High End Luxury Apartment Inventory in NYC is Shrinking, BB

Sales of Manhattan luxury apartments, defined as the top 10 percent of all condo and co-op transactions by price, jumped 17 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier, according to appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and broker Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate. Of the 311 sales in the category, 25 were priced at $10 million and above. That was the second-highest level since the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., surpassed only by the second quarter of this year, according to Jonathan Miller, president of New York-based Miller Samuel.

MANHATTAN - International buyers seeking stable investments and “resolute” New Yorkers eager for deals at prices still in a post-recession dip have fueled a yearlong increase in sales of homes priced at $5 million and above, Haber said. The surge drove down the supply of Manhattan apartments for sale in that range last month to the lowest level for an October since 2007, according to StreetEasy.com, a property-listings website. There were 832 homes on the market with asking prices of at least $5 million last month, compared with 862 in October 2010, 917 in 2009 and 909 in 2008, StreetEasy data show. In October 2007, near the real estate market’s peak, there were 588 listings. “Overall Manhattan inventory is shrinking,” said Sofia Song, vice president of research at StreetEasy. “In the $5 million and up segment, it is specifically new-development inventory that is shrinking.”
By Katie Spencer, November 20, 2011 Bloomberg Real Estate

Link to article

740 Park Ave Luxury apartment for sale for $60MM: The building is considered so exclusive that last year it saw the publication of its own biography, 740 Park: The Story of the World's Richest Apartment Building, by the New York society writer Michael Gross.  The seller is Courtney Ross, widow of former Time Warner owner Steve Ross.