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Last February, Sarah Silva, a real-estate agent at Brown Harris Stevens, started working with a Manhattan couple who\u2019d recently had a baby and were looking to buy a two-bedroom for under $2 million in Park Slope, Cobble Hill, or Brooklyn Heights, preferably one with a little outdoor space. They made a combined income of a quarter-million dollars a year and had a few hundred thousand dollars saved for a down payment. In any other time or place, this would have been sufficient, ample even. But after making several offers and losing out to other, higher bids, they decided to take a break this November. \u201cThey felt they were priced out. All the homes left that they could afford required a significant amount of work,\u201d says Silva. \u201cThey\u2019re hoping that maybe a bigger bonus will allow them to compete next year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not everyone struggled, though. One of Silva\u2019s other buyers was a man with a net worth of more than $100 million who purchased a $4 million downtown penthouse for his son\u00a0graduating from college. He paid over ask, in cash. Then the family decided to sink another half a million into a full renovation, even though the apartment was already in excellent condition. \u201cMy business shifted almost exclusively to all-cash buyers last year,\u201d says Silva. \u201cThe buyers who needed a mortgage just got beat out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brokers say that this gulf \u2014 between the merely wealthy and the truly rich \u2014 was the defining feature of New York\u2019s real-estate market in 2025, with the former forced to sit out of the market and the latter scooping up properties like so many cashmere sweaters at an end-of-the-year sale. All New York City buyers are people of some, often substantial, means, but rarely have things been so bleak for buyers who need mortgages, brokers say. While there have always been separate markets for the salaried classes and the superrich, several years of high interest rates and high rents meant that this past year, the superrich weren\u2019t just signing contracts for $129 million penthouses<\/a>, they were also buying $2 million apartments for their kids, diversifying their assets with investment properties, and snapping up pieds-\u00e0-terre, shouldering out buyers with more modest resources in the process.<\/p>\n While everyone is hopeful that interest rates will fall (given that the Fed cut rates three times in 2025) and that inventory will surge in 2026, giving the salaried classes a better chance, all the brokers I spoke with thought next year\u2019s market will be a busier version of this year\u2019s, without the falloff that happened with the lead-up to last year\u2019s elections (which happens in every election year). Bess Freedman, the CEO of Brown Harris Stevens, described this past year as a \u201creturn to better\u201d with a number of promising signs for next year: crowded showings and a slew of older listings going into contract, proof that Zohran Mamdani\u2019s election didn\u2019t drive the rich away<\/a> after all. \u201cEveryone was taking off for the holidays, but we had so many people scrambling to get into showings,\u201d says Tania Isacoff Friedland, who helms the ATelier team at Compass with Allison Chiaramonte. \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s going to be a boom year, but I think we\u2019re coming out of a trough.\u201d One of their listings, a three-bedroom co-op at 1070 Park asking $3.95 million, went into contract in less than a month this fall: \u201cWe had like 30 showings in one week and multiple offers.\u201d<\/p>\n Many of these buyers, or at least, the money behind them, will be coming from wealthy parents, says Rachel Glazer, an agent at Compass. \u201cAll the people wondering, How do they afford to live here when they seem like they have a normal job? That\u2019s how. I\u2019m doing a deal now where the parents are buying their kid a $10 million apartment \u2014 not a kid-kid, someone in their 30s. I have a ton of those. You could be a partner in a law firm and still need the help.\u201d Glazer said some of her other active buyers are empty nesters relocating from the suburbs, although they\u2019re not trading in modest capes for one-bedrooms; they\u2019re buying the big, $8 million apartments they couldn\u2019t afford when they were younger.<\/p>\n Glazer, who lives in Tribeca, knows a lot of families who rent there and are \u201chigh-earning, dual income, but not Michael Rubin or something,\u201d and want to buy in the neighborhood: \u201cThey\u2019re working 80 hours a week at Goldman. They don\u2019t want to commute in from the suburbs, but it\u2019s tough,\u201d she says. \u201cPeople elsewhere don\u2019t believe that people making $1 million a year can\u2019t afford to live here, but we have an affordability crisis even for high earners. You need to be a celebrity or sell a company or be a CEO earning like $10 million a year.