How long it takes to sell an apartment in NYC
Median days on market for NYC apartments by borough and neighborhood, measured from live listing data rather than brokerage marketing claims.
Updated Aug 18, 2026 · 4 min read
Days on market is the quietest useful number in real estate. It does not tell you what an apartment is worth, but it tells you how long the market takes to agree with a price - and that shapes everything from how you set an asking price to how much room a buyer has to negotiate.
By borough
Median days on market for sale listings in the last twelve months, measured from the listing data CurbScoop collects rather than from marketing claims.
| Borough | Listings | Median days | Average days |
|---|---|---|---|
| Manhattan | 2349 | 74 | 98 |
| Brooklyn | 1551 | 63 | 86 |
| Queens | 2516 | 58 | 83 |
Live CurbScoop listing data, sale listings from the last 12 months, generated Aug 19, 2026.
The fastest neighborhoods
Borough medians hide a great deal. These are the neighborhoods where apartments moved quickest over the same period, among those with at least 50 listings.
| Neighborhood | Listings | Median days |
|---|---|---|
| Park Slope | 102 | 36 |
| Brooklyn Heights | 52 | 50 |
| Flushing | 175 | 51 |
| Ditmars-Steinway | 79 | 51 |
| Jackson Heights | 166 | 51 |
| Upper West Side | 199 | 53 |
| Kew Gardens Hills | 67 | 53 |
| Yorkville | 129 | 56 |
| Forest Hills | 271 | 56 |
| Greenwich Village | 85 | 57 |
| Hunters Point | 181 | 61 |
| Bedford-Stuyvesant | 50 | 62 |
What a slow market actually means
A long days-on-market figure is usually a pricing story rather than a demand story - Manhattan carries the highest median on this list at 74 days. Apartments priced against recent recorded sales tend to move; apartments priced against what the seller hoped for two years ago tend to sit, cut, and then sell anyway at a number the comps predicted all along.
- If your building has listings sitting well past the neighborhood median, check what they are asking against what recently recorded nearby.
- Time on market compounds: the longer a listing sits, the more buyers treat the age itself as a signal that something is wrong.
- Speed is not automatically good news for owners. Very fast sales can mean the market cleared an underpriced unit, which then becomes a comp against you.
Related reading: where sellers cut asking prices most and how to find real comps.
Common questions
- What is a normal days-on-market in NYC?
- Medians run in the region of two months, and vary by borough - Manhattan typically sits above Brooklyn and Queens in the listings CurbScoop tracks.
- Why is the average so much higher than the median?
- A minority of listings sit unsold for many months and drag the average up. The median is the better read on a typical apartment.