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.

Volume rose a fifth straight week while the annual comparison stayed negative: 249 contracts, up 13% from the prior week and down 5% year-over-year. That makes eight consecutive weeks of annual declines since Labor Day, the first such run since 2022, during a stretch when weekly volume climbed from 198 to 249. The year holds at 2.6% ahead of 2025.

New development fell to 11 contracts, down 71% annually: the largest annual percentage drop of 2026 and the lowest count reported since January. That is a sixteenth consecutive weekly decline, the longest since May 2022, with thirteen of those sixteen weeks off more than 20%. New development is now 4% of everything signed in Manhattan.

Resale carried the entire week: resale condos reached 93 contracts, up 16% annually and 33% from the prior week, and co-ops 141, up 2% annually. Together they are 94% of the borough’s contracts. Townhouses signed 4 against 6 a year ago.

The middle of the market led: $1M to $3M reached 108 contracts, up 9% annually and 30% week-over-week. Under $1M fell 13% and $3M to $5M fell 27%. Sales above $5M came in exactly level with last year at 25, and twenty-eight weeks after the pied-à-terre tax announcement that segment trails 2025 by 3%. The week’s highest-priced contract was 111 Murray Street PH1, asking $33.95M ($4,423 PSF), the final sponsor sale at a development that launched in June 2015.

Midtown and the Upper East Side did the lifting: Midtown jumped 69% from the prior week to 49 contracts, up 32% annually, and the Upper East Side reached 67, up 8%. Upper Manhattan fell to 12, down 56% annually, after leading every submarket two weeks earlier. Downtown held flat at 61, down 20% from last year.

New development signed 11 contracts in Manhattan last week. Four percent of everything that traded, down 71% from a year ago, the lowest count since January, and a sixteenth consecutive weekly decline.

Read as demand, that number is alarming. Read as inventory, it is something else.

The week’s highest-priced contract was the penthouse at 111 Murray Street, asking $33.95M. It was the final sponsor sale at that development. 111 Murray launched in June 2015. Eleven years to sell the last unit.

A week earlier, the top contract in Manhattan was a penthouse at 255 East 77th Street, the last of that building’s five full-floor penthouses to enter contract.

Two sellouts finishing in two weeks is not enough to build a theory on. But it points at a mechanic worth understanding. When a building sells its final sponsor unit, it stops feeding the new development column. Everything that trades there afterward is a resale. So that category is not only a measure of how many people want new construction. It is also a measure of how much unsold sponsor inventory is left to want.

What the number cannot tell you is how much of the 71% is each. Weekly contract counts do not separate a buyer who walked away from a building that ran out of units to sell.

What does follow is practical. If you own in a building that has just finished its sellout, your competition changed. You are no longer pricing against a sponsor who can cut, absorb closing costs and move on to the next line item. You are pricing against your neighbors, who cannot do any of that.

That is usually the better end of the trade, and it is easy to miss. A sponsor has a balance sheet. Your neighbor has a mortgage. Find out which one you’re competing against.

Brooklyn grew where Manhattan shrank: 125 contracts, up 12% year-over-year and 3% from the prior week, with every product type posting annual growth. The year runs 3% ahead of 2025.

New development was Brooklyn’s fastest grower, the exact inverse of Manhattan: 15 contracts against 7 the prior week and 13 a year ago. Resale condos reached 30 (+11% annually) and co-ops 37 (+12%), with single-family houses at 18 against 16 last year.

Both ends of the price range rose: $750K to $1M jumped 85% to 24 contracts and $500K to $750K rose 28%, while contracts above $5M went from 2 last year to 5. The soft spot was $1M to $2M, down 23% to 34 contracts.

Six of eight submarkets grew annually: Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill, Dumbo and Downtown Brooklyn reached 20 contracts, up 43% annually and 150% from the prior week on increased resale co-op activity, and Fort Greene, Clinton Hill and Prospect Heights rose 50% on resale condo deals. Bed-Stuy, Crown Heights, Prospect-Lefferts Gardens and Bushwick fell 40%. South Brooklyn signed 48, up 23% and 38% of the borough.

Two-bedrooms drove the week: 40 contracts, up 67% annually and 74% from the prior week. Three-bedrooms held level at 25 and four-plus bedrooms at 29. The most expensive contract was 37 Sidney Place in Brooklyn Heights, a five-story 1846 Greek Revival single-family of 7,040 square feet, last asking $17M ($2,415 PSF), the third most expensive townhouse contract since 2024.