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November saw a big drop in Manhattan real estate prices. Prices for real estate fluctuate of course, but the drop was the biggest since February of 2009. Is it an anomaly, or a canary in a coal mine? Justina Vasquez reports on the price drop in Bloomberg, writing:

Prospective Manhattan home buyers had plenty of options in November, and their wallets were thankful for it.

The average price of condos, co-ops, townhouses and single-family homes on the market dropped 3.3 percent from a year earlier to $1.1 million, according to the November 2018 StreetEasy Market Reports released Wednesday. That’s the sharpest year-on-year decline since February 2009 and takes the price almost to the level of October 2015.

Inventory has been rising for months, and about 1,400 new homes hit the market in November, an 18 percent increase from the year before, the second-biggest increase since the financial crisis. The biggest increase was in the previous month, when homes on the market jumped by 21 percent.

“The combination of a ton of new homes on the market and potential buyers holding out for better deals has shifted the market dynamic in Manhattan further in favor of buyers,” StreetEasy Senior Economist Grant Long wrote in a company blog post Wednesday.

Read more here.