Odd summer for Manhattan’s condo market

Deal volume down, prices up as 220 CPS carries the quarter

From left: 25 Park Row, 220 Central Park South, 30 Riverside Blvd (COOKFOX, Getty; StreetEasy)

The Manhattan condo market this summer was like deep-sea fishing: Not many deals rolled in, but they tended to be big.

A total of 511 condo deals closed from July through September in the borough, down from 614 in the second quarter, according to an analysis by The Real Deal. The average sale price, meanwhile, rose to $3.6 million from $2.7 million per deal in the second quarter and $2.4 million a year ago.

The larger deals pushed total sales volume up to $1.85 billion — a 13 percent increase from the prior quarter’s $1.63 billion.

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Central Park South saw its median sales price for condos nosedive to $1.5 million (iStock, photo by Gary Hershorn/Getty Images)
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One building in particular played an outsize role in this shift: Vornado Realty Trust’s 220 Central Park South. It single-handedly accounted for almost a third of the quarter’s sales volume, with 16 units closing for a total of $592 million — an average price of $37 million.

The table below shows how different Manhattan submarkets fared in the third quarter, compared with the same period a year ago. It is hard to miss the impact of 220 CPS on Midtown sale volume and pricing.

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A few other buildings also saw a slew of closings in the quarter. L+M Development and J&R Music World’s 25 Park Row saw a whopping 29 closings for $67 million — increasing the Seaport submarket’s sales volume by more than 700 percent quarter-over-quarter and sixfold year-over-year.

Out west, Related Companies saw five closings at 15 Hudson Yards and three more at 35 Hudson Yards for a total of $50 million — a 623-percent increase from the submarket’s prior quarter, but still 74 percent less than the $192 million Hudson Yards saw in the third quarter of 2019.

Another busy building was 30 Riverside Boulevard in GID Development’s Waterline Square complex on the Upper West Side, which had 19 closings totalling $59 million.

On a per-square-foot basis, pricing in Manhattan’s condo market rose by nearly a quarter from the previous quarter as well as year-over-year. The big sales at 220 CPS played a role here as well, but it was far from the only driver.

As the chart below shows, submarkets including the Seaport, Midtown West, Chinatown, the Financial District and Chelsea also saw major increases in price per square foot in the third quarter.

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