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Luxury condominiums have penetrated pretty much every ethnic neighborhood in Manhattan. WNYC's Lisa Chow finds one place that appears to be resisting the forces of gentrification.

REPORTER: First, let's talk about a neighborhood that's changed.

GERRINGER: It used to be predominantly a black community in Harlem. We have everybody from investment bankers on down that will move up there.

REPORTER: Andy Gerringer is a managing director at the real estate brokerage firm Douglas Elliman. New services, he says, are attracting new buyers.

GERRINGER: You have movies up there. You have shopping and the more and the more that happens, the more these areas are opening up. I mean the same thing's happening. You know we did it in the Lower East Side is another area that people didn't live in.

REPORTER: And that's what they mean by gentrification. Washington Heights could also be on that list. But what about one of the biggest ethnic neighborhoods in Manhattan, Chinatown? It doesn't appear to have opened up, yet it occupies prime New York real estate. It's close to Soho, Tribeca and Wall Street, and eight subways lines go through it. So why hasn't the housing boom changed Chinatown the way it's changed the rest of Manhattan? To find out, you have to go to a Chinatown authority.

NG: They call me mayor of Chinatown. Even Mr. Bloomberg. He says, Hi, Mr. Mayor.

REPORTER: Eric Ng represents 60 family, regional, and professional associations in Chinatown. It turns out these nonprofit groups own real estate, and they're not likely to give it up.

NG: We don't want to leave Chinatown. This is our root. We have the buildings inside Chinatown. Why do you sell the building and go outside. We don't need the money. We need location.

TAI: We are standing across 94 Mott Street right now. You can see this building right here.

REPORTER: Ng's assistant Gary Tai points to a six-story building, owned by the Chew Lun Family Association. There's a large Chinese restaurant on the ground floor, and several small businesses above. Tai walks down Mott Street and points out several other buildings owned by the associations. They have 50 in all - about a quarter of the buildings in Chinatown's historic core.

TAI: For example the Wong's family association. Everybody whose last name is Wong can join that organization. So let's say my name is John Wong and I'm moving away so I want to sell the building. Can't because the building doesn't belong to John Wong. It belongs to the whole Wong family organization. It belongs to the whole Wong's family.

REPORTER: So these associations are one reason Chinatown's been resistant to gentrification. Robert Weber gives a second reason. Too many people living in one room. He's policy director for a nonprofit group, Asian Americans for Equality. He says his group has visited many buildings in Chinatown and seen cramped, in some cases, illegal housing arrangements. When you've got several people sharing a room, each paying a couple of hundred dollars a month, he says the numbers add up for the landlords.

WEBER: A lot of people are making money by this practice of divvying up property so they have no real interest in selling them right now. They can sit on those properties and take a lot of rent each month and go to the bank and be very happy with that.

REPORTER: And the competition for rooms is intense considering that the number of Chinese-born living in New York grows by more than 4,000 people every year. So here you've got some nonprofit and for-profit landlords, neither with an incentive to sell. That's the supply side. What about the demand side? Shing Wah Yeung is a developer who's worked on several residential projects in Chinatown. He says you can't ignore the neighborhood's stigma.

YEUNG: Chinatown is still not the area to be, I guess, in a lot of people's minds. It still has some negative connotation of being dirty, grimy, smelly.

Yeung brought 61 condos onto the market two years ago, selling at 400-thousand to 1.6 million dollars. More than 90 percent of the buyers, he says, were Chinese-American. So even when new apartments come online, the racial demographics of Chinatown don't change. Jan Lee runs an antique and furniture store out of the same building his grandfather bought in the 1920s. Lee says look around, Chinatown is changing.

LEE: We were the first Chinese family to live in the buildings. My father was born in the building in 1921. Before that it was Italian and Jewish. So it's come full circle, to the point where now, it may go back to being not Chinese anymore.

REPORTER: He says three longtime Chinatown businesses on his block have moved because of high rents. And individual families like his, that own buildings in Chinatown, are starting to sell. The future is uncertain, he says, even when it comes to his own property.

LEE: We lost the patriarch of the whole family was my father. He died about 9 months ago. He was 84. And I think he left in peace knowing it was still going to be in the family and it really depends on the generation after me and what their interest in this neighborhood is going to be.

REPORTER: About six blocks away, just north of Canal Street, a real estate broker is open for business.

CHAPMAN: This is a solid oak floor.

REPORTER: Michael Chapman walks into the kitchen. White brick, cast iron columns and timber beams frame the open space.

CHAPMAN: It's a Valcucine kitchen. Valcucine being an Italian cabinet manufacturer. You have the subzero that's integrated into the cabinetry. You have a millet oven.

REPORTER: This six-story machinery warehouse has been converted into 14 luxury condominiums. The lofts are selling for 1.6 million up to 5 million dollars for the penthouses. Chapman says this type of development will change Chinatown's main commercial street.

CHAPMAN: I think there is going to be more of a higher-end retail because you have a lot of tourists, there's a lot of traffic on Canal Street. I mean hopefully we're going to get some of the major stores like Nike and Adidas.

REPORTER: Eric Ng, Chinatown's so-called mayor, isn't worried. Change, he says, comes in waves.

NG: Twenty-five years ago, I push everyone out. Right now they push everyone in. There's a competition. There's a cycle.

REPORTER: Chinatown's survived the Great Depression, World War I, World War 2 and 9-11. Its biggest test now is the real estate boom. For WNYC, I'm Lisa Chow.