International Buyers Drive Manhattan Luxury Market as Domestic Investors Hesitate
High-net-worth international buyers, particularly from India, are actively acquiring luxury Manhattan condos above $5 million, reshaping developer strategies and shifting demand downtown, while domestic buyers pause due to interest rates and tariffs.
While most observers of the New York City luxury market focus on interest rates, tariffs, and geopolitical uncertainty, a specific group of international buyers is acquiring properties with a clarity of purpose that domestic buyers at the same price point struggle to find, according to Mukul "Micky" Lalchandani, founder and principal broker of Undivided, a boutique NYC residential real estate advisory firm.
Pre-pandemic, buyers from China represented close to 75% of all-cash luxury transactions in New York, but that shifted sharply after 2020. Developers who had structured pre-sale campaigns around Chinese buyers were suddenly building for an audience that had stopped showing up. What has replaced that cohort is more varied, with high-net-worth buyers from India becoming one of the most active international groups. According to the National Association of Realtors, Indian buyers purchased approximately 4,700 US homes worth $2.2 billion between April 2024 and March 2025, ranking among the top five foreign buyer groups nationally. India recently overtook China as the largest source of international students at US Ivy League institutions, and the wealth profile of those families mirrors what Lalchandani sees at the transaction level. Overall foreign demand has rebounded sharply, up 44% year-over-year after eight years of decline, and the composition of that demand is reshaping what developers build and how they sell it.
"They are focused on the long term," Lalchandani says. "The political noise that is giving domestic buyers pause does not register the same way for someone who operates in a complex environment at home. They are buying with a 10 to 15-year lens." That time horizon changes the evaluation framework: these buyers are not trying to time a rate cycle but are asking what a building's resale profile looks like in a decade, who the future buyer will be, and whether the neighborhood's supply dynamics support long-term appreciation. Lalchandani applies the same framework for every client through the Undivided Value Index, a building-level scoring system that evaluates condominiums across eight weighted categories, including financial health, absorption dynamics, and resale liquidity.
The amenity packages that defined the previous cycle are being replaced. New developments like 212 Fifth Avenue are conceived around private club concepts: residents-only access, whiskey bars, Zoom-ready private conference rooms, and outdoor terraces attached to individual units. The home office is now a baseline requirement, and buyers are asking for private gym installations within the unit itself. The preference is for consolidation: fewer shared walls, fewer shared spaces, and more control over the environment. "Before, a buyer wanted a second bedroom for a child," Lalchandani notes. "Now they want a separate home office. The footprint requirements have changed, and buildings that were designed for the previous buyer profile are having to reckon with that."
The current cycle is concentrating downtown, a departure from the Billionaires Row era on 57th Street. Record transactions at 150 Charles Street, 140 Jane Street, and 80 Clarkson reflect a structural preference shift: buyers want walkability, proximity to restaurants, and real neighborhood infrastructure. Midtown around Central Park draws tourists but lacks the everyday density that buyers who plan to actually live in the city are looking for. Downtown delivers that.
Markets driven partly by international capital can move in ways that are harder to predict than domestically-driven cycles. These buyers are long-term holders by design, but if their outlook shifts, resale liquidity at the upper end can thin quickly. That is not a reason to avoid the market but a reason to be selective about which buildings to buy into, and why fundamentals like absorption rate, sponsor health, and building financials matter more than the view. For domestic buyers trying to make sense of a volatile market, the international cohort offers a useful reference point: the question is not whether to buy, but which building holds its value when it is time to leave, and whether the data supports the decision.