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The number of homes sold in Queens decreased slightly in 2011 with 9,128 properties changing hands, our latest analysis shows. The Y-o-Y decrease is 11%, while compared to 2006 (when the number of transactions reached a 7-year peak), the decrease is 39%.

At $305,000, the yearly median sale price has stayed flat for a third consecutive year. The median sale price in Q4 2011 was $300,000, a 5% decrease over Q3 2011 and a 6% decrease over Q4 2010. The zip code with the highest median sale price in 2011 was 11109 ($694,000), comprising 3 neighborhoods: Hunters Point, Sunnyside and West Maspeth. Here are some interesting properties that exchanged hands:

131 Beach 139th Street
The most expensive residential property sold in Queens in 2011 was the single-family home at 131 Beach 139th Street. The beautiful oceanfront residence first hit the market on May 2nd, 2010 with an asking price of $5,379,000. More than a year and several price chops later, it finally sold for $3,200,000 on September 27th. The current seller had previously put down $3,400,000 for it on September 7th, 2006.

5 Center Drive
The second biggest transaction in Queens in 2011 was the single-family home at 5 Center Drive, Whitestone. The custom-built, brick colonial house first hit the market on July 24th, 2010 with an asking price of $3,250,000. It sold on April 29th, 2011 for $2,625,000.

The most expensive condo sold was the #PH9 penthouse at 46-30 Center Boulevard. Located in Long Island City’s building “The View” (which was covered by Curbed on many different occasions), the penthouse sold for $1,660,000 on November 22nd.

From left to right: The oceanfront house at 131 Beach 139th Street, the home at 5 Center Drive and "The View" building in Long Island City

Finally, here’s the complete top 10 of the biggest Queens real estate residential transactions in 2011:

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“The impressive drop in foreclosures merely represents a delaying of the inevitable. Thousands of homeowners are behind on their mortgage payments or have stopped making them altogether.” said PropertyShark founder Matthew Haines. “I expect that thousands of home foreclosures that are currently delayed will eventually make their way through the system. “

In Q4 2011, the number of new foreclosures increased slightly by 7% from the previous quarter and was down 54% compared to Q4 2010.

Manhattan was the only borough recording a year-over-year increase. The 193 first-time foreclosures recorded in 2011 are up 28% compared to the value in 2011 (151). In Q4 2011 there were 37 first-time foreclosures in Manhattan, 32% more than in Q4 2010 (28).

Although it continues to comprise 40% of the NYC foreclosure activity, Queens (89) recorded a significant 63%  Y-o-Y decrease while Brooklyn foreclosures decreased 58% from 91 in Q4 2010 to 38 in Q4 2011.

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1. 601 W 26th Street
Topping the list is the building at 601 W 26th Street, a.k.a. the Starrett-Lehigh Building. The 19-story, 2.3 million-square-foot building occupies an entire block in Chelsea and was built in 1932. It was purchased by RXR Realty for $920M on July 29th.

2. 230 Park Avenue
The subject of the second biggest transaction of 2011 was the building at 230 Park Avenue. The transaction happened on June 9th and it amounted to $760M. Maybe the biggest highlight of this transaction is the fact that Goldman Sachs lost around $400M in the deal, as reported in August by The Real Deal.

3. 299 Park Avenue
Also from Park Avenue comes the third biggest transaction of last year, the building at 299 Park Avenue. A 49.5% stake in it was bought by the Alaska Permanent Fund in the last day of August, for $623.7M. This implicitly values the building at $1.25 billion.

From left to right: 601 W 26th Street, 230 Park Avenue and 299 Park Avenue

Here is the complete top 10 of the biggest commercial transactions of 2011 in New York City:

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As a matter of fact, the most expensive home sold in the year that just ended would have only grabbed 3rd spot in 2010. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that 2011 lacks any spectacular transactions, on the contrary. Here’s a top 10 of the most expensive homes sold in 2011.

1. 1280 Meadow Lane, Southampton
The most expensive home transactioned in the Hamptons in 2011 sold for $25M on June 1st. According to Curbed, the impressive oceanfront mansion was designed in 1930 by architect Leroy P. Ward in a French provincial style with incredible attention to detail.

