{"id":344217,"date":"2026-09-11T18:44:17","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T18:44:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/344217\/"},"modified":"2026-09-11T18:44:17","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T18:44:17","slug":"25-years-later-downtown-manhattan-real-estate-continues-to-thrive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/344217\/","title":{"rendered":"25 Years Later, Downtown Manhattan Real Estate Continues To Thrive"},"content":{"rendered":"

Time to read [4 minutes]<\/p>\n

Manhattan on 9\/11, with the personal focus now on preserving that memory as fewer Americans lived through it directly.<\/p>\n

Lower Manhattan was rebuilt aggressively post-9\/11, with residential sales growth far outpacing Manhattan overall in the 25 years since.<\/p>\n

FiDi price growth tracked closer to Manhattan\u2019s average, driven by heavy new construction, and the analysis leans on condo data because co-op records are sparse.<\/p>\n

Five years ago, I was at my Midtown Manhattan office on West 45th Street (between Fifth and Sixth Avenues) by about 8 am on September 11, 2001. After the first plane hit, colleagues from around the country began emailing to check whether I was alive. That\u2019s a weird question to have to answer, but when connecting with them later, they basically didn\u2019t know how to ask it.<\/p>\n

I’ve written about my memories of that fateful day several times over the years, but the best version is at the bottom of my 2021 post<\/a>. I prefer not to rehash what I\u2019ve already written, but it still accurately conveys what I experienced that day. Here are some of the photos taken by or shared by my employees and friends that day and the days that followed – I no longer have the actual sources.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I remember wondering on that day in 2001, when the 5th anniversary of 9\/11 came to be, whether it would be less painful to think about that day<\/a>. As if 5 years out might feel less smothering. Here we are 25 years later, and nearly 30% of US residents were born after the September 11, 2001 attacks (about 103 million people). My concern has shifted to making sure the pain of that memory doesn\u2019t fade<\/a>, as outlined in this Real Deal piece. But now we find ourselves in another war in the Middle East.<\/p>\n

Before I get into the analysis, I thought I would share a fascinating look at the World Trade Center when it was first built<\/a> in Curbed. The structure was so massive and out of scale with the neighborhood that government offices dominated early tenancy. The neighborhood effectively evolved around it.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There was an inspiring Wall Street Journal piece, 25 Years After the September 11 Attacks, Lower Manhattan Is Thriving<\/a> (gift link), which is an important read to understand the sentiment on display in the city. I borrowed a form of the word \u201cthriving\u201d from the article title for this post title. It is important to remember that NYC\u2019s response to 9\/11 was to rebuild and then build a lot more. My biggest takeaway from the overall experience was how the city and the country came together. Bloomberg also had a great piece: In Post 9\/11 Era, NYC\u2019s Downtown Forges Life Beyond Wall Street<\/a> (gift link), to which I contributed data for some charts:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Source: Bloomberg<\/p>\n

I repurposed the same data I provided to Bloomberg above in the following two charts. This was reflected in the residential sales market, and growth over the past twenty-five years has been significantly higher in FiDi than Manhattan’s overall growth. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

However, price growth in FiDi over the same period was more consistent with Manhattan. It was a little weaker but occasionally exceeded. That\u2019s logical in a market that has seen a large volume of new product enter the housing stock. In the FiDi neighborhood, there are only a handful of co-ops, each with just a few sales, and co-op data around 9\/11 was not public record, such as 55 Liberty<\/a>, 26 Beaver, 3 Hanover Sq, 176 Broadway, 65 Nassau St, and a few others, so I relied on condos. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Twenty-five years later, New York\u2019s answer to 9\/11 was to rebuild, and Lower Manhattan\u2019s residential market shows it, outperforming the rest of Manhattan even as FiDi\u2019s price gains were tempered by heavy new construction. But the real lesson was that just as the city chose to build rather than give up, it is also important to remember, rather than letting that day fade away.<\/p>\n

The Actual Final Thought \u2013 I ate there<\/a> several times and clearly remember the purple carpet<\/a> in the elevator lobby.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

My Housing Notes column<\/a> also appears several times a week<\/a> over at The Real Deal<\/a>!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Share Housing Notes by Jonathan Miller<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Time to read [4 minutes] Manhattan on 9\/11, with the personal focus now on preserving that memory as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":344218,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[75,84,83,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-344217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}