NYC Investment Sales Market Shrugs Off Challenges

New York City’s investment sales market is going strong in 2026.

Investment sales across the Big Apple’s five boroughs — excluding Staten Island — rose 60 percent year-over-year over the first six months of the year, the Commercial Observer reported. The jump in activity was captured in Avison Young’s recent property sales report.

Activity in the second quarter dipped 10 percent from last year and 4.6 percent from the first quarter. Nevertheless, the city’s market is flying past its 2025 pace and running towards the annual 10-year average, which stands at $23.4 million; the city is pacing towards $22.87 billion in sales.

“Year by year, we’re working in the right direction,” Avison Young investment sales principal Brandon Polakoff told the Observer, noting a particular hot streak for development deals in the last six to eight months. There were 13 sales in the sector in the second quarter, totaling $707 million.

In Manhattan alone, there were 94 investment sales in the second quarter. Gary Barnett’s Extell Development led the charge with its $451 million purchase of 405 Park Avenue, the largest piece of Barnett’s sprawling Midtown assemblage, which can support up to 700,000 square feet of rentable office space with additional air rights.

Not far behind Barnett was Sovereign Partners, which shelled out $378 million to buy the 40-story office building at 575 Fifth Avenue from Beacon Capital Partners and MetLife, who had put the building up for sale twice, previously targeting a price north of $400 million.

Manhattan’s office market alone accounted for $1.51 billion in sales during the second quarter and $3.3 billion for the first half of the year. That’s a gain of 110 percent year-over-year.

Factors such as the war in Iran and elevated interest rates don’t appear to be dogging buyers these days, which Polakoff attributes to strong fundamentals in the market.

— Holden Walter-Warner