1280 Meadow Lane, Southampton. Photos courtesy of Curbed.

2. 137 Crestview Lane, Sagaponack
This house in Sagaponack was originally listed in August 2010 for $26.75M, according to Newsday. The house sits on 2.4 acres of oceanfront property and features an infinity pool, two laundry rooms and a guest cottage. Our records indicate that the (now) previous owners put down $18M back in 2007 to acquire the property before deciding to list it for sale three years later. The property finally sold for $24M on September 2nd, 2011.

137 Crestview Lane, Sagaponack.

3. 5 Eel Cove Road, East Hampton
Curbed revealed that the seller of this property was none other than Robert Benton, movie writer and director. He was one of the writers of 1978’s ”Superman” and writer and director of ”Kramer vs. Kramer”. With the latter, he won the Oscar for best director in 1980. Originally listed with an asking price of $29,900,000 on July 13th, 2010, the property finally sold on November 17th, 2011 for $23M.

4. 96 Meadow Lane, Southampton
This impressive home sits on the Atlantic oceanfront and it sold on October 21st for $21.6M. The home itself was custom built in 2009, but the lot was purchased back in 2005 for $10M. The property was first listed on May 24th, 2011 with an asking price of $26.9M, before it was snatched up by an undisclosed buyer through Seacret LLC in October 2011.

5. 1251 Ocean Road, Southampton
Closing off the top 5 is the property located at 1251 Ocean Rd, Southampton, which sold on March 30th for $20.5M. It was allegedly bought by the TV star Donny Deutsch through an LLC, 1251 Ocean Road LLC.

Finally, here’s the complete top 10 of the biggest single-family sales in the Hamptons in 2011:

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To better visualize it, on the map, the number of sales by building is depicted by the size of the circle while the color indicates the price per square foot. You can click on the dots to see more details about sold units in the buildings you’re interested in.

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Click on the following link to browse current Manhattan apartments for sale.

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As we look around the world – where economies are now not recovering from one epic financial crisis, but trying to either stay out, get out or minimize their exposure to a second – it is a struggle to find anywhere that looks like a good place to invest, save for things such as structured property investments. One place that really is standing out right now is Istanbul, which is currently appealing both to emerging markets investors and wealthy investors seeking a safe-haven.

Prime property in prime locations is now proven as resilient against financial shocks. So, with cash devaluing at an alarming rate, the world’s wealthy along with institutional investors are now buying up such properties as safe-haven stores for their wealth.

Ski property in the premier Alpine resorts of Switzerland and France, chic apartments in Chelsea, Knightsbridge and apartments and townhouses in London’s other pricey places, plush pads in Paris, and high-life homes in Hong Kong are all providing such wealth store services as described above, but so is Istanbul.

What? Istanbul is an emerging market, isn’t it? Correct. Turkey is the fastest growing economy in the world, and Istanbul is its top emerging market. Istanbul’s population is among the fastest growing in Europe, both in terms of affluence and numbers. This, combined with high liquidity fueling incredible growth in Turkey’s immature mortgage market, is leading to demand for Istanbul property far outstripping supply.

Thus, as an emerging market few places in the world can rival Turkey: Natal in Brazil, maybe Pattaya in Thailand (but it loses out on political stability, over which there are still doubts over), Tangier in Morocco, and that’s about it.

But according to Sotheby’s, Istanbul is also becoming one of the safe-haven destinations where the world’s wealthy individuals store their wealth in prime property, and where institutional investors make their low-risk acquisitions.

Some areas of Istanbul have become as attractive as marquee addresses in London and Paris, says Turkey Sotheby’s International Realty General Manager Arman Özver.

Özver told Sunday’s Zaman that Istanbul’s unique position as a geographic and cultural “intersection”, with its rich history and culture, combined with its well-developed financial system and sound infrastructure, placed it among the most desirable locations in the world for property investors and the super-wealthy. “Istanbul is able to compete in every sense with those metropolises”, “Özver said in reference to London and Paris.

Özver believes that areas such as Istanbul’s Nişantaşı and the picturesque properties that line the Bosporus have achieved the same status, being increasingly regarded by wealthy investors as a “safe haven” asset class, immune from fluctuations in the wider economy.

“Nişantaşı is the same [as Knightsbridge, central London], and if rental or sale prices in Istanbul collapse by 50 percent, prices for buildings like these [Sotheby's office in an art nouveau building in Nişantaşı] will maintain their value, because this [property] is unique,” he said.

