The sinking euro hasn't seriously derailed foreign appetite for New York City real estate, at least for now, said Pamela Liebman, president and chief executive of The Corcoran Group.
"We thought our foreign buyers would flee, but they haven’t as yet," she said Monday at the Reuters Global Real Estate and Infrastructure Summit in New York.
The next four to eight weeks will reveal whether the euro zone market chaos that recently swept the single currency to a four-year low will eat away at foreign demand for Manhattan properties, she said.
"It still feels as good as it did before the euro crisis, but we’re waiting to see, and it’s nowhere near what it was with the condo boom," Liebman told Reuters.
The mix of foreign buyers has already shifted over the past two years.
Italians, South Americans and Russians are in. The Irish and Koreans are out.
The current buyers are typically wealthy and looking to buy for families for the long term rather than to flip.