The Post-Pandemic Marketplace: These Buyers Will Conquer NYC Real Estate

As the moment for New York City to open for real estate draws closer, the brokerage community is … [+] divided over what the re-entry will bring.

When can New York agents show property again? And when they can, who will be looking, and at what? As the moment for New York City to open for real estate draws closer, the brokerage community is divided over what the re-entry will bring. Is there enough pent-up demand to send us out of the gate with a bang? Or is there still so much anxiety about the future that our new beginning will sound more like a whimper? It is, of course, impossible to know, but there will almost certainly be a diverse group of players at the table, on both the buy-side and the sell-side. A number of them will have differing or even conflicting priorities, out of which we will forge a market representative of both traditional and new residential priorities. The buyers and sellers who transact during the balance of 2020 will teach us what to expect going forward into the post-pandemic marketplace.

While all theories remain speculative at this point, I have a few about who will be buying, who will be selling, and why:

For now the city is quiet. No movie theaters, no Broadway shows, no Yankees or Mets, no Carnegie Hall or Metropolitan Opera. But New Yorkers know this is not forever. They all want their live music, their live sports, their live restaurant dinners. While no one knows exactly when those pleasures will be back, they WILL be back. The smarter among city residents will have great new homes when that moment comes; happily working a day and a half from their home offices, they will look out at the re-animated city with pleasure and satisfaction.