Apartment Building Sales, Prices Down, Food Stamp Use Up

April 2, 2009 11:59 a.m. EST

New York, NY (AHN) - Apartment buildings in Manhattan are selling for about 20 percent less than a year ago, if they sell at all, but food stamp use is up in New York and elsewhere.

First quarter sales figures show that luxury apartments and new condominiums were particularly hard-hit by sluggish sales even at lower prices.

Closings on condominiums and co-ops plunged 58 percent from a year earlier.

The number of unsold apartments stood at 10,445, which was reportedly the highest in a decade of record-keeping on that statistic by the Prudential Douglas Elliman.

In some areas of Florida, the real estate market is so sluggish that some banks are dragging their feet in filing foreclosure lawsuits against people who stop making mortgage payments because the banks don't want to take over paying the property taxes and insurance premiums on the buildings.

In many cases, apartment buildings around Florida have high vacancy rates because people have lost their jobs and have either doubled up with relatives or friends, or left the state or become homeless.

In Florida, 1 in 10 people are on food stamps, which is the same as the national rate.

As of January, there were 1,802,316 Floridians receiving food stamps up from 1,395,527 a year earlier, in New York there were 2,211,935 on food stamps up from 1,932,022 in January 2008, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.