The annual list tracks the areas that saw the biggest increases in searches by buyers and renters between 2024 and 2025. In a shift from last year, Manhattan regained its lead and secured the #1, #2 and #4 spots for 2026 with the Financial District, East Village and Lower East Side. On last year’s list, Manhattan gained just one spot, finishing in 10th place with Morningside Heights.
Financial District: A sleeper hit
In first place for 2026 is the Financial district “is often overshadowed by its more notable neighbors like Tribeca and Soho,” the report said. But apartment hunters gave this neighborhood the biggest increase in searches on StreetEasy year-over-year: a 46.7 percent increase from 2024 to 2025.
Once known for its office buildings and restaurants catering to the lunch crowd, the neighborhood has become increasingly residential thanks to redevelopment projects like 25 Water St., known as SoMA, that of the US largest office-to-home conversion to date with 1,320 rental units.
Rising buyer demand in Manhattan
A bump in Manhattan real estate is finding tracks with demand in the Manhattan sales market.
In the fourth quarter, rising sales and declining inventory for Manhattan apartments and co-ops led to a “market [that] felt faster on the ground,” wrote Jonathan Miller, president and CEO of an appraisal firm Miller Samuel and author of the Elliman Report in its Manhattan Fourth Quarter Sales Market Report.
According to Miller, the Manhattan sales market has seen transactions and average sales prices increase for five straight quarters.
Options in the suburbs
Although Manhattan gained more places, the list is still dominated by Brooklyn and Queens. New developments in the suburbs offer more options for buyers and tenants.
A recent report from the Real Estate Board of New York on the city’s progress toward its goal of adding 500,000 new homes by 2034, underscoring where development is happening (and how little has been built so far).
Since the first quarter of 2024, only 66,162 units have been completed, just 13 percent of the 500,000 unit target. Brooklyn and Queens account for just over two-thirds (65 percent) of completions since the first quarter of 2024, the REBNY report said.
East Village offers a discount
In second place is a newcomer on StreetEasy’s list: The East village, where there is strong tenant demand, reflected in a 13.4 percent increase in the average rent to $4,560, the steepest jump on StreetEasy’s list. The area, “a hub for artistic and countercultural movements,” is close to NYU and Cooper Union, and its rental stock includes many antebellum buildings and a small number of new developments.
Units here are typically small (even by NYC standards) studios and one-bedrooms, according to the report. Perhaps that’s why buyers here can get a discount compared to other neighborhoods: The average asking price dropped 6.3 percent to $1,199,000, an 11 percent discount compared to the borough’s average asking price of $1,350,000.
Windsor Terrace is going up
In third place is Brooklyn’s Windsor Terrace neighborhood, which rose two spots from last year with a 44.9 percent annual increase in searches, the biggest jump among the Brooklyn places on the list.
The neighborhood near Prospect Park is considered a more affordable alternative to Park Slope, its neighbor to the north, with an average asking price of $1,125,000 compared to Park Slope’s $1,723,000, but supply is limited. Windsor Terrace’s average asking price reflected an annual decline of 12.8 per cent, the steepest decline on the list at more than double.
For rentals, Windsor Terrace saw a 7.2 percent increase in average rent to $3,800, just above the borough’s median of $3,600.
The homes here largely consist of single- and multi-family homes with some low-rise apartments. But with City Council approval for a rezoning of the site for Arrow Linen, a commercial linen supplier, a major new project could be built on Prospect Avenue. The City Council eliminated a few floors from the plan and ultimately approved the development of two new 10-story residential buildings with a total of 250 residential units, with 100 units set aside as permanently affordable.
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