From July 2024 to July 2025, 1 in 3 condos sold in Manhattan sold at a loss, according to luxury real estate firm Brown Harris Stevens. Experts say this dynamic is somewhat typical in a city with high selling fees and high tax rates.
What is unusual is the borough’s wavering property values over the past decade. In November 2015, 1 square foot of space in Manhattan cost $1,562; by fall 2025, prices had fallen to $1,108 per square foot, according to Redfin data.
Manhattan condo and co-op values took a large swing down amid the Fed’s tightening of the U.S. economy from 2022 to 2024. A dearth of foreign buyers further dampened demand. Experts point to shifts in foreign exchange rates between the U.S. dollar and currencies such as the euro.
“I think there’s probably more upside over the next 10 years than the last 10 years,” said Jonathan Miller, CEO and founder of Miller Samuel, a real estate appraisal and consulting firm.
Experts say many first-time buyers are shut out of this high-end market. “I’m seeing more people in their early 30s, and they’re getting a little bit of help from their parents,” said Bess Freedman, CEO of Brown Harris Stevens. “They’re New Yorkers who are going from uptown to downtown, empty nesters, … younger families, … not so much international,” she said in an interview with CNBC’s Robert Frank.
“That’s actually why rents went up so much, because people couldn’t afford to buy,” said Pierre Debbas, a real estate lawyer in the New York metro region.
The median rent in Manhattan today is $4,973, according to rental website Zumper, a 10% increase from the year prior. A buyer purchasing the median condo in Manhattan — which sells for $1,650,000, according to data from Miller Samuel — with a 20% down payment and a 6.25% mortgage could face monthly principal and interest payments north of $8,000.
As a result, even wealthy New Yorkers are choosing to rent.
New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani campaigned on affordability issues, gaining national attention.
His platform called for higher taxes on the rich and a rent freeze for approximately 1 million rent-stabilized units throughout the city. Experts say this could raise the rents on an estimated 1.2 million market-rate units in the coming years.
“What that’s going to cause landlords to do is to push expenses on the buildings they control that have more open-market units,” said Miller.
Watch the video above to see how Manhattan’s real estate market is shifting.
