Metro

Recovery has yet to hit ‘home’

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A rebounding economy has yet to breathe new life into Manhattan’s housing market, with sales prices over the last three months dropping 10 percent from the same period a year ago.

The median sales price of a Manhattan home was $782,071 for the first quarter of 2011 — down 9.9 percent from $868,000 during the first quarter of 2010, according to a report by the real-estate firm Prudential Douglas Elliman.

While the prices lagged, the number of sales remained nearly flat, inching up less than half of a percent from 2,384 sales in last year’s first quarter to 2,394 in this year’s.

“The Manhattan real-estate market is stable but fragile,” said Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel Real Estate Appraisers, which conducted research for the report. “There’s a disconnect between the housing market and the economy.”

Miller attributed the drop in sales prices in part to the lapse of the federal home-buyers tax credit in April of last year. The tax break triggered an artificial boost in sales to people who took advantage of the benefit before it expired. He noted that sales plummeted immediately afterward.

“The tax credit poached from the future. We end up in about the same place,” he said.

Miller also said the drop in apartment prices was impacted by a different mix in sales of co-ops and condos, the latter typically selling for a higher price than the former.

Co-ops accounted for 60 percent of sales this year, the highest in six years. The sales of condos fell from about half of all sales to just 40 percent.

Co-op sales surged 29 percent from 1,111 units in the first quarter of 2010 to 1,430 this year. But condo sales sunk 24 percent from 1,273 units to 964 units.

Meanwhile, the price per square foot of apartment sales dropped 1.3 percent from $1,038 in last year’s first quarter to $1,025 in this year’s.

Miller cautioned that the housing market was not out of the woods of the recession that ravaged the real-estate industry. He said the credit market for home loans is tight following the submortgage crisis and noted that the nation’s two biggest underwriters of home mortgages — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are hemorrhaging funds.

A separate study conducted by the real-estate firm Brown Harris Stevens reported similar findings.

Brown Harris Steven President Hall Wilkie remained bullish.

“As we see a steady increase in job growth in Manhattan and the general economic outlook continues to improve in New York City, demand for housing will remain strong,” he said.

carl.campanile@nypost.com