Inventory can't go down forever, so when you lap decreases, decreases become more difficult. But this is obviously what we've been watching, and we will continue to watch because if we saw an increase in inventory at the same time that rates were over 7%, obviously that would have a negative impact on pricing. Nothing too interesting when we look at this by price point, but mortgage rates, that's really where you want your focus to be. You can see that they've been drifting up for a couple months now, and that is despite The Fed not doing anything. In fact, the increase is because The Fed has not done anything. As The Fed has signaled that rate cuts will be fewer, less drastic, and further out and/or further out. When you discount those future interest rates back, it increases today's interest rates, and that's what you're seeing. The market is raising interest rates today because those cuts are going to be further out and/or smaller. You can see this on a day-to-day basis with the 10-year Treasury. You can see that we are not quite back to the highs that we saw in the fall, but we're getting pretty close. On a day-to-day basis, mortgage rates are going to track the 10-year Treasury. We're a quarter point, three-eighths of a point away from those peaks. That peak in the 10-year Treasury, it's likely we're going to see a couple more increases in the 30-year mortgage rate because we're not close to the high in the 30-year mortgage, which was close to eight. We're in the low sevens now, so it'll probably drift up a little bit, but again, this changes every day, so take that with a grain of salt. That's really it. Mortgage rates have gone up. That's created a decline in demand, and inventory remains relatively tight. We have one more month in the selling season in May than things are going to cool down for the summer, but if you're looking to get into the market, capitalize in a little bit more of a buyer's market, obviously we'd be happy to help and get you a commission rebate for up to 2% on any property in New York City, so you can reach out to us at info@yoreevo.com. We'd be happy to help. Thanks for watching, and we will see you next month, bye!
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