More Than One-Third of Co-ops and Condos Failed to Find a Buyer in 2022

Stress is a big killer. For New Yorkers, putting their home on the market is more stressful than planning a wedding, finding a job or even getting a root canal, according to a new StreetEasy survey conducted by The Harris Poll.

And for good reason. In 2022, out of 39,845 previously-owned New York City homes listed for sale on StreetEasy, 35.7% — a little more than one in three — were taken off the market without finding a buyer.

With mortgage rates rising rapidly in the first half of 2022, an increasing number of homes were falling into this category. Of the resale listings that entered the market in the second quarter of 2022, 38.2% did not enter contract, followed by 38.1% of homes listed in the third quarter. By the end of the year, as sellers adjusted to a new market characterized by higher mortgage rates, the share of homes listed in the fourth quarter that did not sell declined modestly to 34%. This continued as buyers returned to the market earlier this year: of 9,108 homes listed in the first quarter of 2023, 29.2% went without a sale.

New York City's real estate market is unique in numerous ways. For starters, prices are far above the national average, and homes tend to stay on the market much longer. Also, most homes for sale in the city are co-ops, condos or townhouses, each with vastly different price points. Of all co-op listings in 2022, 31.7% didn’t find a buyer, compared to 41.6% for condos citywide and 50.1% for townhouses in Manhattan and brownstone Brooklyn. While co-ops typically have stricter financial requirements and close scrutiny by the co-op board, condos and townhouses tend to sell at higher prices. In 2022, the median asking price of all co-ops on the city was $599,000 — less than half the $1.4 million median asking price of condos, and less than a tenth that of townhouses in Manhattan and brownstone Brooklyn ($6.6 million).

The survey found that the three main reasons a home fails to find a buyer are mis-pricing compared to the competition, time spent on the market, and failure to engage a broker.