Luxury Living! How Manhattan's Topmost Apartments Fared in '07

Luxury apartments drove the Manhattan housing market in the fourth quarter of 2007. Here's some nuggets from the Radar Logic-Prudential Douglas Elliman report:

• The average sale price for the top 10 percent of apartments purchased in the fourth quarter of 2007 was $5.7 million and the median sale price was $4.3 million.
• The average and median prices of luxury apartments increased by 32 percent and 28 percent, respectively.
• The number of luxury co-op and condo sales dropped from 350 in the third quarter to 252 in the fourth quarter, but rose by 3.3 percent annually.
• The number of days a luxury apartment remained on the market decreased from 117 days in the third quarter to 115 days in the fourth, a 22 percent drop from the same period in 2006.
• The willingness of luxury apartment sellers to bargain didn't change much from mid-2006. The discount from the listing price in the top 10 percent of apartments sold dropped from 3.6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2006, to 1.8 percent in the last six months of 2007.
• The number of unsold luxury apartments on the market decreased 34.9 percent from the fourth quarter of 2006 to the fourth quarter of 2007, from 1,362 to 887. The inventory dropped 58 percent from quarter over quarter.