Market Notes

September 7, 2026 Azari

Quick question. What do you call an asset that everyone left for dead, that sat flat for a decade while every trendy alternative doubled, and that just printed its highest demand numbers in five years while trading below its peak?

Manhattan: like red lipstick, a pinstripe suit, or a white tablecloth, it's most in vogue when everyone says it's dead.

Lets start with rents. StreetEasy's June report has the citywide median asking rent at $4,200. That is the highest number they have recorded since 2010. Up 5 percent in a year. If you're renting right now, you are paying north of fifty grand a year for the privilege of building someone else's equity. Your landlord thanks you. He's using it to pay down the mortgage on the apartment you could have bought.

Now the top of the market. Everyone spent the spring predicting the new pied-à-terre tax would send the wealthy fleeing to Palm Beach with their Picassos under their arms. The tax went live July 1. For exactly one week, the ultra rich paused (one contract above $10M that week, the doomers had their moment). Then August happened. Last week of August, the dog days, the week nothing is supposed to trade: 24 contracts signed at $4 million and up, dollar volume $77.8 million AHEAD of the same week last year. Year to date, 218 trophy contracts above $10 million versus 202 this time in 2025. The tax is live, and the whales are transacting faster than before it existed.

Why?

Because capital doesn't flee quality. It negotiates, grumbles, and buys the scarcity asset anyway. The top contract that week was a three bedroom at Central Park Tower asking $20.5 million... which was asking $25 million in 2019. The smartest money in the world is buying Manhattan trophies 18 percent below the old sticker. That is not fear. That is accumulation.

And the middle? Green shoots everywhere if you know where to look. Contracts entering signed status jumped 18.6 percent year over year in June. Corcoran counted 3,477 signed contracts in Q2, a five year high. Contracts lead, closings follow. The median will chase. It always does.

Anyhoo. Zoom out with me, because the macro is where this gets fun.

On August 19, the Treasury announced it was doubling its buybacks of long term government debt. Stanley Druckenmiller took it upon himself to write an open letter via The Wall Street Journal, calling out his fellow "Masters of the Universe." The long-end buyback ratio is running three to four times anything the Treasury has done in prior cycles. What am I talking about? I'm talking about the government of the United States openly stating it will not allow long term interest rates to run. They will print, buy, and cap. Call it yield curve control lite, call it financial repression; the ducks are quacking... bread soon to follow.

The market heard it loud and clear. Gold ripped 3 percent that same day and central banks vacuumed up 180 metric tons last quarter. Bitcoin jumped 25 percent in August alone, its best ETF month of the year, and is now trading in lockstep with gold for the first time since 2020. Global money supply just hit a record $150 trillion. When the oldest and newest forms of hard money rally together while the Treasury caps rates, the message is not subtle: paper is being debased, and the exits lead to real assets.

God ain't making more land and the regulators ain't making more Manhattan.

Meanwhile, look at what happened to the cities that stole our thunder. Fortune just named the three metros leading the national price downturn: Las Vegas, Austin, and Miami. Austin condos are down more than 20 percent, basically round-tripping to 2019. Miami has 28,000 condos sitting on the market with special assessments raining down the regulatory hail (despite the libertarian bloviations of DeSantis).

Manhattan, the entire borough, has about 7,200 listings. Total. An eight year low for a second quarter. The pandemic darlings ran 50 to 100 percent and are now giving it back. The money that chased them is coming home to the übermensch legacy asset, Manhattan. Mean reversion is undefeated, and NYC real estate is the smart money's piggy bank. Taxes or not. Always has been, forever it will be; we are the social and economic center of the planet; the singularity of premium.

The Little Drop of Poison

Sellers haven't got the message yet.

Manhattan asking prices were DOWN 6.9 percent year over year in June while contract volume exploded. Sellers are still pricing for the market they feared, not the market that's forming.

Manhattan condo price per square foot is still sitting roughly 9 percent below its 2017 peak in nominal dollars. Run the napkin CPI math on seven years of inflation and you're buying the best real estate on planet Earth at something like 30 percent off in real money. Jonathan Miller, the dean of Manhattan data, says it plainly: this market has moved sideways for a decade. A decade! While Austin doubled and gave it back, Manhattan just... waited. For you, seemingly.

There is no perfect moment. There is only the moment when the data turns and the crowd hasn't. If you've been waiting for the bear market to end, I have news: it ended, and nobody sent a press release. They never do.

I'm around. If you want to know what your building, your budget, or your block actually looks like under these numbers, call me, and I'll pull it apart with you. No pitch, just the data over some oysters and champagne.

The best time to buy Manhattan was ten years ago. The worst time was 2020. Well, we have 2017 prices again today, and this time they won't round trip.

Your Bespoke Broker,
Azari

ps if you got one of those pied-à-terre surcharge notices from the city and you're pretty sure you don't qualify, you're probably right, the rollout was a mess and they extended the exemption deadline to september 18. send it to me before you panic

psps if nobody told you so today, you're very good looking. happy labor day to you and yours