It’s not hard to spot a mullet in the lobby cafe of the WSA building.
One man sporting a blonde mini-mullet bounces past another — dark-haired half-mullet — leaning back in his chair, sporting AirPods and a red puffer jacket, facing the rack of artfully arrayed fashion and design magazines.

These people, Vanessa Low Mendelson says, pointing around to those milling about the cafe, are evidence of the resurgent and hip FiDi. Mendelson, the sales director at 77 Greenwich Street, has a vested interest in the attractiveness of the neighborhood. In certain respects, the area is thriving.

Large office-to-residential conversions have filled up quickly, spurring more development and even more conversions. The area’s population has nearly tripled this decade. There’s a new Whole Foods!

It is no longer the dominion of suit-and-tie-wearing financiers that flee the scene once they punch their timecard.

“This neighborhood is cool,” Mendelson exclaimed at one point during a walk-through of the 89-unit building.

But cool — of the mullet-sporting, canvas bag-toting variety — may not be synonymous with six-figure downpayments that brokers like Mendelson need to fill their buildings.

FiDi has for years counted the most new development inventory of any neighborhood in the city. An analysis of public records by The Real Deal found the area’s unsold buildings account for over 20 percent of Manhattan’s unsold units and over 10 percent of New York City’s unsold units. That excludes buildings that haven’t begun closings, like the long-awaited 272-unit tower
overlooking the site of the former World Trade Center.

The disparity has only grown in recent years. As of the end of 2024, FiDi had more unsold new condos than the rest of all of Manhattan below 34th Street combined — the first time that has happened since 2012, according to data from Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group.

The explanations are, as often is the case in New York real estate, myriad. The 654-foot-tall elephant in the room, Harry Macklowe’s One Wall Street, contributes an outsize portion of the unsold units.

But conversions like LCOR’s Broad Exchange and shiny developments like Trinity Place Holdings’ 77 Greenwich Street still have a sizable chunk of places to move, and even well-regarded projects like Lightstone Group’s 130 William Street are not completely sold out.

Then there are the projects that have languished, like Fortis Development’s 161 Maiden Lane, or until recently, the Rafael Viñoly-designed tower at 125 Greenwich Street.

The FiDi construction boom came as sales were already spiking in the mid-2010’s, and the resulting projects that launched have been the core of the city’s already anemic condo inventory. But as hundreds of units in the area continue to wither on the vine and the city’s pipeline looks dry for years to come, the pressure is on for these closely watched addresses and the answers they hold for the next wave of new development.

A neighborhood with promise
For most of the 21st Century, the Financial District, with its cornucopia of Art Deco buildings and relatively cheap land, has proven irresistible to developers.

Large conversions at 15 Broad Street and 20 Pine Street showed circa 2008 that condos in the area could sell as a value proposition. Following the financial crisis, construction slowed across the city and it was not until the mid 2010s condo boom that sizable projects returned to the area. And once they started, they didn’t stop.

Towers Time Equities’ luxury tower at 50 West Street and the Beekman Residences by GFI Development Company and GB Lodging brought around 250 units to the market as the first
wave of successful larger new developments.

“There was a bit of a divergence in thinking where some developers saw the neighborhood trending up and tried to push pricing, while others met the market where it was at.”Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group’s Ryan Schleis

The two buildings scooped up contracts on over 50 percent of their units by 2015, but by 2017, the 191-unit 50 West landed a fresh loan secured by its 46 unsold condos, which ended up being used as rentals for the time being (many of those units still have not been sold, according to public records and recent StreetEasy listings).

For most of the 21st Century, the Financial District, with its cornucopia of Art Deco buildings and relatively cheap land, has proven irresistible to developers.

Large conversions at 15 Broad Street and 20 Pine Street showed circa 2008 that condos in the area could sell as a value proposition. Following the financial crisis, construction slowed across the city and it was not until the mid 2010s condo boom that sizable projects returned to the area. And once they started, they didn’t stop.

Towers Time Equities’ luxury tower at 50 West Street and the Beekman Residences by GFI Development Company and GB Lodging brought around 250 units to the market as the first
wave of successful larger new developments.

“There was a bit of a divergence in thinking where some developers saw the neighborhood trending up and tried to push pricing, while others met the market where it was at.”Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group’s Ryan Schleis

The two buildings scooped up contracts on over 50 percent of their units by 2015, but by 2017, the 191-unit 50 West landed a fresh loan secured by its 46 unsold condos, which ended up being used as rentals for the time being (many of those units still have not been sold, according to public records and recent StreetEasy listings).

Wrong price, wrong time

The screws on many of these projects were still turning when the condo market began to sour. After three straight years of growth, Manhattan condo sales dropped 20 percent in 2018, before falling off a pandemic-induced cliff in 2020, according to data from Miller Samuel. In the Financial District, 2016 saw 385 closed sales at an average price per square foot of $1,888 — numbers that fell precipitously the following year.

“When they penciled and wrote those checks, it was pre-pandemic and the world and the city looked a little different back then,” said Compass’ Vicky Barron, who at one point worked on sales at 100 Barclay Street. “Then there’s so much that came to market.”
While developers trying to catch a wave launched buildings around the city through the mid- to late-2010s, the density and scale of the projects in FiDi is relatively unrivaled for that time period.

But the frenzy to develop Lower Manhattan has led to self-cannibalization — the returns and prices developers thought they could get may not have accounted for the amount of supply building up at the same time in the same place.

