Is Wall Street Money Keeping Luxury Deals Flowing?

5 December 2025

When Vickey Barron’s client, a 27-year-old working in finance, heard what his bonus was going to be last year, he went on a “shopping spree.”

“I would imagine it feels like, ‘Oh, I just won the lottery,’” said Barron, a veteran Compass agent. “[They were] fixated on buying. It wasn’t a question, it was: ‘let’s find the right property.’”

They ended up with a Chelsea condo for just under $5 million.

Barron’s client is one of many finance workers in the city with a winning lottery ticket in the form of a big year-end bonus. The city’s biggest firms have turned in some of their best trading years in history, and New York City brokers told The Real Deal that cash flow has inspired a slew of buyers.

Business hawks strategized and spent to prevent Zohran Mamdani’s bid for mayor, but the city’s luxury market hasn’t skipped a beat following his election and the doomsday predictions that came with it.

But the timing makes sense: Wall Street bonuses are expected to bounce back this year after a lull, with one forecast projecting a rise to their highest level in four years.

“We’re working with a lot of finance people right now that are, I think, feeling very bullish,” said Brown Harris Stevens’ Lisa Simonsen.

Bonuses in the securities industry rose 34 percent to a record $47.5 billion in 2024, according to a report from the state comptroller’s office. Trading firms like Jane Street Capital in particular rode booming equities markets to record trading profits last year, with many companies on pace to do the same in 2025.

Employees at these firms, who often pay interns six-figure salaries, can earn millions in bonuses alone. In 2024, Jane Street gave out over $2.4 billion in bonuses, an average of $900,000 per employee.

Barron said she has two more clients who work for Jane Street looking for Downtown Manhattan homes in the $5 million range after renting what “you would rent right out of college” for the last year.

“They could have afforded far more than what they were renting, but I think they honestly were just working so hard that they just needed a bed to sleep in,” she said. “And now, of course, they’re out shopping to buy because it paid off.”

While the first-time buyers splurging on their first apartments have been pumping the $5 million-plus market, industry veterans have been trading some of the city’s trophy properties as well this year.

Earlier this year, a financier was behind a Downtown Manhattan record. Harsh Padia, CEO of trading firm HAP Capital, sold his duplex at the Witkoff Group’s 150 Charles Street for $60 million. The buyer was reportedly from Jane Street Capital, which has its office just minutes away down the West Side Highway.

Compass’ Zeve Salman, who represented the buyer on that deal, said he’s working with at least a dozen other buyers looking for homes over $30 million and only sees prices going up.

“I would almost guarantee you’ll see more records broken before the end of the year, and that is all post-election,” he said. “The numbers that we’re discussing with people, the type of properties that we were discussing — it’s the exact same caliber, and it’s still all local people.”

Luxury sales in the city have been particularly strong in recent months, after a spring market bogged down by economic and geopolitical uncertainty. In November, contracts signed in Manhattan for homes asking at least $4 million rose 51 percent year-over-year, according to a report from Miller Samuel. And in Brooklyn, the borough has seen contract volume crack $100 million in each of the last two months, a rarity for the borough.

“There were not enough buyers actively looking last spring, and it’s been night and day to this fall,” said Compass Kallie Catt, who has put four homes into contract in the last several weeks, including a Dumbo condo asking $5.5 million.

Buyers who have profited from the stock market in the last few years may have another motivation to buy real estate in the city — getting out of the market.

Corcoran’s Ryan Kaplan said many of his clients in finance “feel that the market is objectively frothy.”

“Things are very rosy for these kinds of people, financially speaking,” said Kaplan. “So that’s probably why we’re starting to see them deploying capital.”

Despite the money flowing into the market, Kaplan said buyers — especially the fiscally savvy ones — are still wary about getting a good deal. “There is this sense of opportunism,” he said, where buyers know that inflation is still high, debt is still expensive and the presidential and mayoral elections have ruffled some feathers.

That maneuvering has meant sellers getting realistic with pricing has been just as important for the market this fall, according to Douglas Elliman’s Michelle Griffith. “If buyers wanted to come into the market earlier this year, the sellers weren’t as flexible,” she said.

But desperate buyers trying to fearmonger their way into a discount after the election may still be out of luck, according to Salman.

[“Agents will] come to a $10 million listing and it’ll be like, ‘Well, you know, the election — so he really thinks it’s worth $9 million,’” Salman said.

But, for now at least, “those same properties end up selling close to their asking price,” he added.