The good news is three months old.

Every quarter the market reports its closings, and every quarter we read them as today’s news. They are not. They are the spring, arriving in the fall.

Manhattan just posted its strongest third quarter for closings since 2022, with a record third quarter median price of $1.25 million. That headline is accurate. It is also mostly a record of deals agreed in April, May and June, when the average 30 year mortgage was 6.42 percent. The latest reading is 7.24 percent. The same reports carry a quieter number that describes the market we are actually in: signed contracts, which fell.

Why this issue is about timing

Issue 01 asked how long you intend to stay. Issue 02 asked what waiting costs. Issue 03 asked what you are buying into. This issue asks something simpler and easier to get wrong: when did the number you are relying on actually happen?

A closing is the end of a deal. A contract is the beginning of one. Between them sit two to three months of mortgage approvals, board packages and attorneys. In a market where rates have moved almost a full point in six months, that gap is the whole story.

Two clients, one calendar.

Both of these are real patterns I am seeing this season. Both people are reading the market carefully. Both are reading the wrong quarter.

The buyer who read the headline

He saw “four year high” and “record median” and concluded that he had to move fast and bid over asking to win anything. Some buyers do need to, because the right apartments are still going quickly. But the record he read about was set by buyers paying close to six and a half percent. He is borrowing at more than seven, against fewer competing contracts than a year ago. He is bidding against a market that has already moved on.

The seller who priced off September

She set her asking price from three comparable sales that closed in September, all near her number. They are real sales, and they are good comps. They are also contracts signed in late spring, by buyers whose monthly payment on the same loan was several hundred dollars lower than her buyer’s will be. Her price is anchored to a buyer who no longer exists in quite the same form. The listing has been live for seven weeks.

What is actually missing

Neither of them misread the data. What was missing was the date underneath it. Closings arrive with a lag built in, and in a quarter when rates rose sharply, the lag turns a backward looking number into a misleading one.

Corcoran counted Manhattan closings up 9 percent from a year earlier. Douglas Elliman counted recorded sales down 6 percent. The firms count differently, and both are being honest. They agree on the number that matters most: contracts, the leading edge of the market, were down.

The exhibit: the closings and the contracts

Here is the third quarter as the city’s largest brokerages reported it, with closings and signed contracts side by side.

Two things stand out. In Manhattan, closings and contracts are now pointing in different directions, and the contracts are the part still moving. In Brooklyn, the pattern runs the other way: closings fell because there was little new development to close, while buyers signed more contracts than in any third quarter since 2022. This city is never one market. The quarterly headline makes it look like one.

A buyer today who wants the same monthly payment as the buyer in the September comp can afford about $120,000 less, roughly 8 percent. So far, prices have not fallen to meet that. The market has adjusted through fewer contracts, not lower prices. That is how an adjustment usually starts.

How I read a market report

Four numbers. As in the earlier issues, the order matters.

• Signed contracts, first. They are the closest thing to a live reading the market offers. I look at the direction and the size of the change, and I read them by borough and price band, because the citywide total hides as much as it shows.
• The gap between closings and contracts. When closings rise and contracts fall, the market is slowing behind a strong headline. When contracts rise and closings fall, it is often strengthening behind a weak one. Brooklyn this quarter is the second case.
• Time to contract. Manhattan apartments that sold went to contract in 90 days on average, two weeks faster than a year ago. Fewer buyers are signing, but the ones who find the right apartment are not waiting. That is a market rewarding well priced listings, not every listing.
• Inventory. Manhattan listings were down 3 percent and Brooklyn’s were up 21 percent. Supply decides who has the leverage once the rate has done its work.

Three questions before you price or bid

• One. When were my comparable sales signed, not when did they close?
• Two. What rate was that buyer paying, and what is mine paying now?
• Three. What are contracts doing this quarter in this borough and price band?

If the answers point the same way as the headline, trust the headline. If they do not, trust the answers.

For buyers

Read the contracts, not the record. A record closing quarter does not mean you face a record number of competing bidders this month. In much of Manhattan you are shopping into fewer signed contracts and a lower payment ceiling for everyone, including the buyers you are competing with. That is room to negotiate on price and terms. Where a listing is genuinely right and well priced, it will still move in weeks. Know which one you are looking at before you bid.

For sellers

Your comps are telling you what spring buyers paid. Your buyer is paying fall rates. If your apartment is unique, the premium for it is real and the reports show it. If it is one of several good choices, price for the buyer who exists today, at today’s payment. The listings that sold fastest this quarter were priced for the market that was signing, not the one that was closing.

What that sounds like in the room

It sounds like me pulling the contract date on every comp before I talk about price. It sounds like telling a buyer that the record he read about does not apply to the apartment in front of him. It sounds like telling a seller that her September comps are real, and that I would still price below them, and showing her why on one page.

The line I am watching

The new pied-à-terre tax. Since July, condominium and co-op units that are not anyone’s primary residence, with a Department of Finance market value of $1 million or more, carry an annual surcharge of 4 to 6.5 percent of that value. Finance Department values sit well below sale prices, so the tax reaches higher value apartments than the $1 million figure suggests. Corcoran already names it as one reason Manhattan contracts slowed. Its effect on the upper end will show up first in contracts signed this winter, and only months later in closings.