Stat of The Day: $10 M. Apartments Keep Moving

The Times' hedonistic front-pager this morning on how the very rich keep on spending, never mind the downturn, mentions this Manhattan housing market tidbit:

Buyers this year have already closed on 71 Manhattan apartments that each cost more than $10 million, compared with 17 apartments in that price range during all of 2007.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago in The Observer's print edition about the resiliency of the luxury housing market here. The average luxury apartment sales price cleared $7.66 million in the first quarter of 2008, according to appraiser Miller Samuel and brokerage Prudential Douglas Elliman.

The Times story also has details on a May 10 party for new condo owners in the Plaza:

It will feature a dozen female string musicians made up to look like statues and clothed in dresses of fresh flowers, like roses and gardenias. There will be caviar and Cognac bars, as well as a buffet designed to visually replicate 17th-century Dutch paintings from the recent Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibit, “The Age of Rembrandt.”