Welcome to this week’s Streets365 Weekly. Each Sunday I look at the latest Manhattan market numbers, share what I notice in them, and then talk about something that happened in real estate during the past week that caught my attention. It’s a chance to look beyond any one deal and think about what’s happening around us as we begin another week.
Market Dashboard
Active Inventory — 5,464
New Listings — 560
Signed Contracts — 131
30-Day Contract Pace — 598 — 30-day rolling total
Median Days on Market
Under $1M — 79 days
$1M–$2M — 91 days
$2M–$4M — 82 days
$4M+ — 123 days
30-Year Fixed Mortgage Rate — 7.03%
These are the most current figures available to us.
What I Notice
The September inventory increase we’ve been waiting for has arrived. Manhattan active inventory jumped 13% in a single week to 5,464 apartments, while 560 new listings came to market. That was the second consecutive heavy week of new inventory and brought Manhattan back above 5,000 active listings for the first time since mid-August. Even after that increase, inventory remains 14.4% below the same period last year, so I see this more as the fall market being replenished than Manhattan suddenly having too much inventory.
Buyers also began responding. Signed contracts increased 9% to 131 after the slower post-Labor Day period. The 30-day contract pace is now 598, about 13% below last year’s comparable period. We now have more apartments coming onto the market and some improvement in weekly contract activity, which makes the next few weeks particularly important in determining how much of this new fall inventory buyers are prepared to absorb.
The number that caught my attention most this week is 7.03%. The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate has crossed 7%. It was 6.71% three weeks ago, 6.76% two weeks ago and 6.95% last week. This week it moved through a barrier that buyers and agents notice. A difference of eight basis points from last week doesn’t dramatically change an individual buyer’s payment, but crossing from a six to a seven in front of the rate changes the conversation.
This comes just as buyers have more apartments to choose from. Some buyers will continue with their plans, particularly those who have been waiting for better selection. Others may recalculate what they’re comfortable spending, change their price range or simply decide to wait. Sellers entering the fall market now have to compete not only with substantially more inventory but with financing that has become noticeably more expensive in a very short period of time.
Thought for the Week
A Manhattan sale caught my attention this week because of the distance between where the seller started and where the market eventually put the value.
The penthouse beneath the gold dome at the historic Sohmer Piano Building at 170 Fifth Avenue sold at auction for $9 million. The 5,700-square-foot duplex had originally been listed at $25 million in November 2024 and spent about 530 days on the market before going to auction.
This isn’t an ordinary apartment, and I wouldn’t use it to draw conclusions about Manhattan pricing generally. What interested me was what happens when a property is so unusual that there are very few meaningful comparisons. A spectacular apartment can be difficult to price for exactly the same reason that makes it special.
There is also something interesting about the auction. After a long period in which conventional marketing didn’t produce a buyer at the seller’s expectations, the auction created a moment when the market had to answer the question: what will someone actually pay for this apartment today?
The answer was $9 million.
For agents, I think properties like this are a reminder of the difference between what makes an apartment extraordinary and what the market is prepared to pay for those qualities. Those two things don’t always move together. The more unusual the property, the more judgment becomes involved in pricing it, and sometimes the market ultimately provides an answer very different from where the conversation began.
Think Beyond The Deal,
George