the manhattan bleeding slow!

The aughts are in the past, but it's not time to close the book on one of the craziest decades in New York City real estate history quite yet. The major brokerages have issued their fourth-quarter Manhattan sales reports, and at first, things look predictable: Elliman, Corcoran and sibling brokerages Halstead and Brown Harris Stevens all pegged the average price of a Manhattan apartment at around $1.3 million, and the median price at around $800,000, both down from last year. But the pace of the market's free fall in the wake of Wall Street's apocalypse has slowed, according to the brokerages, when comparing those numbers to the third quarter of '09. In fact, Halstead/BHS even showed increases in average and median sales prices in Q4 when compared to the prior quarter. We certainly didn't see that one coming. Other encouraging signs for our frienemies in suits: All of the brokerages reported increases in sales over both last year and last quarter. In essence, when compared to recent market history, the fourth quarter saw more sales for less money. A stabilization, or a plateau before a double-dip? That's the $64,000 question, which, by the way, still won't buy you anything on this dastardly island