At 175 Fifth Avenue, Unit 19 North went into contract in September at its $25.5 million asking price. It has 4,600 square feet, four bedrooms and a 12-foot-ceilinged great room that looks over Madison Square Park. According to The Real Deal's September 21 report, it was the 17th of the Flatiron Building's 36 apartments to find a buyer since sales began about a year ago, and the asks across the project average roughly $4,800 per square foot.
That's close to three times what an apartment in the surrounding blocks sells for. The gap comes from how office conversions get financed in this part of Manhattan. The city's main incentive for turning offices into homes doesn't apply to these projects. So what a developer paid for the old building, more than any city policy, decides what kind of home it becomes and what it costs.
Seventeen Contracts and No Confirmed Closings
Buying in a conversion starts with a long wait between signing a contract and getting the keys. When the New York Post covered the Flatiron Building in August 2026, move-ins were expected "this fall." As of October 8, we have not found a public report of a first closing or a resident moving in. The prices circulating for the building are asking prices on signed contracts. That includes the $58.5 million ask on the roughly 7,400-square-foot five-bedroom on the 21st floor. None of them is a recorded sale price yet.
Four blocks north, the Emmet Building at 95 Madison Avenue has a similar timeline. Sunlight Development and NuVerse Advisors launched sales on June 25, 2026, at an average of about $2,300 per square foot, and the launch announcement gives Q1 2027 as the expected start of move-ins. The announcement lists both 63 and 65 residences, so even the unit count is still settling. A buyer who signed in July is waiting the better part of a year for a home in a landmark that is still under construction.
Target dates also slip without much notice. At 114 East 25th Street, Adellco forecast that its 20-unit Armorie conversion would be finished in the first quarter of 2026. We have found no report confirming that it was completed or occupied.
Why the City's Conversion Incentive Skips These Buildings
New York's office-conversion incentive is the Affordable Housing from Commercial Conversions program, known by its tax-code section, 467-m. It was enacted in May 2024, and HPD's final rules took effect in January 2025. Manhattan below 96th Street gets the deepest exemptions, and the program covers only conversions to rental housing. To qualify, the NYC Comptroller's July 2025 analysis explains, a building must meet these conditions:
- At least 25% of units are income-restricted
- At least 5% of units are restricted at 40% of Area Median Income
- The average restriction does not exceed 80% of AMI
- The restricted units stay rent-stabilized permanently, even after the tax exemption ends
That structure suits large rental buildings. The Comptroller's pipeline data shows rental conversions averaging about 421,400 gross square feet per building. Condo conversions average about 145,900, and the Comptroller notes they tend to have larger units. Flatiron and NoMad are full of exactly those smaller, ornate, often landmarked buildings.
The report also compares what each type of building sold for:
"On average, office buildings that convert to residential condominium trade at more than twice the price of rental conversions ($591 vs. $276 per gsf). As land values increase, condominiums appear to be the feasible development alternative without incentives."
The Comptroller goes further. These buildings trade at prices that make a rental conversion unworkable even with 467-m. Once a developer pays that much for a building, the plan has to be condos large enough and expensive enough to cover the purchase.
What Each Building Cost Became What Each Apartment Costs
The Comptroller's transaction table shows this building by building. The Flatiron Building traded in May 2023 at $880 per gross square foot, one of the highest acquisition prices on the list. Its apartments now ask around $4,800 per square foot. Elad Group's 419 Park Avenue South, a former office and WeWork building at East 29th Street, traded in August 2024 at $451 per gross square foot. The Comptroller counted it as a 100-unit condo conversion. More recent project information puts it at 107 units. Published delivery dates for it range from 2027 to 2028.
79 Madison Avenue shows what happens when the numbers don't work. In March 2025, Commercial Observer reported that Williams Equities had put the building on the market as a possible luxury-condo conversion, with pricing talk around $130 million. More than a year later, the owner still markets over 166,000 square feet of move-in-ready office space there, and Crain's described it in June 2026 as an office tower facing rising vacancies. We have not found any confirmation that a conversion is underway.
The rental version of a conversion is happening a short walk north. At 29 West 35th Street, Infinite Global Real Estate Partners, Buttonwood Development and 400 Capital Management are converting an office building into 107 rentals, mostly studios of 400 to 575 square feet. Twenty-seven of them are affordable units at $1,701 a month. The developers' announcement says the project combines 467-m with Mandatory Inclusionary Housing. Most of what the incentive produces is small units in buildings that pencil out as rentals. Flatiron's ornate, expensive buildings fall outside it.
Where Resale Sits Below the New Tiers
Against that new supply, here is what the resale blocks around it traded at in Q3 2026, according to PropertyShark's neighborhood data, with Corcoran's Q3 2026 Manhattan new-development median for comparison:
| Q3 2026 | Median price per sq ft | Sales | Year-over-year change in price per sq ft |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flatiron District, all homes | $1,696 | 55 | +6.9% |
| NoMad, all homes | $1,736 | 47 | −0.4% |
| Gramercy Park, all homes | $1,810 | 85 | +13.6% |
| Manhattan new development, median | $2,050 | n/a | +4% |
| 95 Madison, launch average | about $2,300 | n/a | n/a |
| Flatiron Building, average ask | about $4,800 | n/a | n/a |
95 Madison is priced near the Manhattan new-development median, a little above it. The Flatiron Building is priced with trophy towers, far above anything else on the table. Neither sits close enough to neighborhood resale to pull those prices up or push them down directly. In Q3 2026, 17 Flatiron Building apartments in contract against 55 total Flatiron sales would look like a big share of the market. They don't move resale comps because they're in a different price tier.
Flatiron's own resale figure needs a caveat. The neighborhood's all-home median sale price rose 32.4% year over year in Q3 2026, to $1.9 million, while median price per square foot rose only 6.9%. When total price outpaces price per foot that much, larger homes made up more of what sold. The figure says less about existing apartments gaining value. With 55 sales in the quarter, a handful of big lofts can move the median a lot.
The split between condos and co-ops points the same way. In Q3 2026, Flatiron's 33 condo sales had a $2.5 million median and its 22 co-op sales had a $1.3 million median. In Gramercy Park, 52 co-op sales had a median of $825,000. The conversions are adding to a condo stock that was already the expensive part of the market, and the co-op market below it gets no new supply from them at all.
How the Pipeline Changes a Comparison Between New and Resale
Some conversion apartments leave the market before most buyers see them. Adellco sold all 20 Armorie units plus the commercial space to a private family office in a single $71 million deal in April 2025, as The Real Deal reported. The units had been marketed quietly before that deal. Even so, a project the Comptroller's pipeline counts as 20 new condos went to one buyer before construction was finished.
Timing also separates the two tiers. A resale condo or co-op in Gramercy closes on the building's schedule and a lender's. A conversion contract closes when the sponsor finishes the building. At the Flatiron Building, that date hasn't arrived even though contracts were signed as far back as a year ago, and at 95 Madison it is expected sometime in early 2027. In the meantime, the buyer's money and plans are tied to a sponsor's construction schedule.
The pipeline itself is steady. Conversions here will keep adding condos priced from what the old building cost. Rental conversions with affordable units are going into the larger buildings near 35th Street. Flatiron and NoMad resale prices, which ranged from about $1,700 to $1,810 per square foot in Q3 2026, stay a separate market below both.
If you're deciding between a contract at a conversion like 95 Madison or the Flatiron Building and a resale on the surrounding blocks, I can walk you through how the sponsor's offering plan, its closing timeline and the current resale comps compare for the apartment you have in mind. Reach out to Darya Goldstein and let's connect.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
