New Construction Is Strong — Even Where Resale Isn't

It's important to separate two different stories happening in the Manhattan condo market at the same time. New-development pricing at the top of the market has been genuinely strong: Manhattan new-development condos have averaged roughly $1,970–$2,000 per square foot recently, with luxury product commanding $3,000+ and ultra-luxury product $4,000+ per square foot. New-launch supply has also been unusually thin — first-quarter 2026 new-unit launches ran roughly 75% below the 10-year average for that quarter — which has helped support pricing at the top end.

At the same time, the resale condo market has been softer: Manhattan condo price per square foot on the resale side has fallen over the past decade, and roughly one in three Manhattan condo sellers reportedly sold at a loss over the past year. The takeaway for a property owner: land and new-development economics are behaving very differently from the secondary resale market, and it's the former — not the latter — that determines what a developer will pay for your site.

Record Land Pricing, By the Numbers

  • East Williamsburg, Brooklyn: a four-lot condo assemblage sold for $13.5 million — roughly $450 per buildable square foot, reported as a record for the submarket
  • Brooklyn borough-wide: average land values reportedly reached an all-time high of roughly $313 per buildable square foot, with City of Yes cited as a contributing driver
  • Manhattan development sites (2025): roughly $3.97 billion across 64 deals, averaging about $468 per buildable square foot excluding outlier trophy transactions — up about 19% in dollar volume year-over-year despite fewer total deals
  • 800 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan: an $810 million trophy transaction (a Robert A.M. Stern–designed condo tower replacing a rental building near Central Park) — an outlier at roughly $2,869 per buildable square foot, illustrating what a truly prime site can command

Why Condo Economics Are Outperforming Rental Right Now

Manhattan's 2025 development-site data shows both condo and rental activity growing — but for different reasons. Rental development-site volume rose largely on small-to-midsize projects structured to fit the 485-x Modest Rental tier (under 100 units) without triggering construction wage requirements. Condo transaction volume rose on the strength of trophy, large-scale deals.

The core dynamic: 485-x pencils most cleanly for rental projects that are either small enough to avoid its wage floors or large enough to absorb them. Sites that don't fit neatly into those boxes — too big for the small-project exemption, too awkward in scale or location for a 100+ unit rental play, or simply better suited to for-sale product — increasingly pencil better as condo, especially now that 421-a legacy sites have largely run out. High interest rates have also made rental financing and cap-rate economics tougher, while condo sellout structures return capital to developers faster. Layer in the 2024 repeal of the state's 12.0 FAR cap and the new density City of Yes unlocked (see our rezoning guide), and more sites now support a scale of condo project that wasn't previously possible.

Neighborhoods Worth Watching

Based on where land is actively trading, where zoning now supports meaningfully more density, and where comparable new condo product is selling:

  • Long Island City, Queens — the OneLIC rezoning (approved November 2025) opened significant new density, and land assemblage activity is active
  • Astoria, Queens — high unit volume with several new buildings underway; per-square-foot pricing has actually softened recently, which some buyers are reading as a value entry point rather than a warning sign
  • East Williamsburg / Bushwick fringe, Brooklyn — site of the record $450/BSF assemblage trade, with continued assemblage interest
  • Downtown Brooklyn / Brooklyn Heights — luxury condo product has held pricing better than mid-tier Brooklyn product, which has softened with rising inventory in some submarkets
  • Upper East Side near Central Park, Manhattan — trophy condo redevelopment activity, exemplified by 800 Fifth Avenue
  • Financial District, Manhattan — the current value play in Manhattan condo pricing, and StreetEasy's most-searched neighborhood recently, suggesting latent buyer demand

Not every Brooklyn or Queens submarket is participating equally. Mid-tier product in some neighborhoods (parts of Crown Heights, Bed-Stuy, and inner Williamsburg) has softened with rising inventory and buyer concessions — location and product positioning matter more than borough-wide averages suggest.

Transaction Volume Trend

Manhattan development-site sales totaled roughly $3.97 billion across 64 transactions in 2025, up about 19% in dollar volume year-over-year. Queens investment sales rose about 16% to roughly $3.43 billion across 558 transactions, with development-site sales specifically up more than 40% — much of it attributed to newly unlocked density in Long Island City and Jamaica. Brooklyn's first half of 2025 saw roughly $3.25 billion in transactions across 453 deals (all property types).

What This Means If You Own an Underbuilt Site

If your multi-family or commercial property sits in or near one of the neighborhoods above — or anywhere with meaningful unused FAR — it's worth finding out whether your site's land value now exceeds its income value under current condo development economics. That comparison is exactly what a development-site analysis is for. See our guides on how to value a development site and whether your multifamily building is worth more as a development site.

Market conditions in NYC development land move quickly — the figures above reflect deals and reporting through mid-2026 and should be treated as directional, not as a substitute for current comparable sales specific to your site.