“There’s more development sites, more opportunity — but absorption rates are challenged by the fact that there’s this constant supply of new product entering the market,” Miller said.
Even then, developers may have overestimated how far they could push prices in an area that has been claiming to be “revitalized” for almost two decades. Barron said one developer previously likened Park Place to the uptown enclave of a similar name.

“It’s not Park Avenue,” she said.
“There was a bit of a divergence in thinking,” said Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group’s Ryan Schleis, where some developers saw the neighborhood trending up and tried to push pricing, while others met the moment in the market.

One Wall, Harry Macklowe’s hulking obelisk at the epicenter of Wall Street, stands out as a poster child of what has turned out to be wishful thinking. The 566-unit office-to-residential conversion hit the market asking on average over $2,400 per square foot, with many units pushing $3,000.

It remains unclear how much leeway Macklowe has on pricing after sinking at least $2.6 billion into the project, but the units that have moved have been more in line with area norms — around $1,900 per square foot, according to Marketproof.

Of the 130 units sold or in contract, 103 are studios or one-bedrooms, and One Wall has moved nearly half of its studio stock while two-bedrooms are 13 percent sold and three-bedrooms just 5 percent sold. The building hasn’t sold a single unit above the 34th floor, where the price per square foot is generally higher.

At 77 Greenwich, no studios are still on offer, and the property has sold or put into contract around 60 percent of its 89 units for an average price per square foot of around $1,800. “Demand in the neighborhood is not as deep for three and four bedrooms as it is in Tribeca or the Upper East Side,” Schleis said.

Projects considered to be selling at a better clip, like the 242-unit tower at 130 William Street and the 110-unit conversion at 25 Park Row, benefitted from having fewer units to move and launching before 2020, despite both seeking over $2,000 per square foot.

“Developments in the Financial District have been very aggressive with their pricing, and that’s why they’re not selling,” said Platinum Properties’ Khashy Eyn.

Shlomi Reuveni, who took over sales at 77 Greenwich Street last year, said that even if the price per square foot is reasonable, condo conversions can end up with massive apartments because of their deep floor plans. “Even at the same price per square foot, your price point is very high,” he said.

Renters, for now
Just around the corner from One Wall, 25 Broad Street has flipped rentals to condos at a humble $1,200 per square foot and sold nearly two-thirds of the 308-unit building. “Those boxes are checked for a certain demographic, looking for either studios, one-bedrooms or small two-bedrooms,” said Reuveni, who also took over sales at the LCOR development in 2023.

“All you have to do is take a walk down Broad Street at 12 or 1 o’clock in the afternoon, and you’re not seeing the same suit-and-tie wearing professionals,” Reuveni said.

For those laser-focused on the Lower Manhattan condo market, the half-filled towers dotting the area might spell doom and gloom, but the success of the area’s rental projects shows people do want to live there, even if they don’t yet want to take out a mortgage.

Vanbarton Group’s 160 Water Street, which was just completed this year, has 99 percent of its 588 units leased, according to NY Yimby. Metro Loft’s conversions at 20 Broad Street and 180 Water Street both have occupancy rates above 95 percent across their more than 1,000 units.

Rental units likely appeal more to the 18- to 35-year old cohort, which makes up a third of Lower Manhattan’s total population, according to Downtown Alliance president Jessica Lappin.

Developers have taken note, according to Lappin, and the current pipeline has reversed the 2010s condo craze — 70 percent of the 8,000 planned units in the area are now rentals.

While the turn to rentals might seem foreboding for the developers sitting with empty condos, the population influx should only help over time.

“The rental market sometimes gets hotter first, because people move down there, they rent for a year or two, and then they buy,” Pappas said. “The slowness is just part of the way that the city develops as these different areas become more of the ‘residential hotspots.’”

In the meantime, some buildings are taking part in the time-honored tradition of renting out vacant units. One Wall has a number of apartments listed on StreetEasy, including two recently rented three-bedrooms.

At 77 Greenwich, the tide is already starting to turn. All four of the building’s four-bedrooms have sold, according to Reuveni, and the team is now looking to combine units to meet the uptick in demand for larger spaces. (It likely has not hurt that since taking over the project, Reuveni has dropped the price on several units by as much as 30 percent from the original offering plan, according to StreetEasy.)

Even the closely-watched One Wall has started selling over two units in each of the last six months, according to Marketproof. (That pace still places sellout in 2040).

But perhaps the most important factor is that the market is starting to turn. Last year, new development contracts beat the city’s 10-year average, and Miller said there’s “probably more optimism” now than in recent years.

That is all lenders need to give projects in the area a little more time: Macklowe secured a $665 million refinancing at One Wall and Trinity Place Holdings extended its debt on 77 Greenwich earlier this year.

The latest Downtown litmus test is the long-stalled, now-restarted luxury supertall at 125 Greenwich Street, which just announced the completion of its top-floor amenities suite. At a party celebrating the reveal of the city’s highest gym and pool, Douglas Elliman’s Stacy Spielman said the 272-unit building was on track to begin closings this spring.

In the meantime, the development team is looking to refinance its existing $313 million construction loan, a bid on the sense of renewed optimism in the FiDi condo market.

“You don’t want to be caught coming to market in a three-year stretch where it wasn’t the best,” Pappas said of lenders’ willingness to work with developers. “At the end of the day you missed the next cycle of velocity, which I think we’re about to hit.”

https://therealdeal.com/new-york/2025/03/13/fidi-condo-development-boom-sales-nyc-supply/