Even as the political swirl swirled about what the 34-year-old Assembly member’s successful campaign would yield, much of it coming from the industry itself, deep-pocketed buyers continued to snap up some of the city’s most expensive properties.
“There is absolutely no sign of reckoning, discounting or fear in the market,” says Matthew Lesser of Leslie Garfield. “The reality is we are seeing a lot of activity here.”
In the two weeks leading up to the election, nearly 70 Manhattan homes asking $4 million or more saw signed contracts, according to Olshan Realty’s weekly reports. In Brooklyn, a Gravesend home owned by the Gindi real estate family set a new borough record when it sold for $32 million in late October.
Even as the results were announced, the luxury market showed little sign of slowing down. Olshan reported another banner week for deals in Manhattan, with more than 40 deals signed for luxury properties – 24 of which were signed after results were announced on November 4.
Lesser, who specializes in townhouse sales, said most predictions about the new mayor — including theories about a so-called Mamdani cut — are all hype.
“Nobody knows what’s going to happen,” Lesser said. “Things will inevitably slow down because of the holidays, but then you see messages saying, ‘Oh wow, the contracts are expiring. It’s the Mamdani effect.’
Douglas Elliman’s Michelle Griffith echoed a similar refrain about the speculation, though she wasn’t quick to dismiss the possibility of a “Mamdani discount.”
She said it’s probably too early to tell whether fear of the new mayor has had an impact on those sales, as most of the reported activity so far has been on signed contracts rather than closed deals. She added that some of her seller clients, skittish about results, are starting to accept offers they would have said no to just a few months ago.
“Yes, there is movement,” Griffith said. ‘That one time [deals] close we could see that sellers would have to be significantly more flexible and get rid of those asking prices.”
Griffith said that because Mamdani has focused much of his campaign on tenants’ rights, some sellers who had previously considered foregoing offers and renting out their homes might choose to sell at a lower price instead.
“If sellers don’t get the right price, they might say, ‘Maybe I’ll rent this for a year or two and go out on the market,’” she said. “That conversation is more complicated now.”
Not so fast…
Gary Barnett is once again trying to offload one of the most expensive units in Central Park Tower.
The developer this week put a duplex in the Billionaires’ Row tower back on the market for $128 million after taking it off the market in March, according to StreetEasy. The price tag is significantly less than the $150 million Extell Development CEO had been asking for it since he first put it on the market in 2021.
The apartment, which occupies the 127th and 128th floors, is the most expensive home on the New York City market, followed by a quadplex at 111 West 57th Street that has been asking $110 million since it went public in April.
Carl Gambino of Compass has the listing for the 11,500-square-foot apartment, which was previously represented by Shlomi Reuveni of Reuveni Development Market.
Now that the duplex is back on the market, some may be wondering about the fate of the supertall’s crown jewel penthouse — a sprawling 17,000-square-foot triplex that was one of the key backdrops to Ryan Serhant’s Netflix series “Owning Manhattan.”
The flagship penthouse at 217 West 57th Street hit the market in 2022 asking a whopping $250 million, which would have broken the record for the most expensive deal in the U.S. had it sold for that price.
However, a year later, Barnett lowered the price of the penthouse to $195 million, labeling the move as an attempt to “get serious about selling.”
The following summer, shortly after Serhant’s show premiered on the streaming service, the developer took the penthouse off the market.
It has yet to surface again.
NYC deal of the week
The most expensive land sale on the city’s registry this week was a condo in Extell Development’s Central Park Tower, which traded for $47.5 million, or $7,100 per square foot, in cash. The full-floor unit sold to an unknown buyer for significantly less than the last asking price of just under $55 million.
Unit 121 spans 7,000 square feet and has five bedrooms and five bathrooms. It also features 12-foot floor-to-ceiling windows, a private foyer and an eat-in kitchen.
The sale at 217 West 57th Street is led by an internal team from Extell and another team from Corcoran Sunshine, including Kane Manera, Janet Wang, Tim Rizzo and Gabriele Tonini.
Read more
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