Since listing a three-bedroom co-op in a classic prewar building on West End Avenue for $2.35 million last month, Lisa Lippman has received a half-dozen bids. They come from a diverse group that included a contractor, a dentist and his therapist wife, an accountant and others—but one field was conspicuously unrepresented. Not one of the bidders works on Wall Street. The same holds true in the other three multimillion-dollar sales Ms. Lippman is working on.
“It's unusual that not one of these buyers is in finance,” said Ms. Lippman, a top-producing agent at brokerage Brown Harris Stevens. “Like most high-end brokers, I find that most of my clients [typically] work on Wall Street.”
Maybe so, but many of them are also seeing what she is experiencing: a major shift in the residential real estate market. Both on the sales and rental sides, deep-pocketed bankers are waning in importance after decades of dominance. The shift has gathered steam in recent weeks as a growing list of banks have scaled back compensation by as much as 30%, after months of cutting back the size of their staffs. Meanwhile, the slack is increasingly being picked up by tech- and creative-industry employees, as well as foreigners.
The change reflects the evolving New York City economy. Recent reports predict that education, health services and professional and business services—including lawyers, accountants and computer programmers—will drive employment growth in the city, even as Wall Street continues to shed jobs this year. Back before the recession, in 2006 and 2007, finance professionals on average represented 35% of the buyers of new luxury condo developments in Manhattan sold by Corcoran Sunshine….
Read more: http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20120205/REAL_ESTATE/302059976#ixzz1loVFktl8
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