Interesting news the other day out of the Commerce Department and reported in the New York Times about new-home prices: The median price (the statistical point where half the houses are priced less but half are priced more) of a new house nosedived 9.7 percent last month when compared with the same month one year earlier. That price, by the way, is $217,100. The decrease represents the “biggest such drop since December 1970,” reports the Times. Now on the positive side, of course, this means new homes are available to buyers at cheaper prices than before. But, the larger picture, some experts say, is one of an economy that may be in for some turbulence ahead.

As the paper points out in an article by Jeremy Peters, the folks who build new houses are just trying to keep ahead of a market that seems to be weakening with each passing day. It was only two months ago when the new home prices were still on the rise.

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Tags: commerce, department, drop, housing, median, New, price, prices, Times, York

Location…Location…Location. The battle cry of real estate brokers. And, location is what a new “landmark” plan for middle-income housing in New York City has: Directly across the river from the United Nations in Queens…24 acres!

New York City Mayor Bloomberg made the announcement and, according to Jill Gardiner’s account in The New York Sun, the city is buying the land from the Port Authority for $146 million dollars.

The Mayor reportedly said of the deal that it is a “landmark moment in affordable housing.”

The last time the city undertook such a large project was back in 1974 with the development of Starrett City in Brooklyn.

Tags: bloomberg, city, housing, income, middle, nations, New, queens, united, York

After recently launching two new real estate pages to their site, Great Homes and The Home Finance Center, the New York Times announced yesterday that they would no longer be operating their real estate blog.

Apparently the NY Times couldn’t focus on all three areas of their site at one:

As you may have noticed, The Walk-Through has been awfully quiet lately. It had a good run, but we’ve decided to turn our focus to other parts of our real estate pages.

This withdrawl from the real estate blog space is a victory for the small real estate bloggers who continue to produce fresh content every day with no backing from a multinational media company. The big boys have fallen, and a new generation of upstarts will rise. Look out!

Tags: blog, blogging, great, homefinancecenter, homes, New, NYT, nytblog, through, Times, walk, walkthrough, York