Brooklyn edges Manhattan below 96th Street as submarket volume drops 43.6%

Brooklyn recorded $693.8 million of multifamily dollar volume in the third quarter, just ahead of $685.2 million in Manhattan below 96th Street, according to Ariel Property Advisors data reported by Commercial Observer. Brooklyn's total was down 12.8 percent from the same quarter a year earlier. Manhattan below 96th Street fell 43.6 percent.

Transaction counts moved the other way in both markets. Brooklyn deals rose 12.7 percent year over year to 178, and Manhattan below 96th Street rose 1.8 percent to 58. Dividing each market's dollar volume by its transaction count puts the average Brooklyn sale at about $3.9 million and the average sale below 96th Street at roughly $11.8 million, an arithmetic inference from the two reported figures rather than a separate Ariel statistic.

Citywide, dollar volume across the four boroughs Ariel tracked fell 23.3 percent year over year to $1.84 billion. Deals of $50 million or more dropped to four, totaling $388.7 million, from eight totaling $999.2 million a year earlier. The big-ticket tier lost $610.5 million of volume, while the entire four-borough market lost about $560 million on the report's rounded figures, which implies that sales below $50 million added volume year over year.

Upper Manhattan, above 96th Street, ran counter to the southern half of the borough: dollar volume rose 32.8 percent even as transactions slipped 5.9 percent to 16. In the Bronx, dollar volume declined 5 percent year over year.

For the first nine months of 2026, the four boroughs totaled $6.99 billion across 1,044 transactions, year-over-year increases of 7.9 percent and 11.5 percent. A nine-month gain alongside a 23.3 percent third-quarter decline implies, on the rounded figures, a stronger first half.

Buildings with at least 75 percent free-market units accounted for 63.1 percent of third-quarter dollar volume, against 19.2 percent for buildings at least 75 percent rent-stabilized. Affordable housing was 8.3 percent. "Last quarter we continued to see a clear divergence in performance across multifamily property types," Shimon Shkury, Ariel's president and founder, said in a statement. "Free-market properties and subsidized affordable housing with predictable cash flows continue to attract strong investor interest, while rent-stabilized assets face significant valuation pressure from regulatory constraints and financing challenges."