

In Manhattan, a $1 million condo counts as “entry level” — and developers are building dramatically fewer of them.
The supply of the city’s most affordable new-development condos is projected to plunge 74% through 2029 compared with the past decade, according to a new report from Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group obtained by The Post.
Corcoran defines the entry-level tier as new condos priced below $1,800 per square foot. For a roughly 500- to 1,000-square-foot apartment, that translates to a purchase price of up to roughly $900,000 to $1.8 million — hardly bargain territory for most Americans.
Yet even homes in that price bracket are becoming increasingly scarce.
Just 172 entry-level units are currently in the Core Manhattan pipeline for 2026 through 2029, or about 43 a year. Over the past decade, an average of 165 such units came to market annually.
That amounts to a 74% collapse in what developers consider the lowest rung of Manhattan’s new-condo market.
Meanwhile, developers are increasingly concentrating on more expensive homes.
Nearly half of the roughly 5,900 condos in the Core Manhattan pipeline are expected to fall into the “mid-market” category, priced between $1,800 and $2,400 per square foot. Just 3% are classified as entry level.
At the opposite end, super-luxury supply — $3,400 to $5,000 per square foot — is projected to rise 88% from its 10-year annual average, while ultra-luxury supply above $5,000 per square foot is expected to soar 285% — putting a 500- to 1,000-square-foot unit at roughly $1.7 million to $5 million or more.
“The cost of doing business has gotten much higher across the board for developers,” Corcoran Sunshine President Kelly Kennedy Mack told The Post.
“Construction and especially labor costs have skyrocketed in recent years, and desirable development parcels are getting fewer and farther between and more expensive in the city — not to mention that it’s gotten increasingly difficult to put together the types of site assemblages that support large-scale developments, which are often the type that would include entry-level inventory.”
The shift comes even as Manhattan’s overall condo pipeline looks relatively stable on the surface.
Corcoran expects about 1,473 new for-sale units a year in Core Manhattan from 2026 through 2029, only slightly below the 10-year historical average of 1,491.
But that figure is being propped up by four exceptionally large developments, each containing more than 200 units — two in Midtown West/Lincoln Square and two on the Lower East Side.
Without those four projects, the projected annual pipeline would be roughly 25% lower.
And compared with Manhattan’s pre-pandemic building boom, the slowdown is more pronounced. New for-sale introductions averaged roughly 1,745 units annually between 2016 and 2020. Projected supply through 2029 is 16% below that level.
Conversions have become an increasingly important dividing line between New York’s rental and ownership markets.
About 79% of the coming for-sale pipeline consists of ground-up new construction. Rental-to-condo conversions, which accounted for about 20% of the new-development market before 2019, are expected to make up just 4% of the pipeline over the next several years.
“It’s also worth mentioning that the city’s latest tax abatement programs have specifically incentivized rental development, and on top of that, recent policy changes have made rental-to-condo conversions very difficult to pull off. Those were previously a significant source of entry-level for-sale inventory in the market,” Mack said.
Office conversions are doing little to replenish the condo market, either. They represent just 5% of Core Manhattan’s for-sale pipeline, as tax-abatement programs encouraging office-to-residential conversions are available only for rental projects.
For renters, the picture is dramatically different.
About 71% of Core Manhattan’s coming rental pipeline consists of office-to-apartment conversions — nearly 13,000 units — compared with just 5,250 units expected from ground-up construction.
The result is a growing divide: New York is still adding tens of thousands of homes, but an increasing share of them will be rentals rather than properties New Yorkers can buy.
Across Manhattan and the selected Brooklyn and Queens neighborhoods tracked by Corcoran Sunshine, roughly 52,000 market-rate homes are expected to come online through 2029.
About 77% will be rentals, up from roughly 70% during the previous decade, while for-sale introductions overall are projected to decline 11%.
The squeeze on homes for sale extends beyond Manhattan.
Across the report’s “Secondary Markets” — Upper Manhattan, Western Queens and portions of Brooklyn — the for-sale pipeline through 2029 is projected to run 18% below the 10-year historical average.
Central Brooklyn faces the sharpest pullback, with annual introductions projected to plunge 47%, while Northwest Brooklyn is expected to see a 16% decline.
Western Queens — including Long Island City and Astoria — is one of the few exceptions. Annual for-sale introductions there are projected to rise 5% from the historical average, while the area’s share of the secondary-market condo pipeline is expected to grow to 33%.
Within Manhattan, the geography of new development is also shifting.
The Upper East Side is projected to see annual condo introductions jump 54% above its decade average, driven primarily by several larger projects along Madison Avenue, while Midtown is projected to see a 46% increase.
The Financial District and Battery Park City, by contrast, are projected to see annual for-sale introductions plunge 86%, leaving the area with just 2% of Core Manhattan’s future condo supply.
And even the 52,000 homes currently in the broader development pipeline aren’t guaranteed to arrive on schedule.
Only 55% are currently under construction. The other 45% remain planned, and Corcoran cautioned that launch and delivery dates could shift because of financing, construction delays and market conditions.
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