Manhattan's luxury housing market cooled noticeably during the week of August 10 through August 16, with buyers signing contracts for just 18 properties asking $4 million or more, down from 26 deals in the previous week. Yet even in a slower stretch, the condo conversion at the landmarked Flatiron Building kept its grip on the top of the list, with a unit asking just under $24 million.
The weekly tally, compiled by The Real Deal, marks the second time in three weeks that a Flatiron Building unit has ranked among the top two contracts in Olshan Realty's report. The report attributes the 18 signed contracts to Olshan Realty, which tracks Manhattan's weekly luxury market. Those 18 homes carried a combined asking price of $135 million, an average of $7.5 million and a median of $5.7 million, and the typical contracted home had been discounted by 8 percent after sitting on the market for nearly two years, according to the same account.
A $24 Million Perch Inside a 22-Story Icon
The top contract of the week was Unit 17North at 175 Fifth Avenue, spanning more than 4,600 square feet with four bedrooms and four full bathrooms inside the 22-story landmarked Flatiron Building. The unit features 12-foot ceilings, a large great room and views of Madison Square Park, per the report's description. It's part of a broader conversion led by the Brodsky Organization and Sorgente Group, which joined GFP Real Estate in 2023 to turn the building into luxury condominiums, backed by a $357 million construction loan, according to CoStar.
The building's amenities include a gym, lap pool, cold-plunge pool, sauna and residents' lounge, and per the CoStar report that lap pool runs 60 feet long, with full construction slated for completion in early 2027. Corcoran Sunshine Development Marketing is heading sales at the project, led by team members Angeli Dececchis and Michele Hinojos. Sixteen of the building's 36 units have gone under contract since sales launched last fall, and the developer plans to combine two seventh-floor units, carrying a combined asking price of $30.5 million, into a single apartment for the buyer.
Signed contracts at the Flatiron Building have averaged nearly $4,800 per square foot, the report's data show. This is not the first time a unit in the building has commanded the market's top spot: just two weeks before the mid-August slowdown, another Flatiron condo, Unit 18South, topped the luxury contract report at a $15.7 million asking price, a figure that had itself been reduced slightly from an original $15.5 million ask when sales launched in fall 2025, according to The Real Deal's earlier coverage. The building's crown-jewel listing to date, according to the Brodsky Organization, remains Unit 21, a 7,400-square-foot full-floor penthouse with five bedrooms and five bathrooms that asked nearly $59 million before finding a buyer this spring.
SoHo's Cast-Iron Runner-Up
The week's second-priciest contract went to a loft condo at 42 Wooster Street in SoHo, asking just under $10 million. Unit 3NorE spans 4,500 square feet with three bedrooms and three bathrooms, featuring wood beams and columns, multiple sets of French doors and a library, per the listing details in the report. The unit entered the market in June 2026 and was listed by Karin Dauch, Mark Mistovich, Pier DeMarco and Daniela Sassoun.
The building itself dates to 1883 and operates as a combined 14-unit condominium with neighboring 50 Wooster Street, a cast-iron structure designed by architect Jarvis Morgan Slade, according to StreetEasy. Separate listing details from Zillow note the loft's 12.5-foot ceilings, a keypad-controlled direct elevator landing, a gas fireplace and six operational French doors that open onto a shared courtyard. The loft last traded for $4.8 million in 2022, according to the report.
The Wooster Street address carries its own celebrity footnote: actors Claire Danes and Hugh Dancy once owned an apartment in the building, selling it for $5.9 million back in 2012, per the same report.
A Slower Week, But Not a Slower Market
Among the 18 signed contracts, 13 were condos, two were co-ops, two were townhouses and one was a condop, reflecting a pattern that has held across Manhattan's luxury market for more than a decade. Condominiums have outsold cooperatives by more than 3 to 1 every year since 2013 in the $4 million-plus segment, according to Olshan Realty, a trend luxury buyers favor for the flexible ownership rules and developer amenity packages that condos typically offer.
The pullback to 18 deals fits within a broader seasonal pattern rather than signaling a market retreat. Manhattan luxury buyers signed 1,436 contracts for properties asking $4 million or more in 2025, an 11 percent increase over 2024 that was supported by a 4 percent drop in average asking prices and bolstered by gains on Wall Street, as Hoodline previously reported. Weekly volume has swung considerably through 2026, with Hoodline noting a similar dip in $10 million-plus contracts back in July even as tight new-development inventory kept pressure on prices.
The Tax Bill That Comes With the Trophy
Buyers at this end of the market also face a steep closing cost courtesy of New York State's mansion tax, a progressive levy paid at closing that escalates from 1 percent on purchases of $1 million up to 3.9 percent on purchases of $25 million or more, spread across eight price tiers, according to a mansion tax rate breakdown. For an acquisition like the top-contract Flatiron Building unit, priced just under $24 million, that works out to a 3.75 percent bracket, generating roughly $900,000 in state buyer transfer tax alone, since the tax applies to the full purchase price rather than only the amount above the threshold, per an analysis from Milton Coste.
