The Real Deal New York

From the March issue: A little over six months ago, Barak Dunayer made headlines when his eponymous agency snagged the listing for William F. Buckley’s Park Avenue duplex. The asking price was $24.5 million, with more than $10,000 a month in maintenance fees. Now, the four-bedroom apartment is still on the market. These days, Dunayer says just closing a $1 million deal is cause for celebration. “The great majority of the deals we’ve done since October have been in the $300,000 to $700,000 range,” he told The Real Deal. “The luxury market has been pretty frozen.” Indeed, New York City’s luxury market is in even more peril than the overall market. According to numbers compiled by StreetEasy.com, overall Manhattan sales in the fourth quarter of 2008 were down 24 percent from the year before. But the news was even worse for the highest echelon of the market — the top 10 percent of recorded sales — where volume fell 30 percent in the same time period.