Not every week gives you a $500K 2-week rental, a $24M ground lease shock, and a poet’s blueprint for Central Park. This one does.

In this week’s edition:

I absolutely love summer, but in New York City it can get hot, humid, and relentless. On those days, Central Park becomes my sanctuary. The minute I step inside, the air shifts, the noise drops, and I remember exactly why I love living so close to it.

From my apartment on the Upper East Side along Museum Mile, the park is just minutes away. Sometimes it’s a quick walk to clear my head; other times, it’s a full loop around the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir. The skyline views never get old: from Midtown’s soaring towers to the grand co-ops along Central Park West and the elegant façades of Fifth Avenue.

While it feels like the park has always been here, the idea for a grand park in the center of Manhattan didn’t start with city planners—it started with a poet. In the 1840s, William Cullen Bryant, along with landscape visionary Andrew Jackson Downing, began pushing for a vast public green space for all New Yorkers. A decade later, the city launched a design competition.

Over 30 entries were submitted. The winning plan? A revolutionary collaboration between Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, who envisioned not a manicured European-style garden, but a naturalistic haven that would be full of wild landscapes, gurgling streams, and surprise vistas meant to give city dwellers a true sense of escape.

Making that vision real was one of the most ambitious landscaping feats in history:

The project came at a cost. The land was home to working-class New Yorkers, including Seneca Village, one of the city’s earliest free Black communities. It's a painful chapter in the park’s history whereby residents were displaced through eminent domain.

Yet today, Central Park stands as a masterpiece.

It is beautiful, ambitious, and that perfect counterpoint to our busy city lives. And on the hottest summer days, it’s where we New Yorkers go to breathe, reset, and feel, even if just for a moment, worlds away.

Between June 2024 and June 2025, COMPASS was the #1 brokerage in the Hamptons with over $2.18B in sales volume. (Source: The RealDeal)

Congratulations to the COMPASS Hamptons team!

Against this backdrop of record sales, how’s the Hamptons market today?

Speaking with my COMPASS colleagues, here's what's happening:

Late summer out east has its own rhythm. My colleagues are reporting a steady flow of deals, with buyer appetite reinforced by Wall Street bonuses and seller sentiment cautiously turning optimistic.

Inventory is slowly building, and the post-pandemic pricing frenzy has eased into something more grounded.

- Listings that sat for years are finally finding buyers.

- Developers are still pushing ahead, though East Hampton’s new zoning laws may mean the mega-mansion chapter is coming to a close.

The Rental Market Has Shifted Too

What once followed a predictable cycle with leases locked in months in advance, stretching from Memorial Day to Labor Day, has shifted to a more fluid rhythm. High-end homes are being rented month-to-month, sometimes week-to-week, and often at the last minute, with pricing to match.

Case in point: there’s an 8-bedroom beachfront estate on Dune Road still available for any 2-week stretch through mid-September —yours for just under $500,000. That’s right… a half-million dollars for two weeks at the beach. Sunscreen not included.

From shifting rental patterns to a calmer sales market, the Hamptons is still in demand, just playing by a different set of rules.

This story came out recently in The Wall Street Journal and caught my attention. It's worth sharing as it’s about the woes of living in a land-lease building. Buyer beware.

(Maybe I’m too cautious, but I rarely show clients apartments in land-lease buildings unless I know, and am comfortable with, the ground lease terms.)

Here's the story:

For decades, Richard Hirsch and his wife Jill Strauss have called Carnegie House home: a midcentury co-op on West 57th Street that once symbolized accessible homeownership for New York’s middle class.

They paid around $400,000 for their 2-bedroom in the 1990s.

Today, the building is dwarfed by the super-talls of Billionaires’ Row, and now the ground beneath it is threatening its future.

Like some co-ops in the city, Carnegie House doesn’t own the land it sits on. Instead, it leases it which was once seen as a way to keep costs down. But as Midtown land values have soared, so have the rents on these ground leases.

This month, an independent arbitration panel ruled to raise Carnegie House’s annual land rent from $4.36 million to about $24 million. A staggering 450% increase. For residents like Hirsch, that could push monthly costs from roughly $5,000 to over $13,000.

