Manhattan luxury contracts surge to 6-month high in first week of October

Greenwich Village townhouse asking $30M led 46 deals last week as record year rolled on

Manhattan luxury contracts surge to 6-month high in first week of October
27 East 11th Street and PH1 at 455 West 19th Street (Google Maps, Abi Chelsea)

A flood of deals last week proved that buyers’ appetite for Manhattan luxury homes has remained strong into October.

Forty-six contracts were signed for homes asking $4 million or more in the borough, according to Olshan Realty’s weekly report. It’s the highest number of deals inked in one week since the third week of April, when 56 contracts were signed.

“It was an extremely pleasant surprise,” said Donna Olshan, author of the report. “And there were many reports from brokers telling me that they had bidding wars.”

The most expensive contract signed was a townhouse in Greenwich Village asking just below $30 million. The five-story home at 27 East 11th Street is 25 feet wide and spans 9,000 square feet. It has seven bedrooms, an elevator, a landscaped garden, a roof deck and two terraces. The sellers purchased it for $26 million in 2016.

The second priciest deal was for a penthouse at the ABI Chelsea condominium. Located at 455 West 18th Street, the 3,794-square-foot triplex unit has four bedrooms and about 1,300 square feet of outdoor space, including a swimming pool. It was first listed in November 2019 asking $25 million. By the time it found a buyer last week, the asking price had dipped to $22.75 million.

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The median asking price was $5.6 million, with an average of 417 days on market. The average discount from the original ask to the last ask was 6 percent, up slightly from 5 percent the week before.

Of the 46 contracts, 32 were for condos. Developers were the sellers of more than half of those units. Seven co-ops and seven townhouses rounded out the week’s deals.

The number of luxury townhouse contracts signed so far this year is 173, already shattering the previous record of 153 contracts set in 2014.

Olshan noted that this is likely due to the unusually small number of townhouses that went into contract last year, though she said the “catch-up factor” alone does not account for the number of deals. She pointed to the average size of a townhouse, 5,560 square feet, nearly twice the average condo size of 2,910 square feet, as another potential reason for the surge.