“I’m seeing more people who don’t even have children yet,” he said.

Desperate Buyers
Some wealthier New Yorkers, with higher price points, have also told Johnson they’re interested in buying in Greenwich this summer. But he said many are now holed up in comfortable vacation homes, in the Hamptons and elsewhere, so they’re looking online and asking questions but don’t seem to be in a rush.

More desperate to buy, agents said, are families with young children in uncomfortable living situations -- squeezed in with in-laws, or sheltering in their city apartments, which are now doubling as offices and schools.

“They want green space,” Hance said. “They want access to amenities.”

Commuting time used to be the key question for many suburban buyers, but Fox said that has changed as employers have become more comfortable with remote working arrangements. Wall Street banks, for example, are preparing for offices to accommodate only a fraction of their pre-pandemic staff. Citigroup Inc. is considering leasing suburban office space.

Bounce Back
After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, many suburban real estate markets had a similar surge of interest. The city soon bounced back. Landlords and brokers are pointing to that previous rebound in arguing Manhattan will survive this downtown too.

“After 9/11 I thought the same thing, I thought people would never want to live downtown,” said Lloyd Abramowitz, a financial adviser at Cerity Partners in New York. “We know how that all worked out.”

Still, the pandemic has fueled anxiety about apartment life. Sharing elevators and air ducts with their neighbors is suddenly a problem and Abramowitz’s clients, who tend to have assets of $15 million or more, are looking to get out of the city.

Even so, buyers don’t want to stray too far, anticipating a day when Manhattan springs back to life and they travel there for work or shows, at least occasionally.

“People still look at New York City coming out of this still being the cultural center of the world,” Abramowitz said. “But perhaps they don’t want to be surrounded by a lot of people all the time.”