This might have been the year that New York City’s ultra-luxury housing market entered a holding pattern.
To date, 240 contracts have been signed in the city for homes priced $10 million or more; last year, there were 235, according to data compiled by the broker Donna Olshan, who publishes a weekly luxury market report. “This year just shows you that the rich are still very rich,” Olshan says.
The rich are predictable in other ways, too. Seven of the top 10 most expensive sales in the city this year to date were on Billionaire’s Row, a stretch of 57th Street directly below Central Park in Midtown Manhattan.
And all of them, except for a townhouse on East 71st Street, according to Olshan’s data, were condos. “It’s the same old story,” Olshan says. “Uber-luxury condos sell, and they just stay above the pack.”
Co-op sales this year were nowhere near the top of the market; they make an appearance only as the 25th entry on Olshan’s list. Rich buyers’ preference for condominiums over co-ops is “not part of a cycle,” she says. “Co-ops have been on the decline for quite some time, which is not to say they’re not beautiful—they are, and many have some of the best architecture ever built,” she continues. “But the shareholders [of co-ops] are suffering. They accept lower-than-true-market value for the privilege of being in a dysfunctional club.”
Despite the similarities to 2022, Olshan says the city’s 2023 luxury housing market will be remembered as a slog. “In general, prices were much more negotiable, and units hung on the market much longer,” she says. “We’re living in fragile times. It just takes a long time to do every deal—and get it across the finish line.”
That’s not quite evident in aggregate dollars spent. Last year, the top 10 residential sales in New York totaled $640.7 million. This year’s top 10 rose slightly, to $650.9 million. “It’s not a bad result, considering you’ve got two wars going, high interest rates and we’re heading into an election year,” Olshan says. “Considering that, New York real estate has held up pretty darn well.”
Here is the full list of the top 10 most expensive home sales in NYC to date this year.
$51 million for 443 Greenwich Street, PHH
The backstory: Located at the top of a 19th century building in TriBeCa, this 8,900-square-foot, three-story apartment comes with its own private elevator and an additional 3,500 square feet of outdoor space. The apartment was once owned by Formula 1 driver Lewis Hamilton; he sold it to an unknown buyer who turned around and sold it to this year’s purchaser, a trust reportedly associated with Jennifer Gates, a daughter of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.
$52 million for 150 Charles Street, PHA
The backstory: Not much is known about this off-market deal, although the Wall Street Journal reported that the seller is a company tied to former Credit Suisse executive Robert Shafir. That company purchased the penthouse, which covers about 4,500 square feet in the West Village condominium building, for just over $29 million in 2016. The penthouse also reportedly comes with about 2,500 square feet of outdoor space.