This is the first in a three-part series today covering the Manhattan housing market since autumn 2007.

Manhattan condo sales dropped 22.6 percent annually in the third quarter of 2008, according to a new report from appraisal firm Miller Samuel and brokerage giant Prudential Douglas Elliman. At the same time, the 12 months from September 2007 to now, the median sales price, the average sales price and the average sales price per square foot for a Manhattan condo increased.

With lower downpayments and no co-op board process, condos are the gateway buy for many New York homeowners; and therefore a solid barometer of where the borough's housing market has been and where it may be going in tougher economic times.  read more »

By this time Friday morning, the blogosphere and the dailies will be rat-a-tat-tat-tat abuzz with what's happening or not in the Manhattan housing market. The Corcoran Group and PropertyShark.com, Prudential Douglas Elliman and Miller Samuel, StreetEasy.com, Halstead Property and Brown Harris Stevens all plan to spill their third-quarter findings into the public sphere.

What to watch for:  read more »

"i can't imagine why anyone, even italians, would want to live in there. isn't the whole point of living in soho to live in unique, stylized apartments and building. it's buildings like this that are making tribeca feel like 94 and 1st avenue, i hope soho avoids this." ["Inside the Gwathmey Seigel-Designed Soho Mews"]

Former Viacom chief executive Tom Freston has apparently taken his townhouse at 57 East 66th Street off the market, according to the Wall Street Journal. He had listed the former Andy Warhol home in the spring for $38.5 million, only to chop that asking price to $35 million.

Mr. Freston, according to a 2000 Observer article, bought the neoclassical townhouse for $6.5 million, moving there from a Tribeca penthouse after about $100,000 worth of renovations.

Warhol lived in the townhouse from 1974 (after paying $310,000 for it!) until his death in 1987.

Hot off the Associated Press wire:

The Commerce Department said Thursday that new homes sales fell by 11.5 percent in August to a seasonally adjusted annual sales rate of 460,000 units, the slowest sales pace since January 1991.

It was a much bigger sales decline than the small 1 percent drop that economists had been expecting. The average price of a new home sold in August dropped by a record amount of 11.8 percent to $263,900, compared to the July average of $299,100. The median price was also down, falling 5.5 percent to $221,900.

In more flush times, Mayor Bloomberg took two separate high-profile steps related to property taxes in the city: he lowered the tax rate by 7 percent, and he gave homeowners citywide a $400 rebate.

Now with the economic storm clouds rolling in, Mr. Bloomberg has repeatedly suggested in the past week that he might eliminate that 7 percent cut, bringing in another $600 million or so in revenue to the city.

As for the $400 rebate, which is viewed by critics as an act that emphasized buying political goodwill more than sound policy, the mayor apparently seems reticent to remove it.  read more »

"just bought in midwood. glad to see that midwood didn't appear on this list at all. it can only be a secret for so long i guess. takes me 35 minutes to union square." ["Where the Bobos Now Buy in Brooklyn"]

More bad news today, this time from the Department of Commerce. New home construction is way down this year, falling well short of last year's numbers and, more troubling, way behind a recently revised annual projection. Economist Patrick Newport was quoted in a Bloomberg News article saying, "the home-construction industry is still in a deep recession and will remain there probably for the rest of the year."

Housing construction dropped 6.2 percent last month and the projected annual rate of 895,00 is the lowest number since January 1991. The statistics failed to meet the modest projections of economists, who earlier this summer predicted the annual rate would be in the mid-900,000's. The uncertainty may reflect even more difficult times ahead, bad news for people in California and Florida who've been dealing with the depressed market for some time.

"A 'slight dip'?? You have GOT to be kidding! The last time the Manhattan real estate bubble deflated (1989-93), prices fell by about 30% on average. The main difference now is that there is a LOT more new construction in the pipeline than there was then. Also, condos account for a much larger share of the market now than then--and it's MUCH easier to get a questionable loan for a condo than for a co-op. Be careful what you wish for. Keep in mind that prices have roughly doubled in the past 5 years, so even with a 40% drop, they'd still be up about 20% from there. And once prices start falling it will be the foreign buyers (speculators) that rush for the exits FIRST. Just look what happened in Florida." ["Panic Is Fun! First Bear Goes, Then Lehman, Then Condo Market?"]

The headlines today (for example: "There Will Be Blood"), are enough to make New York real estate obsessives, who are mostly anxious types anyway, go crazy.

This morning, my colleague Tom Acitelli listed six ways today's Wall Street turmoil will affect real estate (and he listed apartment prices at the top. But Crain's just went a few steps further by chiming in with an article whose subhead says: "The latest crisis on Wall Street could deal a severe blow to apartment prices in Manhattan."

"The extent of this problem is mind-boggling," one hilariously oft-quoted appraiser says in the article. "The ’09 market, and possibly 2010, are going to be characterized by lower volume and some weakness in price levels.  read more »