Corcoran rules over Lower Manhattan

The Corcoran Group edged out Douglas Elliman to take the top spot in The Real Deal’s recent citywide brokerage ranking, but the story was different in Lower Manhattan.

The firm accounted for 45 percent of all deal volume in the neighborhoods of Manhattan’s southern tip, for a total of more than $755 million — over three times the volume of runner-up Compass, which booked just about $234 million.

To measure brokerages’ success in selling homes in Lower Manhattan, TRD drilled down into the dataset of 58,000 deals from 2022 from our rankings based on Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens to focus on activity in Battery Park City, the Financial District, Civic Center, Two Bridges and Chinatown.

Corcoran’s chart-topping strength in new-development marketing gave the firm a clear edge in Lower Manhattan, where more than half of its 350 deals were sponsor sales at developments like Albanese Organization’s Solaire in Battery Park City, Extell’s One Manhattan Square in Two Bridges and LCOR’s 25 Broad Street and Lightstone Group’s 130 William Street in the Financial District. As with total volume and deal count, no other brokerage came close.

Compass, which came in a distant second with about $234 million in volume across just 148 deals, had only 10 sponsor sales in its dealbook. Third-ranked Douglas Elliman, which booked nearly $167 million in volume across 104 deals, had 16 sponsor sales — the most of any firm other than Corcoran.

The 991 on-market deals closed in Lower Manhattan last year totaled nearly $1.7 billion. Of those, the majority — 508 sales for over $890 million — were in the Financial District, where decades of office-to-resi conversions have transformed the business district into a bustling neighborhood. 

Battery Park City had 286 sales totaling just over $419 million, and there were 130 deals in Two Bridges (worth $238 million) — all but 28 of which were in Gary Barnett’s One Manhattan Square. Civic Center and Chinatown accounted for less than 7 percent of Lower Manhattan's deal count.

For inquiries about how to obtain the underlying data set referenced in this story, email research@therealdeal.com

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