Manhattan foreclosures reached a high-water mark last year.
First-time filings in the city totaled 1,588 in 2025, an 8% uptick from the year prior.
Manhattan foreclosures, in particular, saw its the highest figure in at least 15 years. While Queens racked up the highest volume first-time foreclosures, the sharpest uptick in incidents came from The Bronx.
Citywide foreclosures in 2025 showed troubling signs of distress across the five boroughs. CLShebley – stock.adobe.com
While Manhattan foreclosures reached a 15-year high, Queens continued to lead the city in new filings. contentzilla – stock.adobe.com
The disquieting data on New York’s distressed property sector comes from PropertyShark’s annual foreclosure report. The overall market remained slightly below the 1,619 first-time citywide filings counted in 2023, the most active post-pandemic year so far.
Queens, the city’s largest borough, continued its streak as the largest supplier of the city’s foreclosure filings, totaling 587 cases, followed by 460 filings in Brooklyn. The counts in both cases marked only modest increases from the previous year, and stayed well below pre-pandemic figures.
The Queens area encompassing Springfield Gardens, Rochdale, Jamaica and Saint Albans emerged as the city’s foreclosure hotspot, accounting for 50 new filings, or 3% of the citywide caseload. Despite the active year, the borough-wide total of 587 new foreclosures pales in comparison to the 1,165 counted in 2019.
The most troubling figures came from Manhattan and The Bronx.
Foreclosure activity in Manhattan last year rose by 28% from 2024. The wealthy borough’s record year notched 208 home foreclosures. The annual figure is the highest count since PropertyShark began regularly tracking the distressed residential sector.
One Manhattan ZIP code supplied 15 of the borough’s 208 first-time foreclosures last year. Christopher Sadowski
The most expensive foreclosure of 2025 took place in the luxurious Metropolitan Tower on West 57th Street. zimmytws – stock.adobe.com
The unprecedented level of foreclosure activity was most concentrated in parts of neighborhoods like Sutton Place, Central Midtown and Turtle Bay, which collectively supplied 15 of the borough’s first-time filings.
The accelerated pace of foreclosures is in stark contrast to 2022, when the entirety of Manhattan saw just 15 foreclosures in the third quarter of 2022. The city’s COVID-era moratorium on foreclosures and evictions expired in January 2022.
Manhattan also saw the city’s most expensive residential foreclosure of 2025, according to PropertyShark. A roughly 3,700-square-foot penthouse at Metropolitan Tower on West 57th Street hit the auction block in March. The property had a $9.74 million lien.
Filings in The Bronx rose by a startling 35% year-over-year, from 144 to 194. Foreclosures there have more than doubled in the past two years, but it remains in better position than in years past. The annual total for 2025 is still well below pre-pandemic levels, the PropertyShark report noted. The borough counted an incredible 650 foreclosures in 2017.
Staten Island residential foreclosures stayed low at just 139 new filings — just 3 more cases than in 2024.
Two-family homes led citywide foreclosures for the third year running, reaching 540 filings, even as co-op cases jumped 29% from their 2024 dip. Foreclosures of single-family homes totaled 507.
The condo marked remained strong, however, defying the overall trend with 24% fewer new filings logged in 2025 than in 2024. Condos were the city’s least foreclosed residential property type for the fourth year running, according to PropertyShark.