For New York City’s new development market, 2025 has been a year of whisper trades and low inventory.
While a handful of buzzy sales launches powered the market, executives, brokers and data analysts spent the year warning of an imminent inventory cliff, as demand for quality projects continued to significantly outpace supply.
“The overall story is continuing to just whittle down on the inventory,” said Marketproof co-founder Kael Goodman. “The total number of units is growing so slowly.”
The market still had its fair share of highs.
Perhaps the buzziest new development launch kicked off with little fanfare in early spring, when the sales team at Zeckendorf Development and Atlas Capital started quietly inking deals for condos at the development.
“Everything I’ve said this year has been with an asterisk with 80 Clarkson next to it,” said Goodman.
Though some agents have described the West Village project as “the big one everyone is interested in,” details about its sales progress have so far remained a tightly-guarded secret.
The few specifics that have surfaced have largely been through brokers’ social media posts boasting about bringing buyers to the building, including last month when Bespoke posted on Instagram about signing a contract for Unit 24, asking $31 million.
Instagram also gave us the first hint of deals at the Flatiron Building conversion, another hotly anticipated project in Manhattan. Corcoran’s Steve Gold claimed credit for representing the first buyer to sign a contract at the building in an October post to his account. About a month later, Unit 3North, asking $19.4 million, landed among the top two most expensive deals inked in Manhattan that week.
Another notable pending deal was at Aurora Capital Associates’ 140 Jane Street, which found a buyer for its penthouse asking $88 million. If the unit closes at that price, it would break the record for the priciest condo deal in Downtown Manhattan.
For other projects, 2025 was the year of the comeback.
Deals at 111 West 57th Street had been slow before Sotheby’s International’s Nikki Field Team took over sales last summer. Since then, condos at the Billionaires’ Row supertall, developed by JDS Development and Property Markets Group, have been routinely among the two priciest pending deals noted in weekly contract reports. The tower notched $400 million in sales this year and is 95 percent sold, according to a spokesperson.
Another Midtown project has also picked up steam after roughly a decade on the market. In October, 53 West 53rd Street, known as the MoMA tower, nabbed a buyer for Unit 65, last asking $47 million.
Across the East River, two rival new developments in Williamsburg have been vying for neighborhood price records, with deals at Two Trees’ One Domino Square and Naftali Group’s Williamsburg Wharf continuously one-upping each other for the priciest condo deals per square foot. Both buildings are now just below 65 percent sold, according to data from Marketproof.
Underneath the highlights ran an undercurrent of concerns about the waning inventory pipeline in Manhattan.
“The inventory situation is going to continue to get worse, it’s not going to get better,” said Corcoran Sunshine’s Kelly Mack.
But the shrinking options aren’t an upside for buildings that have been struggling to offload units, Mack said. Instead, those buyers are turning to the resale market or waiting for a new project to start selling.
“Several amazing new development properties that have recently come to market, or will in the first half of the year, will be beneficiaries of the current market dynamic,” Mack said. The lack of inventory “creates a sense of urgency to act quickly on those properties.”
Not so fast…
Ryan Serhant’s “Owning Manhattan” is back on Netflix.
The second season of the reality TV series premiered on Friday with eight episodes available on the streaming service. The show features a few new faces, including Peter Zaitzeff, who joined Serhant last January and took over sales at 200 Amsterdam for the brokerage.
The Real Deal, along other reporters, editors and influencers, got a sneak peek of the new season on Wednesday night at an event hosted by Serhant at Zero Bond. Members of the media, with cocktails and buckets of popcorn, cozied up on couches at the private club to watch the first episode, alongside the cast of the show.
“Not everyone lives in this season,” Serhant, clad in a pale pink suit, said, calling back to a scene in the first season where he fired his former agent, Jonathan Normolle.
In response to a question about his leadership style, Serhant veered into an explanation of how the show came to be, alluding to a bidding war between Netflix and other streaming services.
“A lot of other people in real estate who have TV shows and don’t anymore lost to us,” Serhant said. “But that wasn’t your question.”
Cast member Jordan Hurt described the new season as a “deeper dive into everyone’s personal and professional story.” Jessica Markowski added that she hoped to change her perception this time after she was painted as a villain last season for recording a podcast with Normolle making fun of some of their colleagues.
“It was something I wasn’t really proud of,” Markowski said. “Season two, I really focused on business first and foremost and really proving to Ryan and the company that I can do this.”
“Coming in and getting, you know, beat up a little,
The brokerage hosted its official premiere party on Friday at Terminal 5 on West 56th Street.
NYC Deal of the Week
The priciest deal to land in city records this week was a penthouse at 443 Greenwich Street, which sold for just under $40 million. Unit PHG once belonged to Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel, who bought the apartment for $20 million in 2017 and sold it five years later for $29 million.
The 5,300-square-foot condo has four bedrooms and a 2,650-square-foot wraparound terrace. Corcoran’s Noble Black had the listing.
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