We’ve said it before, but now we can say it definitively: 2013 was a banner year for real estate, particularly for high-end residential sales. In fact, so many real estate records were smashed in the fourth quarter, according to reports released today by the city’s biggest residential brokerages, that data wonk Jonathan Miller said it was hard to count them all.

The last three months of 2013 had the most sales of any fourth quarter since Miller began compiling the data 25 years ago, according to the report that his appraisal firm, Miller Samuel, prepared for Douglas Elliman. Median condominium sale prices and inventory were also at a record high and low, respectively, Miller said.

“The fourth quarter is usually the weakest,” he said. “But we have a lot of records going on this quarter. It’s a bit of an anomaly.”

In the fourth quarter, 3,297 apartment transactions closed in Manhattan, a 26 percent increase over the same period in 2012, and the median condo sale price hit $1.32 million, up 14.3 percent from $1.13 million this time last year, the Elliman data show. Part of the reason for the spike was that larger units sold, Miller said.

The overall median sale price was $855,000, up 2 percent from a year ago.

The median cost for a one-bedroom condo was $891,000 last quarter, up 9.19 percent from $816,000 last year at this time, whereas two-bedrooms ticked in at a median of $1.83 million, up 12.2 percent from $1.63 million, according to Town Residential’s fourth quarter report. Three-bedroom condos hit $3.22 million, up 3.8 percent from $3.1 million year-over-year.

Co-op prices were up 4.6 percent year-over-year, to a median sale price of $680,000 in the fourth quarter, according to Elliman’s data.

And according to Halstead Property, new development sale prices in the last quarter averaged $1,562 per square foot, up a whopping 26 percent from 2012’s average, about $1,230 per square foot – another record. (Halstead shares data with sister brokerage Brown Harris Stevens.)

http://therealdeal.com/blog/2014/01/03/manhattan-apartment-market-closes-out-crazy-year-with-record-smashing-quarter/