The soaring values of apartments and houses in the city gave many New Yorkers a major real estate obsession during the first part of this decade. After residential real estate prices took over a decade to climb back to their levels of 1987 (the beginning of the last real estate crash), property values began to soar in 2000 and continued their heady ascent until recently. Now, of course, real estate price increases are yesterday’s news as buyers dry up, inventories of unsold properties mount, sub-prime mortgages readjust and foreclosures increase.

This fall in the housing market will have many effects in New York City. But some New Yorkers, particularly lower-income people, blacks and Hispanics, will feel more pain than others.

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