Looking for Bottom in N.Y. Real Estate

“It’s almost surreal,” said Dottie Herman, the president of Prudential Douglas Elliman, referring to the abrupt turnabout after the collapse of Lehman Brothers last fall. Until then, prices had been marching upward, with the median price of an apartment more than tripling in a decade.

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Looking ahead, however, some believe it is possible that the average slide from peak values could reach 40 percent by the end of 2010, with variation by neighborhood and market segment. That would put values back to levels last seen around 2002.

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Frederick Peters, the president of Warburg Realty, noted that some deals his firm had brokered lately were nearing the lows being predicted by others. “Even if the New York market were to end up being 35 to 45 percent down,” he said, “to the degree we’re seeing deals done at 30 to 32 percent down anyway, it’s not very far away.”