Jonathan Miller may be the most respected man in New York City real estate, if not the greatest “appraiser” on the nationwide housing market, and he just saw something new after four decades of tracking home prices every week: a record-high number of all-cash home sales in Manhattan.
Miller’s research firm, Miller Samuel Inc., along with brokerage Douglas Elliman Real Estate, just released one of its regular updates on the state of the Manhattan market, and saw the share of all-cash buyers in real estate’s crown-jewel borough hit an all-time high in the fourth quarter of 2023. Miller’s latest report shows something that we’ve known all along: Wealthy buyers can pay all cash for the real estate they want. But it shows something else surprising, to Miller: This is a bet on the market becoming a bit easier for homebuyers in 2024, in a way.
