The New York realtors have their February numbers out. "Sales of existing single-family homes in New York slowed in February, according to preliminary single-family sales data accumulated by the New York State Association of Realtors. The February 2006 sales total decreased 6.4 percent to 5,197 compared to the February 2005 sales total of 5,554. The February 2006 sales total fell 16.1 percent from the January 2006 sales total of 6,193."

"The boom in luxury housing may be reaching its crest and market saturation could drive lenders to cut back on the funding of new projects, first-quarter real estate statistics to be released today by some of the city's largest firms suggest. 'With the inventory coming on, we are reaching a saturation point," an appraiser who is an author of one of the reports, Jonathan Miller, said. 'There's a lot in the pipeline.'"

"'Without Wall Streeters' spending, we were looking at a fairly flat market,' said Jonathan Miller, CEO of Miller Samuel. 'This is further evidence that the housing market is not seeing the big price gains we've grown accustomed to in the past several years,' Miller said."

"The inventory of apartments available for sale in the first quarter rose 15.8% from December, and a hefty 59.6% from a year earlier. It's at the highest level since Miller started tracking it in 1999. That's a cause for concern, because it means there are more apartments competing for buyers, he said."

"'Bigger Wall Street bonuses shifted the mix to larger apartments during the quarter,' Miller said, lifting the median. But, he noted, price per square foot was mostly unchanged, at $1,004."

"Another sign of weakness is inventory and time on the market. The average apartment now spends 138 days on the market, compared with 98 a year ago. Part of that is, with prices so high, there's a lot of building going on. 'New developments have added a lot to the inventory,' said Pam Liebman, CEO of the Corcoran Group."

"The 2005 market started out with a bang: plenty of Wall Street bonus money, lots of demand for housing and historically low inventory of available property. By the end of the year, stagnation had set in, leaving the numbers, which had peaked in June, ending approximately where they began."