The Winners and Losers When New York’s Luxury Home Market Reopens

At the start of 2020, New York’s luxury real estate market was finally showing signs of life. There was still a large oversupply of new condos on the market, but buyer and seller expectations—never aligned in the best of circumstances— were slowly beginning to move in tandem. Manhattan sales volumes were up 13.1% year over year in the first quarter of 2020, according to a Douglas Elliman report, even as median prices declined by a modest 2.6% for the same period.

Now, more than two months into the Covid-19 pandemic shutdown, with the summer sales season looming, the industry is once again bracing itself for an uncertain market. “Prices had been falling for several years at the high end,” says Jonathan Miller, the president and chief executive officer of appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. “The question is: Will sellers and developers at the top of the market capitulate to another step-down?”