The In-Between

Hi {{ First Name | Scooper }}! The market moves every day, but most coverage shows up monthly. This is your weekly read on what actually moved: one week of Manhattan and Brooklyn contracts, distilled to what matters.

Six straight weeks of annual declines, which hasn’t happened since 2022: 213 contracts, down 6% year-over-year despite rising 3% from the prior week. Every week since Labor Day has come in under last year. The year is still 2.0% ahead, so this is a market losing ground slowly, not falling off a shelf.

Co-ops were the only product type to post a measurable annual gain: 126 contracts, up 3%, and 59% of everything signed in Manhattan. Resale condos fell 14% and new development 39%. Townhouses signed four contracts against zero in the same week last year — real, but too small to read anything into.

New development’s decline streak reached fourteen weeks: 19 contracts, down 39% annually, with eleven of those fourteen weeks off more than 20%. Three and a half months of losing to resale, and the gap is widening rather than closing. Sponsors are still pricing against a market that moved.

The top of the market rebounded as fast as it fell: $5M+ returned to 21 contracts, up 17% annually and 40% week-over-week — three more deals than the same week last year, seven days after the segment showed a 38% annual decline. Twenty-six weeks after the pied-à-terre tax announcement, $5M+ sales trail 2025 by 3%. The week’s highest-priced contract was 551 West 21st Street 17A, asking $17M ($3,980 PSF), 31% above its 2021 sponsor closing.

The top of the market rebounded as fast as it fell: $5M+ returned to 21 contracts, up 17% annually and 40% week-over-week — three more deals than the same week last year, seven days after the segment showed a 38% annual decline. Twenty-six weeks after the pied-à-terre tax announcement, $5M+ sales trail 2025 by 3%. The week’s highest-priced contract was 551 West 21st Street 17A, asking $17M ($3,980 PSF). The unit closed with the sponsor at $17.81M in 2016, resold at $13M in 2021, and is now back at a number 4.5% below where it started ten years ago.

Co-ops were 59% of every contract signed in Manhattan last week. New development was 9%.

That ratio isn’t a one-week artifact. Over the last three weeks co-ops have run 57.6%, 56.3% and 59.2% — the steadiest share of any product type. Resale condos took another 30%. Together, resale co-ops and condos are roughly nine out of every ten Manhattan contracts.

Almost none of the attention goes there. New development gets the renderings, the press releases and most of the market commentary, including some of mine. It’s the smallest piece of the market by a factor of six.

Part of why co-ops get skipped is that they’re harder to write about, and they’re harder to write about for the same reason they’re harder to buy. A co-op purchaser is underwritten twice. The bank goes first — a board won’t accept a package without the loan commitment letter attached. Then the board applies its own standard on top, usually the tighter of the two: minimum down payments above what any lender requires, post-closing liquidity sitting in the bank after the deal funds, debt-to-income limits the mortgage alone wouldn’t trigger. Then they decide whether to interview you at all.

Some co-ops also restrict subletting, and some don’t permit a pied-à-terre. The building is choosing neighbors, not just buyers.

That process is the reason a co-op trades at a discount per square foot to a comparable condo. It’s a real cost and it shows up in your sale price. What you’re buying with it is a building where everyone who lives there cleared the same bar, where the sublet market can’t hollow out the hallways, and where the owner next door is unlikely to be a balance sheet.

Whether that trade is worth it depends entirely on what you want from the apartment. But if you own one, it’s worth knowing you own the version of this market that most of it actually is, not the exception.

If you’ve been told the board process is what’s holding your apartment back, the numbers say otherwise. Let’s look at what it’s actually worth.

Brooklyn gave back more than it gained: 93 contracts, down 18% annually and 24% from the week before. Seven days earlier the borough posted a 2% annual gain at 123 contracts; this week it finished below the 102 it started from two weeks ago. The year is still running 4% ahead of 2025, which is the number that matters more than any of the three.

Co-ops and single-family houses were the only product types to gain annually: resale co-ops jumped to 36 contracts (+64%) and single-family townhouses to 23 (+109%). Two- to four-family houses fell to 22, down 41% — the same category that led the borough seven days earlier. Treat both swings as sample size, not as a change in what investors want.

The entry level came back, but not evenly: under $500K rose 20% annually and $500K to $750K rose 43%, the strongest segment in the borough — while $750K to $1M fell 29%. Nothing above $2M posted an annual gain. Three adjacent price ranges moving three different directions is a sign of thin counts, not a clean trend.

South of Prospect Park doubled: Kensington, Windsor Terrace, Greenwood Heights, Ditmas, Flatbush and PPS reached 14 contracts from 7 last year, driven by co-op resales and single-family houses. South Brooklyn signed 47, over a third of the borough and up 9% annually. The Brooklyn Heights–Cobble Hill–Dumbo–Downtown corridor rose 27%. Williamsburg and Greenpoint fell hardest at 10 contracts, down 44%.

One-bedrooms halved: 15 contracts against 30 a year ago, with two-bedrooms down 15% and four-plus bedrooms down 10%. Three-bedrooms were the only unit type to gain, up 12%. The most expensive deal was 870 President Street in Park Slope, a 4,554-square-foot, 30-foot-wide Romanesque Revival multi-family, last asking $7.995M ($1,756 PSF).