The Exclusive Listing Myth: Why Manhattan's Biggest deals don't need gatekeepers

Last month, a 26-story office tower in Manhattan's Financial District closed for $105 million. The building had traded nearly a decade earlier for $225 million, after which the sellers poured another $70 million into gut renovations. By any traditional calculation, they were staring at a catastrophic loss nearly $200 million evaporated into the New York skyline.

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But here is what nobody wrote about: the deal didn’t happen through an exclusive listing. There was no glossy offering memorandum, no controlled auction, and no six-month “process.” The building at 101 Greenwich Street never hit a listing platform; it sold because someone reached the right buyer, the one person who looked at a distressed office tower and saw what others didn’t. The buyer, Idan Ofer, partnered with Nathan Berman of Metro Loft, who has converted more than 8 million square feet of office space into residential.

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The deal closed because the right buyer was found, a fact that challenges how the commercial real estate industry has operated for decades.​

The unstated truth about $100+ million transactions is that finding a buyer is not difficult. Manhattan is drowning in capital; sovereign wealth funds maintain permanent teams in Midtown, and family offices move with conviction. In 2023, foreign investors accounted for over 32% of New York City investment activity the highest level since 2019 with Manhattan attracting nearly 20% of all foreign capital flowing into U.S. commercial real estate.

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Access is not the scarce resource. Assets are. So, if finding buyers isn’t the challenge, what is? Finding the right buyer.

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The Cupid Problem - Think about what this actually means. One investor looks at a building and sees a nightmare: deferred maintenance, difficult tenants, a location that doesn’t fit their portfolio, or a capital structure that doesn’t pencil. They will lowball or walk away entirely. Another investor looks at the exact same building and sees gold. They see the bones of a residential conversion, the corner lot that makes an assemblage possible, or the ground lease that fits perfectly into their tax strategy. They see the neighborhood five years from now instead of today. The building didn’t change; the buyer’s vision did.

This is why commercial real estate at the highest level isn’t really about “selling” at all. It’s about matchmaking. Call it the "Cupid problem": your job isn’t to convince someone to love what you’re selling. Your job is to find the person who already loves it.

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The moment you find that match, the market speaks for itself regarding pricing. In Manhattan, at $100+ million and above, there is a beautiful and brutal reality that strips away the noise: nobody steals anything, and nobody overpays. The market speaks, but what the market says depends entirely on who is listening.

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The Gatekeeper Incentive - Now bring this back to exclusive listings. If the whole game is finding the perfect match the one buyer who sees your building the way you need them to see it so what does an exclusive listing actually do? It restricts who gets to look.

Often, an exclusive broker may choose a buyer not because they are the strongest candidate or willing to pay the most, but because the broker can finance the deal internally or plans to resell it within their own network. These incentives can quietly shape the outcome.

This isn’t about running a "cattle call" or blasting every investor on earth with an offering memorandum that is the opposite of what sophisticated sellers need. It is about reach without noise, access without chaos, and discretion without restriction. It is about making sure that when the market speaks, everyone who should hear the question actually hears it.

The exclusive model doesn’t just fail to find the right buyer. It’s structurally designed to prevent finding the right buyer. That’s not a bug for the brokerages running exclusives it’s a feature.

Here is the part nobody in the industry wants to discuss openly: when a brokerage controls a listing exclusively, they control who sees it. They control the narrative, the timeline, and the flow of information. They determine which buyers get a seat at the table and which never know the opportunity exists. Crucially, when that same brokerage brings an internal buyer, they often earn double the compensation. Even witho