The New York metro is a tale of two markets. In the suburbs of Westchester County, northern New Jersey, and Fairfield County, Connecticut, sellers have the upper hand due to a shortage of inventory. Suburban markets that typically have 150 homes for sale now have as few as 10, says Ilija Pavlovic, owner, president, and CEO of Christie’s International Real Estate Group in the tri-state area. He attributes this to homeowners’ reluctance to trade out of low mortgage rates. “People want to sell their homes, but not their mortgages.”
Meanwhile it’s a buyer’s market in Manhattan. Pavlovic notes that Manhattan is less sensitive to interest rates, and because it is an international market, buyers are also affected more by global factors. The latter may bring more international buyers back to the Big Apple in 2024.
“When there is geopolitical instability around the world, money often flows into the New York City market because it is the safest, most stable investment in global real estate,” he says.
Manhattan will also benefit from the return-to-office movement, which is no surprise considering it houses 463 million square feet of office space. This comes at a time when more people are moving downtown, expanding their searches to East Village, West Village, Washington Square Park, the Financial District, and Tribeca. The Upper East Side is still a prime neighborhood, but it has more competition. “New York has more ‘good neighborhoods’ than ever before,” Pavlovic says.
