A year ago, Skyline Tower had zero active resale listings. Today it has 26, more than any other building in Long Island City, and it's become the single largest source of resale inventory in the neighborhood. That fact alone is worth sitting with before anyone tells you the Long Island City condo market held steady in the first half of 2026.
Because on paper, steady is exactly what it looks like. The market-wide price per square foot rose just 3 percent in the first half of the year, and the median didn't move at all. Read only the headline number and you'd assume nothing much happened here. Underneath that flat median, two very different stories are playing out at once, and neither shows up until you look at what's actually listing versus what's actually closing.
If you're comparing a resale unit to a new-construction listing this year, the sale price alone won't tell you which one costs less to own or which one is more likely to close near ask. What explains the gap is a supply story and a construction-timing story, and both are specific to this neighborhood right now.
The flat number is hiding a supply flood
Resale listings more than doubled in the first half of 2026, reaching 155 units, a record 70 percent share of everything listed for sale in Long Island City. That's not ordinary turnover. It's largely owners who bought during the 2019 to 2021 new-development wave now choosing to sell, and Skyline Tower is the clearest example of it: zero active resale listings a year ago, 26 today, more than any other building in the neighborhood.
At the same time, what's actually closing tells a different story than what's listing. Total closings fell 20 percent year over year to 153, though that's still 25 percent above the 15-year average and the fourth-highest half-year total since 2009. Resale condo closings had the largest decline of any category, down 46 percent, though that comparison is against a record high a year earlier. New development held flat at 81 closings and actually grew its share of total sales, from 42 percent to 53 percent.
Put those two facts together and you get a market where resale inventory is piling up while new construction is quietly taking a bigger slice of what's actually selling. That's not what a flat median price per square foot would lead you to expect.
Bigger units are moving, and that's changing what the average measures
Part of why the market-wide number looks so calm is a mix shift. The median unit that sold in the first half of 2026 measured 865 square feet, up from 657 square feet a year earlier. Larger units were closing more often, and sales above $2 million rose 25 percent while closings between $500,000 and $750,000 fell 68 percent. A lot of that upper-end activity was Skyline Tower resales, including the neighborhood's top sale so far this year at $2.72 million.
That tells you something the flat average can't: what's actually trading in the resale market right now skews toward bigger, pricier units from that same 2019 to 2021 cohort, not the full range of what's sitting on the market. If you're shopping at the entry-level price point, you're looking at a lot more competing inventory than the closing data would suggest is actually moving.
The clock nobody puts on the listing sheet
Here's the part that matters most if you're weighing a resale unit from that 2019 to 2021 cohort against something newly built. Many of those boom-era buildings were approved under the 421-a tax exemption program, which stopped accepting new applications in June 2022 and was replaced by a program called 485-x. Buildings that got their 421-a approval before that cutoff keep their original benefit schedule, which typically runs somewhere between 15 and 25 years, with the tax break phasing down gradually in the final years rather than disappearing all at once.
That means a resale unit and a new-construction unit priced identically per square foot today can carry very different total costs five years from now. The resale unit's abatement clock started ticking when the building was completed, several years ago. A unit in a building that broke ground after the 2022 cutoff would fall under 485-x instead, on its own separate schedule.
Not every building from that era carries an abatement at all, and the remaining term varies unit by unit depending on when the certificate was issued. Before you compare two listings on price alone, pull the status yourself. NYC's Department of Finance keeps a public property inquiry tool where you can search any address and see whether an exemption is active and when it's scheduled to end. The building's offering plan, filed with the state, has the full year-by-year phase-out schedule. Any agent representing you should walk you through both before you write an offer, not after.
Here's the first half of 2026 in Long Island City, side by side:
| Metric | Resale Condos | New Development |
|---|---|---|
| Share of active listings | 70% (record high) | remainder |
| Share of closings | fell to roughly 47% | rose to 53% (from 42%) |
| Closings, YoY | down 46% (vs. a record comp year) | flat at 81 |
| Notable driver | Skyline Tower: 26 active listings, up from 0 a year ago | Radiant: about half of remaining new-dev inventory |
The new construction that's left just got scarcer
New-development inventory in Long Island City contracted 22 percent to just 59 units in the first half of 2026, with roughly half of that concentrated in a single project: Radiant, the 117-unit tower at 24-01 Queens Plaza North. Radiant only finished construction and received its temporary certificate of occupancy this summer, which is part of why so much of the neighborhood's remaining new-development supply is sitting in one building right now rather than spread across several.
Meanwhile the projects that are closing are setting records. Vesta LIC, the 115-unit tower on Murray Park in Court Square, closed units at a median of $1.55 million in the first half of the year, roughly a third above the market-wide median. New development's share of total closings rose even as the number of available new-construction units shrank. Fewer choices, more of the market's dollar volume. That's a seller's dynamic, not a buyer's discount.
What this means if you're actually comparing the two
Before you compare a resale listing to a new-construction unit on price per square foot alone, get answers to these:
- When did the resale building complete, and does it carry a 421-a exemption? Check the address directly rather than assuming based on the building's age.
- What is the remaining term on that exemption, and what does the tax bill look like once it phases out completely?
- Does the new-construction unit you're considering carry a 485-x exemption, and if so, what's the schedule, including any affordability or wage terms that could affect the building's finances long term?
- Once you model both units' carrying costs five and ten years out, does today's price gap still favor the one it appears to right now?
None of this shows up in a listing description. It shows up in the offering plan and the DOF exemption record, and it's exactly the kind of due diligence that separates a good price from a good deal.
A couple of questions worth asking before you compare two listings
Does every condo built in Long Island City before 2022 have a 421-a abatement? No. Eligibility depended on when construction commenced and whether the building met affordability requirements for its size and location. Some buildings from that era have no abatement at all, which is why checking the specific address matters more than assuming based on the building's age.
How do I find out when a specific unit's abatement expires? Search the address on NYC's Department of Finance property inquiry tool, which shows active exemptions and their start and end dates, then request the full year-by-year schedule from the offering plan. A competent listing agent should be able to confirm both before you make an offer.
If you're weighing a Long Island City resale against something newly built, I'd rather walk you through the actual math on both than let a flat median price per square foot make the decision for you. Michael Molina works this market building by building, and a free home valuation is a good place to start whether you're buying or thinking about listing.