\u201d<\/p>\n While parents buying for kids<\/a> is nothing new, what is new, says Nicole Hechter, an associate broker at Corcoran, is how much more of it she\u2019s been seeing this year, especially in the last few weeks, which she thinks is, in part, driven by high rents. \u201cWhat\u2019s surprising is the pricing of where those trades are happening,\u201d she says. Whereas\u00a0parents might have dropped three-quarters of a million on a one-bedroom in the past, many of the sales this year have been between $1.5 and $3 million. Nor are 20-something children expected to share these pricey apartments with a sibling. When we spoke, she was heading to a showing with parents buying a condo for their younger child. They\u2019d already bought the older one a place in a different building.<\/p>\n Rents are so high right now that when sellers can\u2019t get the sales price they want, they often decide to go rental rather than dropping them. Abby Palanca, an agent at Serhant, told me that one of her listings, a turnkey townhouse at 357 Henry Street in Cobble Hill, listed for $7 million in February. After not finding a buyer, the owners rented it out in August. \u201cThe owner who was initially so upset it didn\u2019t sell ended up being really happy \u2014 we got $25,000 a month.\u201d<\/p>\n High rents have also brought back investors looking to buy, who have been largely on the sidelines for the last few years. Chiarmonte, one of the Compass brokers, says that in the last two to three weeks, she\u2019s seen a lot more of them, asking How much could I rent this apartment out for? What could I get for it furnished? \u201cI was surprised,\u201d she says. Shawnalei Tamayose, an agent at Brown Harris Stevens, is currently working with a family office considering buying an investment condo at either One Manhattan Square or 15 Hudson Yards. Prices have dropped at both developments this year, particularly at Hudson Yards, because, as she puts it, \u201cNew Yorkers want to live in real neighborhoods and it\u2019s still not there yet.\u201d But between the price cuts \u2014 the duplex penthouse<\/a> her clients are considering is now asking $22.95 million, down from $29.5 million \u2014 and the tax abatements, it\u2019s a really alluring investment. The taxes on the penthouse, which is more than 5,000 square feet, are a mere $182 a month.<\/p>\n Brokers say that next year, they expect to see continued demand for apartments in family neighborhoods \u2014 two-, three-, and four-bedrooms on the Upper East Side, the Upper West Side, and in brownstone Brooklyn. Right now, people are even going for Upper East Side co-ops that need work \u2014 long considered one of the hardest sells in the city. Daniella Schlisser, an associate broker at Brown Harris Stevens, had a classic seven<\/a> at 45 E. 82nd, a pre-war coop, that was listed for $5.5 million in March 2024. They got \u201cnot a single offer\u201d and decided to pull it in August. She asked the sellers to do a few minor things \u2014 change out the kitchen-cabinet knobs and the linens in the primary bedroom, pull up the wall-to-wall carpet \u2014 before relisting it last January for the same price. This time, there was a bidding war, and it sold for $6.2 million, $700,000 above ask. \u201cSame apartment, same price,\u201d says Schlisser. \u201cThat\u2019s how different the market is.\u201d Some of the enthusiasm for co-ops may be that many of the last market cycle\u2019s new-construction condos, faux ops<\/a> such as the Naftali project on 83rd and Third, have sold or nearly sold out. Without many new condos to choose from, buyers are more willing to put up with the hassle of buying in a co-op \u2014 even one that needs work.<\/p>\n But professional-class buyers, frustrated as they are by this year\u2019s market, seem to be tepidly hopeful about their prospects in 2026. Brokers say that they\u2019ve been hearing from more of them this month. Fed up by high rents and somewhat encouraged by slightly falling interest rates, they seem to be up for trying again next year. And many are willing to look farther afield. David Harris, an agent at Coldwell Banker Warburg, has been fielding calls from buyers interested in Queens, specifically Forest Hills, Middle Village, and Rego Park \u2014 neighborhoods where you can still get a three-bedroom Tudor for around $1 million. He also received a text from a couple that had decided to pause their search for a Brooklyn Heights two-bedroom under $1.25 million last spring. After the New Year, they\u2019re ready to start looking again.<\/p>\n Sign Up for the Curbed Newsletter<\/p>\n A daily mix of stories about cities, city life, and our always evolving neighborhoods and skylines.<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n