Nearly seven in ten Manhattan purchases closed this past quarter without a mortgage — a record share of all-cash deals. The Hamptons runs heavier still. And even though mortgage rates have eased into the low sixes, that easing barely registers for the buyers now setting the pace, because they aren’t borrowing at all. If you’re financing your purchase this year, the most useful thing to understand is that you are often competing against people for whom the interest rate is beside the point.

Manhattan: A Record Share of Cash, and a Widening Split

In the first quarter of 2026, all-cash purchases reached 69.1 percent of Manhattan sales — the highest share on record, according to Douglas Elliman and Miller Samuel. The borough’s combined median rose 5.2 percent year over year to $1.225 million, its fifth straight quarterly gain, while active inventory fell to roughly 6,000 units, a five-year low for a first quarter, and the typical home went to contract in about 110 days, the fastest first-quarter pace since 2018.

But Manhattan is not moving as one market. The gap between the condo median, around $1.75 million, and the co-op median, around $850,000, is among the widest in recent memory. Condos, led by the luxury tier above $4 million, are pulling pricing upward; co-ops are flat to soft. For a financed buyer, that divergence is not trivia. It is a map of where the competition is thickest and where it is not.

Brooklyn: Supply Is Loosening Where It Counts

Brooklyn’s borough-wide median held up — about $850,000, up roughly 4 percent year over year — but the more telling number is supply. The borough ended the first quarter at 3.8 months of inventory, up from 3.1 a year earlier, the fourth straight quarter of rising supply, with active listings running about 14 percent above the prior spring.

The largest gains were in co-op buildings, where rising carrying costs and board-approval timelines have stretched out sales, and in mid-tier condos along the Williamsburg–Greenpoint–Gowanus corridor. Translated: in exactly the segments where cash buyers are least dominant, a patient, well-advised buyer using a mortgage now has more to choose from, and more room to negotiate, than a year ago. The well-priced entry-level home still moves quickly. The rest is increasingly open.

The Hamptons: Where Cash Is the Default

On the East End, the cash dynamic is not a trend — it is the baseline. The market set price records through late 2025 and into 2026 on the back of strong Wall Street compensation and tech liquidity, and the buyers driving it are, in Douglas Elliman’s own characterization, largely cash-heavy and far less leveraged than in past cycles. At the top of the market, the substantial majority of deals close in cash.

That has two consequences for anyone financing a Hamptons purchase. Inventory is structurally tight, especially for turnkey homes south of the highway, so competition for the best properties is fierce and often all-cash. But rate movements — the 30-year fixed eased to about 6.23 percent in late April, down from 6.81 percent a year earlier — matter almost entirely in the financed segment, which is precisely where a financed buyer is competing. Knowing which sellers will weigh a strong financed offer seriously, and how to present one, is most of the battle.

What a Cash-Driven Market Means for You

A record cash share changes where your leverage lives. Against an all-cash offer, a financed buyer rarely wins on certainty alone, so the edge has to come from elsewhere: a cleaner contract, a credible and fast financing path, a realistic read on which sellers actually value those things, and a willingness to focus where cash buyers aren’t concentrated. The same spring data that looks intimidating in the headline — record cash, record prices — also shows the openings: softening co-ops, widening Brooklyn supply, the segments the wealthy aren’t crowding. The published median tells you none of this. You have to read the market by segment, and you have to know how an offer is actually won.

How BRN Reads a Market Like This

This is the work a buyer’s-only firm is built for. BRN represents buyers, and only buyers — we never take both sides of the same transaction — so our read on where a financed offer can win, and which segments have room, is never quietly shaped by a listing we are also trying to sell. We spend our time on the part most buyers can’t see from a listing page: how to structure an offer that reads as strong without overpaying, and where the competition thins out.

It is also why we return up to 1.5 percent of the purchase price to our clients at closing. For a buyer who is financing, and stretching, that capital returned is real money back at the close — and it is simply what becomes possible when a firm is organized entirely around the buyer’s side. The return is the proof of the model, not the pitch.

If you are buying in Manhattan, Brooklyn, or the Hamptons this year and financing your purchase, the question worth asking is not where rates go next. It is how to compete, intelligently, in a market where many of the people beside you aren’t borrowing at all.

Estimate your return, or talk with us about a purchase across Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Hamptons, at brnpartners.com.

Conditions vary by neighborhood, property type, and week. This is commentary, not a forecast.