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This is the first article in a series of stories following real estate in major cities around the globe.  The article was written by Liam Bailey for PropertyShark.com on behalf of Select Resorts, a leading overseas property agent currently marketing property in Turkey.

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While it’s no secret that average homes in New York tend to be smaller than in other large cities in the U.S., we went a step further and compiled a list of 20 major US cities by average home size. Somewhat unsurprisingly New York City is at the bottom of the list.

The average sized home in NYC: a 2-bedroom apartment of 1,124 square feet. Interior Photos courtesy of Corcoran

The average home in New York City (all the five boroughs) is 1,124 square feet, which places the Big Apple at the bottom of the list of 20 cities in the U.S. Home owners in Washington D.C. and Atlanta enjoy almost twice as much space as New Yorkers. Californians don’t have it bad either, as an average home in Los Angeles boasts no less than 1,895 square feet.

And talking about Californians, home owners in posh areas like Beverly Hills and Malibu are in a league of their own when it comes to home sizes (and prices!). An average home in Beverly Hills is 3,884 square feet, more than twice the size of one in the City of Los Angeles, while a home in Malibu is on average 2,998 square feet.

The same can not be said about New York – while a home in Manhattan, New York’s most expensive borough, costs twice as much as one in Brooklyn and almost four times more than one in the Bronx, the average home size in Manhattan (1,226 square foot) is not significantly larger than the average in the outer boroughs.

Note: For the purpose of this report, a home is defined as a single-unit residential property (single-family home, co-op or condominium). In the case of Chicago, there’s no public information about the square footage of condo apartments. To overcome this issue we have used an estimate based on the apartments that are currently for sale in the city.

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Despite the low number of new scheduled foreclosure auctions, pre-foreclosure filings remained steady. There were 715 residential properties in the five boroughs that received lis pendens filings in November 2011, only 2% less than in November 2010.

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A duplex at 834 Fifth Avenue was sold for $36,000,000

Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue may be indisputably the world’s most expensive shopping street, but when it comes to home prices it has to battle a reputable contender just two blocks away. Fifth and Park avenues, the stretches between 59th and 96th streets on the Upper East Side, are two of New York City’s toniest thoroughfares, and have been battling for the crown of the city’s most expensive residential street for almost forever. Most of the time Fifth Avenue claimed the top spot.

In the past seven years, on five occasions Fifth Avenue came out as the most expensive of the two, but Park Avenue has made up ground particularly in the past two years, reducing a difference of as much as 44% in 2008 to 11% in 2011. Furthermore, in 2011, Park Avenue real estate was pricier than that of Fifth Avenue in three of the year’s four quarters.

230 sales took place on Park Avenue in 2011, half of them being sold for more than $2.5 million. There were far fewer sales on Fifth Avenue (133) in 2011, but the storied avenue saw some of the largest sales in the city, among them a $36 million sale of a duplex at 834 Fifth Avenue and a $34.6 million sale of a co-op at 927 Fifth Avenue.

Median Sale Price: Fifth Avenue vs Park Avenue

Most expensive properties currently on the market on Fifth and Park avenues:

740 Park Avenue #12/13CD – $60,000,000
973 Fifth Avenue – $49,000,000
502 Park Avenue #PH22 - $33,000,000
640 Park Avenue 8FL – $29,000,000
960 Fifth Avenue #10/11B – $27,775,000

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16 East 69 Street

We recently ran our update on NYC’s most expensive neighborhoods over the past quarter and notably, two Brooklyn neighborhoods, Dumbo and Boreum Hill, were again in the top ten. Both of them were up one place compared with the ranking in Q2 2011 and moved ahead of the historically high-ranked neighborhoods. Dumbo came in third place with a median sale price of $1,460,000 while Boreum Hill was in 9th place with a median sale price of $920,000. 

As expected, Tribeca and SoHo were the most expensive New York City neighborhoods in Q3 2011. With a median sale price of $2,299,500 Tribeca ranked first, followed by Soho with a median sale price of $1,535,840.

Surprisingly, West Village did not make it to the top, ranking 11th in Q3 2011 with a median sale price of $850,000 and being surpassed by Battery Park City.

Upper East Side was the home of the priciest property sold in Q3 2011, the $48M mansion at 16 East 69 Street. Se below the complete list of  the biggest residential sales in each of the ten most expensive neighborhoods.

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