Manhattan sellers slowly return to the market

By Brick Underground | May 6, 2020 - 3:00PM

Sellers are tiptoeing back and increasingly putting their apartments on the Manhattan sales market. For the fifth week of April, the number of new listings rose 39 percent from the prior week, marking the highest weekly level since New York’s shutdown order went into effect.

Another potential piece of good news: The number of listings coming off the market increased 63 percent from the previous week to a seasonal 161, according to UrbanDigs' weekly report on total new listings, contracts signed, and listings being taken off the market for Manhattan.

The number of listings going off market continues to outpace the number of new listings, however an increase in new listings suggests that sellers may slowly be returning to the market, says Noah Rosenblatt, CEO of UrbanDigs and author of the report. (The data does not indicate a reason a listing is going off market—it could be sold, or an owner may be choosing to wait for conditions to improve.)

For the week April 27th through May 3rd, contracts signed were down 10 percent and listings off market were up 63 percent.

“Buyers remain in wait and see mode, with only 40 contracts during the week, suggesting that until the stay-at-home order is lifted, the market will remain thinly traded” with wide gaps between bidding and asking prices, Rosenblatt says.

Compared to last year, activity is way off: New listings were down 71 percent compared to same week a year ago, contracts signed were down 84 percent. Listings going off market remain about the same, 161 compared to 160 in 2019.

Typically, during the spring selling season, you see weekly increases in both new listings and contracts signed, with a weekly decrease in listings being taken off the market, Rosenblatt says. But “with the market on pause, contracts signed are decreasing while both new listings and off market listings are increasing on a week-to-week basis,” Rosenblatt says.

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