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Buying residential property in New York ain't cheap, and buying in Manhattan is a luxury reserved for the city's wealthiest inhabitants. But over the last year, that luxury has become slightly less exclusive, albeit by a very a small measure.
A new report from real estate consultant firm Miller Samuel found that the median cost of residential property sales in Manhattan was $1.14 million during the first quarter of 2017, which is a 0.8 percent drop from the same period of 2016. Sure, spending a cool million on an apartment might seem outlandish. And sure, a vast majority of New Yorkers can't even imagine owning a seven-figure property. But the data suggests that Manhattan is becoming slightly more accessible, one tenth of a percentage point at a time.
When you look at residential property prices in the city as a whole, it's a whole different story. The median sales price for homes across New York during the first quarter of the year was $640,000, a 15.2 percent jump from 2016. Median prices in Brooklyn and Queens saw the greatest year-over-year percentage increases among the city's boroughs, rising by 16.2 and 21.3 percent, respectively. Median prices in the Bronx rose by a slim 2.9 percent, and Staten Island saw a 13 percent bump.
In total, the sum value of New York residential real estate sales during the first quarter of 2017 exceeded $12 billion, which is an unfathomable amount of money for anyone who's relished in the value of a $1 slice of pizza. If this report tells you anything, it's that you'll probably spend your entire New York existence as a renter unless, God forbid, you move to the suburbs.