Amazon’s Real Estate Spree Highlights Renewed Confidence in NYC

Amazon has continued muscling into the New York City landscape.

According to The New York Post, Amazon signed a lease three weeks ago for a 330,000-square-foot office at 10 Bryant Park in New York City. This follows the company’s purchase of the iconic Lord & Taylor building, located at 424–434 Fifth Ave., for a whopping $1 billion in 2020.

More recently, on May 2, Amazon completed closing on the nearby 522 Fifth Ave. building for an undisclosed sum.

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This purchase in New York City added over 600,000 square feet of professional space, which real estate experts say is a sign that corporate real estate is improving.

This also comes after the retail giant signed a lease for almost 200,000 square feet of space at 237 Park Ave. in February, according to a separate New York Post report. This was also its “third major expansion in Manhattan since November.”

“The market is back,” CBRE Global Brokerage Chairman Stephen B. Siegel said at the time. “It validates what I’ve always said — never give up on New York City or on the availability of capital here. It’s clear to corporations that they’re going to grow. There’s pent-up demand for premium space and there isn’t a lot of new product in the pipeline.”

Jeff Bezos Just Sold Billions of Dollars in Amazon Stock

Earlier this month, for the second time in less than a year, billionaire Jeff Bezos filed to sell company shares worth about $5 billion.

When Amazon submitted its quarterly 10-Q report to the Securities and Exchange Commission on May 2, it revealed a 10b5-1 trading strategy for Bezos. The plan involves creating a planned sales schedule that is automatically executed when certain stock conditions are met, seeking to ease concerns around insider trading.

The only information disclosed about the trading strategy was the 25 million shares and the date they must be sold: May 29, 2026.

As Amazon negotiates tariff uncertainty in a difficult environment, the expected sale occurs. According to CNBC, the company’s advertising segment is still thriving despite this, growing 19% to $13.9 billion in the first quarter.

The last time Bezos sold this many shares was in July 2024, when he announced that he was liquidating almost $5 billion worth of his company’s equity. The move came after he relocated to Miami, Florida, where his soon-to-be wife, Lauren Sanchez, lives, from Washington state, where the business was founded.