The end of the 421a tax break for New York City rental projects might push developers to build luxury condos instead, but it hasn’t happened yet.
Pricing for Manhattan’s 10 most expensive condominium projects of 2023 came to a paltry $1.3 billion, half of the previous year’s top-10 total and the lowest since the inventory glut–plagued 2019.
New condo inventory has steadily dwindled in the city, and a new building cycle has yet to begin in earnest. That is in part because rising interest rates made building and buying condos costlier.
Ultra wealthy buyers, who are largely immune to changes in mortgage rates, are behind a greater portion of new condo sales than ever. Developers have responded by catering even more their tastes, although the Billionaires’ Row mania has largely ended.
Builders have staked out sites in Greenwich Village and the Upper East Side as places where well-heeled buyers can pick up a pied-à-terre. Not a single development Downtown, where lower prices offer an entry point into the Manhattan condo market, appears in this year’s ranking.
Despite flashing their cash, buyers have opted for “quiet luxury.” As one reviewer put it, “Statement architecture takes a back seat to refinement” with “clean lines and quiet details.” But that is not always the case, as last year’s priciest project suggests.
Here are more details of 2023’s most expensive condo developments, based on offering plans accepted by the attorney general and data from city records. So-called aspirational pricing muddies the water somewhat, but that is the case every year.
1. Alf Naman, a veteran dealmaker with a taste for high design, is building a kingly condominium at 738 Greenwich Street in the West Village. Naman is converting and enlarging a parking garage on the site where he hopes to sell 7 apartments and 1 commercial space for $245 million.
Ismael Leyva is the architect of record for the planned 52,000-square-foot structure. Leyva also designed the Monogram at 135 East 47th Street.
Naman bought the parking garage, also known as 125 Perry Street, from the West Village Houses co-operative last year. He is the developer behind two high-design projects in West Chelsea: Jean Nouvel’s 100 11th Avenue and 519 W 23rd Street, designed by Linda Roy and overlooking the High Line.
2. Developer SL Green and Georgio Armani have partnered on a 10-unit condo project with a sellout price of more than $200 million at 760 Madison Avenue, honing its focus on ultra-luxury buyers after initially planning to build 19 apartments there.
Armani’s eponymous fashion firm has for more than a decade located its flagship store at the site, to be redeveloped as a three-floor, 20,000-square-foot retail property topped by condo units. The designer himself reportedly plans to live in the building.
Closings are expected to begin this summer. Asking prices for full-floor apartments at the 12-story building start at $22 million. Armani’s firm will pay $13.5 million per year to lease its retail space from SL Green, which bought the land under the project for $282 million in 2014, after buying the ground lease on the properties for $32 million two years prior. The building will be clad in Indiana limestone and have beige interiors.
3. Sackman Enterprises developed the year’s third priciest condo project, a 22-story building with 74,000 square feet at 15 West 96th Street. Sackman hopes its 21 apartments, near Central Park on the Upper West Side, will fetch $152 million. The Agency has been tapped for sales; it’s the brokerage’s first gig in the New York market.
The priciest unit listed, with four bedrooms and four bathrooms, asks $2,260 per square foot. A lawsuit over alleged construction delays was settled out of court last year. Sackman bought the project site in 2007.
4. Rising at 200 East 20th Street in Gramercy, a condo project by Tidhar Group and Glacial Global Partners will seek $140 million for its inventory of 52 apartments. The 78,000-square-foot project secured a $52 million construction loan last year from Israel’s Bank Hapoalim.
Glacier filed plans to build the 19-story building in 2018 after buying the site a year earlier. No units are listed for sale yet. CetraRuddy designed the building and its interior.
5. Rybak Development is nearly finished building the Arloparc, an 80,000-square-foot limestone and masonry condominium at 126 East 86th Street. Rybak, which settled a neighborly dispute that arose during construction, wants to sell the building’s 28 units for $139 million. A two-bed, two-bath apartment asking $2,200 per square foot is in contract, according to Corcoran New Development.
Rybak bought the Upper East Side project site in 2020 for $26 million and landed $35 million in construction loans last year.
6. The legend of William Gottlieb lives on through the Keller, a 22-unit condo building at 150 Barrow Street on the West Village waterfront. Aurora Capital Associates and Gottlieb Real Estate Associates want to sell the apartments and two commercial units for $108 million.
Aurora converted the Keller Hotel, built as sailors’ lodgings in 1898, and constructed an adjacent seven-story building for the project.
Gottlieb, who had a reputation for leaving buildings fallow, had owned the two parcels since 1985. When he died in 1999, his West Village portfolio was valued at more than $200 million. Today, the Keller has 10 units under contract asking $61 million, including a penthouse priced at more than $4,000 per square foot, according to StreetEasy. A two-bedroom, two-bathroom is asking $3,170 per square foot. A one-bedroom is priced at $2,650 per square foot.
7. Following a string of owners and lenders, Forkosh Development is completing a condo conversion in Lenox Hill asking $96 million for 35 apartments. The transformation of the 11-story former warehouse at 305 East 61st Street dates back to 2016.
The Upper East Side project stalled and was sold at auction during the pandemic. Forkosh took over in 2022 and Madison Realty Capital provided a final round of construction financing.
Dubbed the Archive Lofts, three units asking a total of $5.6 million are in contract, according to StreetEasy. After a 12 percent discount, a two-bed, two-bath unit is asking $1,500 per square foot. One-bedrooms are priced $1,280 to $1,670 per square foot.
8. One development on the condo list requires an asterisk: Aurora Capital and Gottlieb Real Estate had planned to sell the 19 apartments at 111 Charles Street for a combined $81 million, but are instead renting out the apartments.
The West Village project is one of several in New York where developers met growing demand for luxury rentals while mortgage rates climbed to nearly 8 percent before falling late last year.
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9. Boomerang Development Group has come around to selling apartments at the Matteo, a 15-story building with 14 apartments at 323 East 79th Street in Yorkville. The developer was asking $59 million altogether.
Two-bedroom, one-bathroom units are listed for $1,480 to $1,800 per square foot. A duplex with four bedrooms and three and a half bathrooms is listed for $1,870 per square foot, a 9 percent drop from the original list price.
Boomerang bought the Upper East Side development site for $13.7 million in 2021 from Spruce Capital Partners, which had acquired it in 2017 from the First Hungarian Literary Society.
10. Across from the Bowery Savings Bank, Hung Kwong Leung has built perhaps the most distinctive offering in TRD’s ranking. The condo project at 139 Bowery, in the East Village, has 18 residential units, 14 office units, and a sellout goal of $59 million.
The developer might choose to rent the residential units, according to the offering plan; no commercial or residential units are listed for sale. Hung Kwong Leung received a $32 million construction loan for the 14-story project in 2019 from Emerald Creek Capital.