Selling an Apartment in Manhattan

A Manhattan contract written at $2,000,000 costs the buyer $25,000 in mansion tax. Written at $1,999,999 it costs $20,000, because the rate applies to the whole price rather than the part above the line. One dollar of asking price is worth $5,000 to the person buying your apartment, and that arithmetic is one of the first things I put in front of a seller, before anything gets photographed or published.

That is the shape of this page. Not a promise about service, but the actual sequence of a Manhattan sale, who does each piece of it, and the numbers that decide what your apartment lists for. If you want the citywide version of the same material, the NYC seller hub collects the tools and guides in one place.

What happens when I list your apartment

One broker runs the whole production. The person who shoots the listing video is the same person who runs the pricing data and the same person who answers the phone when a buyer's agent calls at seven on a Sunday. That is a capability claim, not a size claim: it means the pieces do not wait on a vendor's calendar, and nothing gets explained secondhand.

Before launch: the pricing work

The first week is arithmetic. I build the price range from listing and sale data I pull and analyze myself, not from an automated estimate, and I show you the comparable sales that produced it, including the ones that argue against the number you were hoping for. Where your price lands relative to the mansion tax tier lines gets decided here, at the same time, because those two decisions are the same decision. Alongside the range you get the cost side: transfer taxes, the flip tax if your building has one, attorney fees, and your mortgage payoff, so the figure you are actually deciding about is what lands in your account.

Weeks one and two: preparation and production

Then the apartment gets prepared and shot. I have been shooting my own listing video and 3D tours since 2020, which changes the economics of a listing in a way that is easy to miss. A crew is a booking, a day rate, and a delivery window. When the same person holds the camera and the listing, the shoot happens when the apartment is ready rather than when the calendar allows, and a reshoot after new furniture arrives or a price change lands costs a morning instead of a new invoice. Sellers get more shots at a good first impression, which is the part of the process that expires fastest.

Launch week: the listing goes out in two languages

The listing goes live across the RLS feed and the portals it syndicates to, with the video, the 3D tour, and the floor plan attached from day one rather than added later. Every touchpoint runs in English and Spanish: the listing copy, the outreach, the showing conversations, and the follow-up with buyers and their agents. A Spanish-speaking buyer who can ask about the flip tax and the sublet policy in their own language, at the showing, is a buyer who stays in the running. Most listings lose that person at the door and never find out.

After launch: the part most sellers never see

Feedback from showings turns into decisions rather than a weekly summary email. If the traffic says the staging is reading wrong, the furniture moves and the apartment gets reshot. If it says the price is reading wrong, we change the price and reshoot the material that carried the old number. You hear what buyers' agents actually said, including the unflattering version, because that is the only feedback worth having during the weeks when it can still change the outcome.

The pricing conversation, in Manhattan terms

Manhattan pricing is geography, and the mansion tax tier lines are the terrain. The tax is a New York State tax under Tax Law Section 1402-a. It starts at $1,000,000, and because the rate applies to the entire purchase price, every tier boundary is a cliff rather than a step: $1,000,000 to $1,999,999 pays 1.00%, $2,000,000 to $2,999,999 pays 1.25%, $3,000,000 to $4,999,999 pays 1.50%. The buyer writes that check, which is exactly why it belongs in your pricing decision. An apartment listed at $2,050,000 is competing for buyers who are comparing it against apartments where the tax bill is $5,000 lighter, and their agents know it.

Sometimes the answer is to price just under a line. Sometimes the answer is to price above it and let the value carry the difference, which is a real answer when the apartment genuinely sits above the comparable set. Sometimes the answer is a concession structure that solves the buyer's cash-at-closing problem without moving the headline price. Which of those applies depends on your building and your comparable sales, and the point of running the numbers before listing is that you choose deliberately rather than discovering the line during a negotiation. Run your own figure through the mansion tax calculator, and the full mansion tax guide has the bracket table and the legal ways to reduce the bill.

