The seven-story building at the Northeast corner of Walker and Church streets in Tribeca is mostly scaffolding — for now.
But behind the curtain of beams and blue netting, the team at 32 Walker Street has been busy. Serhant’s Peter Zaitzeff has been quietly shopping five full-floor condos, one of which has already sold after asking close to $10 million.
Zaitzeff, who is heading sales at the project, said his goal is to lock in three buyers before putting up any public listings.
The quiet sales process is not a one-off, and is becoming something of a perk offered by the top shelf in New York new development. After some brokers in 2023 declared the death of the sales gallery, the latest wave of projects came online with little to no public listings, sales offices akin to Harry Potter’s elusive Platform 9 3/4 and scarce Internet presence.
This includes several of the city’s “It buildings,” like 80 Clarkson, Zeckendorf Development and Atlas Capital Group’s buzzy development, and Aurora Capital Group’s and William Gottlieb Real Estate’s exclusive boutique at 140 Jane Street, which found a buyer for a penthouse asking $87.5 million.
When The Real Deal reached out to Corcoran’s Tara King-Brown, who is leading sales at 140 Jane along with Corcoran Sunshine, a spokesperson for the project responded, saying that “in the spirit of a quiet new development sales strategy, the team will not be commenting for the story.”
At 80 Clarkson, which has eschewed publicity down to filing piecemeal offering plans with the Attorney General’s Office that only revealed a handful of units at a time, the project is well on its way to a $2 billion sellout. The project has not even recorded contracts, an even more extreme level of stealth than competitors. In December, TRD reported that the building found a buyer willing to pay $129 million for multiple units in the building, which would smash the record for priciest sale downtown.
Representatives for 80 Clarkson did not respond to requests for comment.
They really have no need to. The city is bursting at the seams with wealthy buyers who are only getting richer yet aren’t finding enough homes that meet their standards. Quiet sales have also created a hierarchy among brokers, with the select few who gain access because of the caliber of their clients signing contracts at places that the rest of the market hasn’t even heard about.
The trend has sparked big market moves even at smaller projects. At a nondescript brick garage in the West Village, four buyers have already signed contracts for homes in what will become a seven-unit boutique condo at 125 Perry Street. One of them bought a unit asking $57.5 million, making it among the most expensive downtown condos.
Compass’ Stephen Ferrara, one of the agents marketing the building, said that as soon as the sales team started talking about the project, they had a “considerable inbound response.”
“I think people really underestimate how deep the buying pool is,” he said.
Nothing to buy
Before 2020, it was not unusual to see multiple developments looking to sell more than $500 million — or in some cases, $1 billion — in condos.
During those heady days, buildings had to do what they could to break through the noise: splashy spreads in the New York Times, elaborate launch parties and sales offices designed to stick out amid the crowd.
In 2012, Gary Barnett’s first Billionaires’ Row tower, One57, had a model of the building’s library with a 24-foot aquarium installed in one wall in its sales office. When HFZ launched its twisting towers along the High Line known as XI in 2018, the project’s sales office had pieces installed by the stage designer for Kanye West and Lady Gaga, including a foyer with a eucalyptus wall and screens with simulated river views.
Six years later, the game has changed.
The project at 80 Clarkson is the first to attempt to do more than $2 billion in sales since the XI, now known as One High Line, and no other approved condo project this year even topped $400 million. The years of shrinking developments have pushed unsold condo units to a 10-year low, according to data shared by Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group.
“It’s the Hermès bag that nobody else can get.”
The vanishing competition has given sales teams free rein to handle their processes as they see fit.
“It put sellers in the driver’s seat,” Zaitzeff said of the limited supply of new condos. “I feel like I could sell a C-plus project right now. The lack of inventory gives us a lot more leverage to get a better price and also to sell out a lot more quickly.”
Corcoran’s Nicole Hechter has sold six buildings for the development firm Grid Group, all with a typical public-facing sales rollout.
But for the seventh, a 22-unit boutique building called The Myles, she’s instead taking appointments at the development’s VIP sales gallery. (Corcoran denied The Real Deal access to the office.)
Hechter said the decision was made after seeing the success of other downtown developments and the inbound calls she received before even doing any marketing.
“There’s just such a lack of inventory in this specific segment of the market that I think we’re getting a tremendous amount of outreach,” she said.
An 18-unit boutique at 220 East 9th Street, Ferrara had over 1,000 registrations on the “Coming Soon” website before putting up a single listing. “It caught all of us by surprise,” he said.
Brokers said that projects with units asking at least $3,000 per foot or $10 million are a typical threshold, where the buyer is already inherently limited by the price.
“We’re going to a small network of buyers,” Zaitzeff said. In that price bracket, “it’s the 5 percent of agents who do 95 percent of deals.”
But beyond being expensive, it seems that projects need a certain something — a name-brand architect or developer, a superprime location or a truly superior product (something every marketing team says it has).
Each project has an unreplicable selling point. At 80 Clarkson, buyers have the chance to pick up a piece of a revolutionary phenomenon: a Billionaires’ Row-caliber offering, downtown. The prime units in 125 Perry Street and 140 Jane Street offer incomparable location, and the design from Leroy Street Studio have been major draws. There is only one triangle-shaped Flatiron Building.
Mass marketing can still work for projects with a wider potential pool of buyers, at a certain threshold, the exclusivity becomes another selling point.
“It’s the Hermès bag that nobody else can get,” Zaitzeff said. “That’s the perception that we’re getting to the market with a product like this.”
But it’s not a simple plug-and-play for buildings that cater to the high end of the market.
At the Aman Residences at 730 Fifth Avenue, the OKO Group eschewed a public-facing sales office and launched just a handful of its original 22 units in 2017. Developer Vlad Doronin told the Wall Street Journal at the time that the restrained sales strategy spoke to the brand’s exclusivity. But by 2022, the building still had 17 unsold condos, according to an update filed with the Attorney General’s office.
Luxury housing report author Donna Olshan said the strategy at the time was to market to foreign buyers with brand loyalty — but she’s skeptical of the whole proposition.
“In my over 45 years of experience, the best results are achieved by pricing the property correctly, presenting it in its best light, and immediately marketing to the entire brokerage community to generate maximum activity and create an auction effect,” she writes on her website.
Desperate money
It remains to be seen just how restrictive incoming additions to New York’s new development scene can be. But the trend is likely here to stay in the city where the richest have gotten richer in the last few years.
After the first half of 2025, Wall Street firms were on pace for more than $60 billion in profits, after having already seen those numbers jump 90 percent the previous year, to $50 billion. The bonus pool hit record numbers in 2025 as well, and could be on pace to do so again this year, according to a report from the state comptroller’s office.
The money flowing through the city has been reflected in a strong luxury market, where contracts for homes asking at least $4 million rose 51 percent in November compared to a year earlier.
Developers are poised with a new playbook to entice future big spenders.
Some buildings have rolled out pricing on a handful of units, giving developers more flexibility to up the pricing of other units later if the market seems to call for it. “Psychologically it’s easier to push pricing if you haven’t already stated what your pricing is going to be,” said Stephen Kliegerman, president of Brown Harris Stevens Development Marketing.
In a market flush with cash buyers and tight inventory, developers can then pitch buyers on getting in early — before the rest of the market comes flooding in.
A quiet sales process can also be a way to appeal to those buyers, Kliegerman said, setting off a win-win-win scenario for developers, brokers and buyers.
“People of great means love shiny new items that very few other people can afford, or avail themselves of,” he said. “Like-minded people like to know that they’re special and they like to know that their broker or their name carries enough weight to get them access.”