Buy Manhattan Real Estate Now, Before the Class of '06 Does

There was a nice article in the NYT about Manhattan's real estate and the right time to buy it.

Excerpt from "A Season of Lofty Expectations":

"An analysis by The New York Observer found that the median sale price for Manhattan co-ops and condos tends to spike in the second quarter of the year — not long after Wall Street’s top workers cash their bonus checks.

The cause-and-effect is not entirely clear, the Observer notes. Other factors, such as a post-winter pickup in buyer interest and home purchases by recent college graduates, might be at work, the newspaper wrote. [Which made us wonder: What kind of recent college grad can afford a Manhattan co-op these days?]"

The kind that get paid over $150K as a base salary + bonus, but, more importantly, banks just love to give them discounts on their mortgages and special discounts for the chance of repeat business. I mean if you're a 22-23 year old shelling out for a Manhattan apartment and working at any of the top 5, especially in i-banking, then you're definitely worth it, for the bank I mean.

For second and third year associates it gets even rosier; you can easily make a bar [Wall Street slang for million] in total compensation. One of my friends recently got in at ML Canada. Nice pay! 5-figure signing bonus, and 80K base salary with 20% bonus on top of that. Talk about a killing! And these are starting salaries of course.

Take care everyone, hope y'all had a good Thanksgiving [for my US readers I mean].