The record, in public

Most of what a broker tells a seller about their own experience cannot be checked. Mine is a list you can read.

Those counts are portal exports of transactions I have personally marketed, leased, or sold, which is why the provenance line travels with them. The Williamsburg figure is a single closed deal with a record behind it rather than a running total, and it is the only dollar figure about my own record anywhere on this site. If you are pricing above $2M, the useful thing on that page is the price-point sort: find your range, see what the material looked like, and judge the work rather than the adjective.

Manhattan is where this page points, not where the work stops

The same process runs in all five boroughs and the Hudson Valley, with the same broker doing the pricing and the production in each one. Manhattan carries more inventory above the mansion tax threshold and a higher share of co-ops than the other boroughs, so the arithmetic on this page shows up more often here, but nothing about the sequence is Manhattan-only. The seller hub is the citywide version, and it links the net proceeds calculator, the should I sell now tool, and the seller guides.

Two other starting points are worth knowing about. If you inherited the apartment, the building asks the executor for a different set of documents before anything can be listed: that is covered at selling an inherited property in NYC. If the sale is funding a smaller purchase, the order of the two closings drives your timeline more than either one alone, which is the subject of selling larger and buying smaller. Costs, documents, and timelines for both co-op and condo sellers are answered in the selling FAQ.

Frequently asked questions

How long does it take to sell a Manhattan co-op?

From accepted offer to closing, a co-op sale typically runs 90 to 120 days, because board approval adds roughly 30 to 60 days on top of a normal contract-to-close cycle. A condo sale in the same market closes in 30 to 45 days from signed contract when the buyer pays cash, and 45 to 60 days when the buyer finances, because there the mortgage commitment rather than a board vote is the binding constraint. Add the weeks before listing that go to assembling the building documents, and a co-op sale is a four to six month project from first conversation to keys.

What does it cost to sell an apartment in Manhattan?

Both co-ops and condos pay the same government transfer taxes: the NYC Real Property Transfer Tax at 1.00% of the price at $500,000 or less and 1.425% above it, plus the New York State transfer tax at 0.40%, rising to 0.65% on residential sales of $3,000,000 or more. The difference is the co-op flip tax, typically 1% to 3% of the sale price and set by your building, where condos generally have none. Attorney fees commonly run $2,000 to $4,000 on either. The selling FAQ answer on co-op versus condo costs breaks the two side by side, and the seller net proceeds calculator subtracts all of it plus your mortgage payoff from a price you choose.

Do I have to publicly list my apartment to sell it?

No. Some sellers do not want their address browsing-visible before they commit to a price strategy, and that is a normal starting point rather than an unusual request. A private consultation is a pricing and marketing review with one broker and no obligation, done before anything is published anywhere. If you decide afterward that a public launch is the right move, nothing has been spent and no listing history exists yet. Direct line 917.416.7433.

Who pays the mansion tax on a Manhattan sale?

The buyer pays it, but it shapes your price. The mansion tax is a New York State tax under Tax Law Section 1402-a that applies to residential purchases at $1,000,000 or more, and the rate applies to the entire purchase price rather than only the amount above the threshold. Because of that, every tier line is a cliff: a $1,999,999 contract owes $20,000 and a $2,000,000 contract owes $25,000, so one extra dollar of price costs the buyer $5,000 in tax. Sellers priced just above a tier line are negotiating against that number whether or not they know it is there.

Do you only sell apartments in Manhattan?

No. The same process runs in all five boroughs and the Hudson Valley, and it is the same broker doing the pricing work and shooting the video in each one. Manhattan has its own arithmetic, mostly because more of its inventory sits above the $1,000,000 mansion tax threshold and more of it is co-op rather than condo, but the sequence of pricing, preparation, production, launch, and offer review does not change by borough. Over 1,100 transactions marketed, leased, or sold are tracked at miltoncoste.com/listings, sorted by price point, across the whole coverage area.