As the WSJ points out, this isn’t just a Carnegie House problem. It’s a warning for other co-ops with ground leases coming up for renewal, and a reminder that in New York real estate, “owning” your home can sometimes be more complicated than it sounds.

According to the latest Compass National Insights report, June brought a mix of subtle shifts and long-term trends in the U.S. housing market.

Median sales prices inched up — houses by 2%, condos/co-ops by 0.8% year-over-year. Active listings dipped slightly from May but were up 16% compared to last June. Months-supply-of-inventory rose to its highest level in over six years, pointing to a cooler market.

Sales volume was up 4% year-over-year, marking the first annual gain in existing-home sales since January. Still, fewer homes went under contract within a month (59% versus 65% a year ago), and fewer sold above asking (21% versus 29%).

Other notable shifts:

On the economic front, inflation ticked up to 2.7%. The Fed held rates steady, mortgage rates hovered just under 7%, and stock markets hit record highs. Consumer confidence reached a five-month high but remains low by historical standards.

Important to note: While national trends don’t always map directly onto New York City’s unique market, they shape the broader context in which our buyers and sellers are making decisions.

Long-term trends in house and condo/co-op median sales prices: Both hit new highs in June 2025.

The "mortgage lock-in effect" affecting prospective sellers continues to slowly weaken:

As is not unusual, the number of new listings coming on the market in June ticked down after peaking earlier in the spring, but it increased 6% year over year, and was the highest June count since interest rates soared in the first half of 2022.

This chart below estimates the number of homes on the market on any given day of the month specified, which is a different angle from the total number of listings on the market within the month and is affected by how fast homes sell: A slower velocity of sales helps push up the number of daily listings. By this metric, inventory in June 2025 hit its highest count since 2019, though remaining lower than pre-pandemic norms.

The daily number of listings which have accepted offers - aka listings pending sale, or listings in contract - is a leading indicator of how many sales will close in 3 to 6 weeks. The June 2025 count fell slightly from May, but rose 4% over June 2024.

Months-supply-of-inventory (MSI) is a measurement of buyer demand vs. the supply of homes available to purchase: The higher the reading, the softer the market. Because the number of listings for sale has risen much faster than the number of listings going into contract - i.e. supply outpacing demand - June MSI hit its highest reading in over 6 years, tilting the market to buyers' advantage. By property type, the house market (MSI of 4.5 months in June) is much stronger than the condo/co-op market (MSI of 6.5 months).

The number of sales in June increased very slightly from May, but rose 4% over June 2024, the first monthly, year-over-year increase since January. This suggests that we may be moving out from under the shadow of the severe economic uncertainty which prevailed during much of the spring selling season.

The next 2 charts look at price reductions, first by the number occurring within the month, and then by the monthly percentage of listings that reduced their asking price. Both readings have continued to rise. When the market is hot and demand outpaces supply, buyers compete for listings. When the market cools and supply outpaces demand, sellers begin to compete for buyers - most typically by reducing price. Note that a good proportion of homes are still selling quickly with multiple offers. Much depends on the pricing, preparation and marketing of the home.

The speed at which listings sell has been slowing on a year-over-year basis ever since the pandemic boom ended in Q2 2022, but is not running particularly slow by longer-term norms. Still, buyer and seller expectations are typically set by what they got used to in recent years, not by what was normal 6+ years ago. And by that standard, the market seems significantly cooler and they are reacting accordingly.

The National Association of Realtors just released their report on foreign-national homebuying in the 12 months through March 2025. International buyers have played large roles in many U.S. markets for years, and in the last period measured, they significantly increased their purchase volume. But this report won't take into account the enormous changes in tariff and immigration policies that have occurred in recent months, and anecdotal reports suggest a substantial impact. As one example, most Canadians have apparently not been pleased by recent tariff threats, much less suggestions that Canada should be absorbed into the U.S.

Following are selected snapshots of major macroeconomic trends.

Please let me know if you have any questions or if I can be of assistance in any way.

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