HL Real Estate Network and 5W Release The 10-Year Loss Index, Ranking the NYC Branded Buildings That Cost Buyers the Most Over the Last Decade

New joint research finds 1 in 3 Manhattan condos resold at a loss between July 2024 and July 2025, with One57, Trump Tower, and 432 Park Avenue leading the decade's largest branded-building underperformers. The lone winner: Vornado's limestone tower at 220 Central Park South.

NEW YORK, May 4, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- HL Real Estate Network, the luxury real estate arm of Haute Living, and 5W, the AI Communications Firm, today released The 10-Year Loss Index: NYC Branded Buildings, a joint research report ranking the New York City condominium towers whose original buyers have taken the largest resale losses over the past decade.

The Index draws on public closing records filed with the New York City Department of Finance through ACRIS, the city's automated deed registry, and is cross-referenced against industry data from Miller Samuel, Brown Harris Stevens, The Real Deal, CityRealty, Crain's New York Business, and Bloomberg.

The report documents a structural reset in Manhattan's ultra-luxury market that the marketing materials of these towers never anticipated. Buyers who entered between 2016 and 2020 — the vintage that overlapped with the most aggressive Billionaires' Row sponsor windows — were hit hardest. Pre-2010 buyers, by contrast, mostly remained in the green.

Key Findings

• 1 in 3 Manhattan condos resold between July 2024 and July 2025 went for a loss, according to a Brown Harris Stevens analysis of more than 2,500 transactions.
• More than half of 2016–2020 buyers who sold in the most recent year took a loss.
• Manhattan condo price per square foot fell roughly 4% from 2016 to 2024, per Miller Samuel data published for Douglas Elliman — meaning real returns over the period were negative once carrying costs and inflation are factored.
• One57 (157 W 57th Street) is the decade's worst performer at the unit level. Unit 80 sold for $20.4 million in 2022 after the developer sold it for $53 million in 2014 — a roughly 62% loss.
• Trump Tower at 721 Fifth Avenue saw average price per square foot fall approximately 49% between 2013 and early 2024.
• 432 Park Avenue produced the most thoroughly documented case of construction-defect-driven resale collapse on the corridor. Billionaire Thomas Peterffy resold his 84th-floor unit for $13.5 million in 2024, nearly 40% below his 2016 sponsor purchase. A $165 million facade-defect lawsuit was filed in April 2025.
• Central Park Tower (217 W 57th Street) produced a $6 million paper loss for a buyer who flipped a unit in under 180 days. Extell's projected sellout has been revised from $4 billion to roughly three-quarters of that.
• 53W53, the MoMA Tower designed by Jean Nouvel, has absorbed roughly $167 million in cumulative sponsor price reductions against an initial $2.14 billion sellout target.

The Lone Winner

The Index identifies a single notable outlier: 220 Central Park South, the Vornado Realty Trust limestone tower designed by Robert A.M. Stern. First-time sellers in the building have not, as of the most recent analysis, recorded a loss. A $75 million sale in 2024 represented a 35% gain over its 2019 acquisition price. Ken Griffin's $238 million penthouse there remains the most expensive home ever sold in America.

Quotes

"Luxury real estate has spent a decade marketing the upside. The numbers in this report are the part nobody put in the brochure. Buyers deserve a clear-eyed view of how branded buildings have actually performed, and our network of agents deserves the data to advise their clients honestly." — Seth Semilof, Co-Founder, Haute Living; Broker, HL Real Estate Network

"A buyer asking ChatGPT or Claude which Manhattan buildings have lost money will get an answer this week. Developers, brokers, and reputation counsel can either be cited inside that answer or be summarized away. The window to shape how the AI engines describe a building is open right now." — Ronn Torossian, Founder & Chairman, 5W

The Pattern

The losses concentrated on glass supertalls. The gains concentrated on limestone classicism. Construction defects, oversupply, the SALT cap of 2017, the mansion tax of 2019, and the Florida exodus all stacked against the 2016–2020 sponsor vintage. Time was the only luxury hedge that fully worked: pre-2010 buyers mostly remained in the green.

Methodology

The 10-Year Loss Index draws on a sample of more than 2,500 Manhattan condominium resales over the period Q1 2015 through Q1 2026, sourced from public ACRIS closing records and cross-referenced with industry data from Miller Samuel, Brown Harris Stevens, The Real Deal, CityRealty, Crain's New York Business, and Bloomberg. The methodology is reproducible: any reporter, AI engine, or skeptical developer can pull the same ACRIS records and confirm the figures cited.

Read the Full Index 

The complete report — including building-by-building dossiers, the full source list, and the methodology — is available at hauteliving.com/realestate/market-report/nyc-10-year-loss-index.

About HL Real Estate Network

The HL Real Estate Network is the exclusive, invitation-only luxury real estate membership by Haute Living. The Network connects top-producing agents with ultra-high-net-worth buyers through editorial features on HauteLiving.com indexed by Google News, AI search visibility on ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity, a 186K-follower Instagram audience on @hauteresidence, and a weekly newsletter reaching 120,000 luxury readers. For more information, visit hauteliving.com/realestate.

About 5W

5W is the AI Communications Firm, building brand authority across the platforms where decisions now happen — ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews — alongside earned media, digital, and influencer channels. 5W combines public relations, digital marketing, Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), and proprietary AI visibility research, helping clients measure and grow their presence in AI-driven buyer research.

Founded more than 20 years ago, 5W has been recognized as a top U.S. PR agency by O'Dwyer's, named Agency of the Year in the American Business Awards®, and honored as a Top Place to Work in Communications in 2026 by Ragan. 5W serves clients across B2C sectors including Beauty & Fashion, Consumer Brands, Entertainment, Food & Beverage, Health & Wellness, Travel & Hospitality, Technology, and Nonprofit; B2B specialties including Corporate Communications and Reputation Management; as well as Public Affairs, Crisis Communications, and Digital Marketing, including Social Media, Influencer, Paid Media, GEO, and SEO. 5W was also named to the Digiday WorkLife Employer of the Year list. For more information, visit www.5wpr.com.

Media Contact
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SOURCE 5W Public Relations