When Lisa Simonsen entered the luxury real estate industry eight years ago, she quickly made her mark. One of her first sales was a $14 million SoHo loft. In the years following, many record-breaking luxury properties passed through her hands: this includes New York’s most expensive Fifth Avenue mansion, plus a $48 million Plaza Hotel condominium, where she represented both seller and buyer, which set a new record in the city in 2011 for the highest price for a private residence.
Together with a multilingual Team, Lisa and The Simonsen Team continue to work with high net-worth individuals and families domestically and internationally (China, Latin America, Russia and the Middle East) and are constantly traveling the world to personally meet with their clients.
Most recently in August, Lisa and her team traveled to Sao Paulo, Brazil. Lisa was invited by a top real estate agency as a lead speaker where she addressed the New York luxury real estate market and the safety and security of investing in New York.
Third quarter market reports show that Manhattan home prices increased yet again. The Elliman report, prepared by appraiser and graph guru Jonathan Miller, found the median price rose 4 percent compared to the same period last year, hitting $908,242 (but that’s slightly down from last quarter), while the average price jumped more than 17 percent to $1,684,729 (slightly up from last quarter).
“Prices have been rising in each of the past four quarters as limited supply has finally pressed prices higher,” says Miller. He notes that the increase in the average price is largely thanks to a lot of activity at the high end of the market. There were 55 sales at $10 million or higher last quarter, up from 29 during the third quarter of 2013. And since new development inventory is up 101 percent and is largely at the top of the market, Miller says we should “expect to see overall prices influenced by more new development closings over the next year.”