When a home sale snags a headline in The Real Deal, it usually meets one or two points of criteria: an upper eight- or nine-figure price tag or a notable name attached.
It’s not a hard and fast rule, but one we tend to stick to when picking which deals warrant coverage. (TRD isn’t shy about its standards — columnist Erik Engquist laid them out in an article last January.) Every now and then, a deal that doesn’t fit the mold will catch our eye because of what it says about a given market, with details such as a premium flip or a major flop serving as valuable fodder for our readers.
Then there are the record breakers.
We cover the obvious ones — the $60 million duplex that claimed the title of the most expensive condo sale in Downtown Manhattan; Ken Griffin’s $238 million Billionaires’ Row purchase that notched a new all-time high for the nation; an $80 million mansion on the Upper East Side that snagged the title of the priciest townhouse trade in the city.
Other so-called record deals are less clear. Earlier this week, two Brooklyn neighborhoods nabbed record-setting deals that seem like small potatoes compared to some of Manhattan’s eyebrow-raising trades.
In East Williamsburg, a penthouse at 28 Herbert Street sold for $3.1 million, or more than $1,900 a foot, marking the highest price per square foot achieved in the traditionally industrial neighborhood. In Greenpoint, a duplex overlooking McCarren Park traded for just under $6 million, surpassing the previous condo record holder, a $5.7 million penthouse at the Huron.
The deals are notable largely because they’re new high-water marks in neighborhoods where prices have been steadily rising, bolstered by a pandemic-era flight to the outer boroughs and a wave of development beyond the high-priced Williamsburg waterfront.
On the residential beat, tracking these peak sales helps us keep tabs on where opportunity exists and which development bets, some of which are still a long ways away from hitting the market, are likely to pan out.
In Brooklyn especially, the likelihood of deals to reach a market-moving price varies block by block. That can be a point of contention when covering these records, as the bounds of a neighborhood can be up for debate.
For example, the buildings that notched the two deals this week are only just barely within the lines of Greenpoint and East Williamsburg, both teetering on the edge of Williamsburg, where prices started climbing after a rush of development in the 2000s. The neighborhood set down a benchmark unheard of in North Brooklyn with the 2021 sale of a unit at 2 Northside Piers for $8.3 million, the neighborhood’s priciest condo deal to date.
As more development hits the market in these neighborhoods, with new prices along for the ride, they could have a TRD paper trail charting the rise.
But there are limits to how much a record has to say about a given market. As for the creative brokers or PR folks who might be reading: no, we won’t be writing about the highest price per square foot achieved for a two-bedroom condo with a balcony in Brooklyn.
Not so fast…
It should come as a shock to no one that New York City, rents reached another record — least of all residential agents who warned the new broker fee ban would spike rates.
The latest report from Miller Samuel shows the median rent in Manhattan reached a record high in July, rising more than 9 percent to $4,700 per month. In Brooklyn, the metric hit its second-highest on record at $3,850, while in Northwest Queens, the median rent was $3,750.
But the fallout from the FARE Act, which took effect in early June, likely accounts for only a fraction of the increase, as rents have been reaching unprecedented heights since February, which is typically a slower month for the market. The sky-high prices continued into the summer, when apartments are usually in high demand and rent for top-tier rates.
Report author Jonathan Miller said demand for rentals has risen, as high interest rates have kept some potential home buyers from pulling the trigger on a purchase.
With more tenants hunkering down in their apartments or searching for new ones, rental inventory fell nearly 8 percent last month compared to last July, according to data from Streeteasy. (A decline in rental listings was another consequence to the FARE Act cited by the industry in its opposition to the law.)
Though inventory dipped citywide, some neighborhoods logged an uptick in available apartments, per StreetEasy’s report. Gowanus in Brooklyn, the site of a number of new development properties following a 2021 rezoning, led the charge, with inventory more than doubling since last July. Inwood, Fort Greene and Boerum Hill followed.
NYC Deal of the Week
The most expensive deal to hit the city rolls this week was a resale at Vlad Doronin’s hotel-condo conversion at the Crown Building. The three-bedroom condo, Unit 16A, traded in an off-market deal for $28 million, about $4 million more than its sponsor sale price.
The building at 730 Fifth Avenue, known as the Aman New York, sold the last of its 22 units in January, about six years after sales launched. Its priciest deal was a $135 million penthouse that the developer bought for himself.
Read more
McCarren Park penthouse sets Greenpoint condo record
Manhattan rents continue record-breaking summer streak
Vlad Doronin’s Aman New York scores $28M resale