$27M Condo Sale Helps Manhattan Luxury Market Set Record

It’s only September, but Manhattan’s luxury real estate market has already set an all-time record.

Based on the combined asking prices, buyers have signed contracts to purchase $11.4 billion worth of luxury homes in the borough so far this year, according to Olshan Realty’s weekly contract report, which tracks homes asking $4 million or more in Manhattan. The year-to-date total surpasses the report’s annual record of $11.3 billion, set in 2014.

“It’s fantastic. I think nobody would have believed it,” said Donna Olshan, the report’s author. “It wasn’t all that long ago that we were all stuck in our homes and things didn’t look so rosy.”

Olshan noted that when foreign buyers are able to return to the city in November the luxury market will likely get another bump in activity.

“You really can never count New York out,” she said.

The most expensive contract signed last week was for a 4,183-square-foot condo facing Central Park at 111 West 57th Street asking $27 million.

The second priciest was a penthouse in Tribeca last asking $17.8 million. The 4,222-square-foot duplex at 408 Greenwich Street has four bedrooms, a 40-foot great room and 36 arched windows on all sides. The upper level consists of a media room and 1,500-square-foot landscaped terrace. The owner paid just under $10.6 million for the condo in 2008 and first listed the home for $19 million in April.

The median asking price last week was $6 million, with an average of 680 days on the market. The average discount from the original ask to the last ask was 6 percent, up slightly from the week before but still well below earlier this year, when concessions were most often in the low double digits.

Of the 27 contracts linked last week, 20 were for condos, three for co-ops and four for townhouses.