Last week, we gave you (via PropertyShark's crackerjack research) the Manhattan zip codes with the most $5 million-and-up housing deals in 2008. That list, however, deliberately did not include The Plaza, 15 Central Park West and Time Warner Center.

The above does, and there's a big difference between the two lists: Gone is the dominance of the Upper East Side.

Upper East Side zips claimed four of the top five spots on last week's list. This week, with the three uber-expensive condo towers included, the Upper West Side tops the list. In fact, the number of $5 million deals in zip code 10023, which includes both 15 CPW and Time Warner, jumped from 33 without the duo to 135 with, and propelled 10023 to the top.

Remember when Penthouse 40B at Fifteen Central Park West was such a gloriously shiny token of our breathtaking real estate bubble? A certain foreigner--maybe a London-based investor--signed a contract in 2005 for the 5,276-square-foot, 14-foot-tall, 9.5-room, four-bedroom penthouse, and closed at the end of this April for $21.5 million. He took out a $14.5 million mortgage with JPMorgan Chase that same day, records show, which means it only cost $7 million cash. And within a few weeks the sprawl was on the market with Brown Harris Stevens for $80 million, just about four times the price of the condo.

It was the most expensive residential listing in New York City.  read more »

When the asking price of luxury real estate falls in New York, it makes a very big sound. It's the sound of brokers screaming.

This week alone, a hip couple's downtown townhouse was listed for $13.85 million (down from $18 million and then $15.5 million); a billionaire's loft went from $37,500 per month to $29,000; a casino magnate's $35 million 15 Central Park West spread went to $31.5 million; an old Ron Perelman mansion dove from $40 million to $35 million; and a duplex belonging to a surgeon and a Barnard trustee (who doesn't like talking about her real estate) went from $39.  read more »

And then there was one.

What's a cash-flush corporate titan to do now? Penthouse 42, the second-to-last penthouse currently for sale at 15 Central Park West, has sold for $26.625 million, city records show, to a buyer listed as Martima Holdings LLC. As was the case with the last three penthouse sales we've reported on, the buyer of the final trophy unit in the Robert A.M. Stern-designed building is unknown.

That's the third trophy apartment in the trophiest of new Manhattan buildings to sell in a little more than two weeks.

Yesterday, a deed for a penthouse unit one floor below appeared on city records.  read more »

Another 15 Central Park West penthouse gone, leaving just two to go. A buyer dubbed on city records as Jnolva LLC has paid $10.7 million for penthouse 41B. Penthouse 42 has not been snapped up yet, and a few floors below, another penthouse on the 40th-floor has been on the market for a reported $80 million since early July, $58.5 million more than a buyer listed as Prominence Corp. paid for the four-bedroom condo about three months ago.

On July 22, an unknown buyer listed as 15 Central Park West Real Estate Holdings LLC paid $21.5 million for a 43rd-floor penthouse. LLCs have bought five of the six penthouse units sold in the building so far, but in the two most recent sales the identity of the new occupant has been hidden beneath layers of lawyers.  read more »

Fewer $1 million Manhattan apartments traded in the first half of 2008 than in the first half of 2007. Though the difference wasn’t titanic, it signals another hurrah for a housing market in full adjectival decline.

The total number of closings on $1 million-plus apartments fell from 3,569 in the first half of 2007 to 3,347 during the first half of this year, a 6.22 percent drop. Still, almost one out of every two Manhattan apartments sold in the first half of 2008 traded for at least $1 million. The numbers are based on analysis by research firm StreetEasy.

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We wonder if the staff of 15 Central Park West knows that New York City's swankiest new building will eventually have retail tenants like Best Buy and West Elm. Based on their reaction to a Starbucks cardboard coffee cup, we presume they may be in for a surprise.

Vanity Fair penetrated 15 Central Park West's limestone facade for its September issue, and architecture critic Paul Goldberger had no shortage of praise for the Robert A.M. Stern-designed building--"The striking thing was the extent to which the building attracted New Yorkers who were ready for a change and didn’t want to live in a tower of glass"--and for its developers.  read more »

The Time Warner Center often rightfully gets credit for sparking Columbus Circle’s renaissance and laying the groundwork for at least eight new condo developments in a five-block radius since it opened in 2003. So you can’t help but wonder if developer Related Companies ever gets peeved when the buildings it paved the way for come in and steal its thunder—that means you, 15 Central Park West!

The Zeckendorf-developed, Stern-designed condo appears to have done just that: Sportscaster Bob Costas and wife Jill Sutton have sold their 61st-floor Time Warner condo (and a storage unit) for $8.  read more »

The Plaza and 15 Central Park West better watch out, because a new ultra-luxe condo is coming to town and its developers are already claiming they will have the edge with an emergent, but increasingly lucrative, segment of the residential market: the Russians.

Earlier this week, Lev Leviev's Africa Israel Investments announced that it had contracted Versace to spearhead the interior redesign of the Clock Tower Building and convert the former MetLife headquarters at 5 Madison Avenue into a 55-unit condo.

Versace, of course, ranks high on the list of residential amenities, but we couldn’t help but feel a brief pang of déjà vu.  read more »

Even though the most expensive single residential deal ever documented in New York City is still a $53 million townhouse sale (though that’s unofficially been beaten by combined-unit spreads at the Plaza), and even though Manhattan real estate is slouching toward dreariness, the biggest real estate story of the summer has been potential $100 million sales at 15 Central Park West, where buyers who closed on their new condos just this year are putting the places back on the market at massive markups.

But most brokers, even the ones who are listing the biggest units in the just-finished mega-condo, say nine-digit apartments are a fantasy.  read more »