Manhattan’s ultraluxury real estate market is experiencing its strongest performance since the frenzied condo boom that defined the mid-2010s, and this time the rally carries fundamentally different underpinnings than the last cycle.
The borough’s most expensive residential properties reached a median price of $6.39 million by year-end 2024, according to newly released data from Douglas Elliman. While still marginally below the 2016 peak, the figure represents a 6% annual increase and suggests the top tier of Manhattan real estate has nearly erased a decade’s worth of volatility.
According to The New York Post, transaction volume at the high end tells an equally compelling story. Approximately 1,143 luxury properties changed hands last year, essentially matching the deal flow from 2016 and posting double-digit growth over the previous year. The recovery comes after several years of pandemic disruption and elevated financing costs that kept many potential buyers sidelined.
What makes this cycle distinct, however, is the composition of forces driving prices higher. Unlike the previous boom, when scarce inventory was the primary catalyst, current appreciation stems largely from economic fundamentals rather than constrained supply.
Jonathan Miller, the appraiser who compiled the Douglas Elliman report, estimates that less than half of the current price strength can be attributed to tight inventory. The remainder reflects a robust local economy and the return of substantial Wall Street compensation packages. That shift in dynamics carries important implications for market sustainability.
The 2016 surge was characterized by a proliferation of newly constructed residential towers featuring exceptionally large units priced at unprecedented levels. Over the subsequent decade, the market gradually absorbed that excess supply while new development activity slowed considerably. The result is a market structure that appears more balanced and less prone to the kind of speculative excess that marked the earlier period.
The luxury segment also demonstrated notable resilience throughout the recent downturn. Although prices declined sharply in the early 2020s amid population outflows and remote work uncertainty, high-end properties recovered more quickly than the broader market. Affluent purchasers typically depend less on mortgage financing and consequently face less exposure to interest rate fluctuations.
The recovery has been far from uniform across Manhattan’s diverse neighborhoods and property categories. While the median sale price for all homes now exceeds 2016 levels on a borough-wide basis, individual submarkets show dramatic variation in performance.
Downtown condominium prices remain below their previous peak, even as cooperative apartments in the same areas have posted steady gains. Greenwich Village experienced a particularly sharp decline in condo valuations over the decade, while neighboring Soho and Tribeca managed modest appreciation. Chelsea lagged in both condos and co-ops, and the East Side presented a mixed picture, with Upper East Side condos surging while Carnegie Hill units declined.
Interestingly, luxury cooperatives have broadly outperformed condominiums in recent years. The shift appears to reflect long-term stabilization in the co-op market rather than any sudden change in buyer preferences, underscoring how different property types can follow divergent trajectories even within the same neighborhood.
