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Manhattan’s top brokerages are locked in a turf war, but fight it in two distinct ways.
Some firms cast a wide net across the borough, while others concentrate their power in pockets of the market.
In 2025, Manhattan’s top five brokerages (based on total sales volume) closed over 8,400 deals totaling $20.2 billion, according to The Real Deal’s analysis of deals recorded in the city, a 22 percent increase over the prior year’s totals.
To understand how those firms are carving up the market, TRD analyzed 42 Manhattan neighborhoods, measuring each of the top five brokerage’s share of total sales volume in each area.
Leading the pack is Compass, which closed $5.74 billion across 2,673 deals in 2025 — the highest totals among Manhattan brokerages. The firm has also built the widest footprint across the borough, holding the top market share position in half of the 42 neighborhoods analyzed. Its reach spans downtown enclaves like NoHo and Greenwich Village to uptown markets including Washington Heights and the Upper East Side.
While Compass has a formidable presence in new development condos, its reach across Manhattan is driven by its resale strategy. The firm posted four teams in the top 10 resale ranking, more than any other firm.
The Hudson Advisory Team, the top-selling resale team in 2025, credits its scope to deep neighborhood knowledge.
“We have a team that services the Upper East Side. Guess where they live? The Upper East Side. We service downtown West Village and Tribeca. Where do we live? The West Village in Tribeca,” said team co-founder Stephen Ferrara.
Corcoran, the second-ranked firm, closed $5.25 billion across 1,953 deals. Unlike Compass, Corcoran has a differing approach: neighborhood dominance. The brokerage was the only firm to surpass an 80 percent market share in a single neighborhood, capturing 88 percent of Hudson Yards’ $310.9 million in total sales.
That stronghold was driven largely by activity at 35 Hudson Yards, where Corcoran closed $228 million across 31 deals — the bulk of its volume in the neighborhood. Corcoran also had a commanding performance in Midtown’s Times Square North with 78 percent share and $426.2 million across 35 deals. The firm also dominated Manhattan’s lower enclave of Two Bridges and Battery Park City, with a share of 78 percent and 73 percent, respectively.
Strength in new development and sponsored sales may be behind the strategy.
“We have the biggest market share of new development on the list side in the city, so that definitely helps us get this type of dominance in certain neighborhoods,” said Ryan Schleis, Corcoran’s Senior Vice President of Research and Analytics.
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Similar to Corcoran, the third ranked firm, Douglas Elliman, cornered the market, literally, with an emphasis on new dev deals. The firm closed $5.2 billion in sales across 1,988 deals last year.
Its strongest market was Midtown’s Sixth Avenue, where the brokerage closed $86.1 million worth of deals, representing a 74 percent share among the top five firms. The biggest driver was 53 West 53, where the Eklund Gomes Team, Katzen Team and Jade Chan sold north of $70 million in on-market new dev condos.
Brown Harris Stevens and Sotheby’s International, which ranked fourth and fifth on the list respectively, got there by deploying a mix of the two tactics. BHS, which closed $2.4 billion in total sales, took control in Carnegie Hill with a 26.8 percent market share and $225 million in sales. Sotheby’s, which had $1.6 billion in Manhattan deals, led in the Plaza District with $384.4 million, good for 56.3 percent of the neighborhood total.
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Some neighborhoods were tightly contested. Out of the 10 top neighborhoods by total sale volume, there were seven cases where a brokerage had less than a 15-point advantage over the second-place firm in market share. Five saw less than a 10-point advantage.