Real estate professionals whose customers are investment bankers, private-equity players, and bond traders receiving record bonus checks this year have high hopes of big sales to come.

“We’re dancing around here,” says Greg Heym, chief economist for privately held Terra Holdings, parent company of top-end Manhattan real estate broker Brown Harris Stevens.

But despite the hype surrounding what has come to be known among New York real estate professionals as “the bonus bump,” a correlation between bonuses and eagerness to pay huge prices for property is hard to prove.

Real estate appraisal firm Miller Samuel has tracked the median sales price on a Manhattan apartment vs. the average Wall Street bonus per person since 1989, and the results show a loose connection at best.

“It’s mostly psychological,” says Jonathan Miller of Miller Samuel.

Source: BusinessWeek Online, Maya Roney (12/20/06)