A glass-enclosed, 7,400-square-foot penthouse in lower Manhattan sold for $30 million, a 13% discount that shows some of the borough's luxury developers are willing to negotiate price.
The 13-room TriBeCa neighborhood duplex was originally listed for $34.5 million, said Sean Murphy Turner, executive vice president for Stribling Marketing Associates of New York. The penthouse had been under contract since August and closed this month. She declined to name the buyer.
The median price of a luxury apartment in Manhattan, defined as the top 10% of sales, fell 3.9%, to $4.13 million, in the fourth quarter compared with the same period in 2007, according to the appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. Inventory climbed 26%, to 1,730 properties, and sales fell 9.5%. Rising inventory and falling sales preceded a drop in home prices nationwide.
Luxury units in Manhattan stayed on the market an average of 169 days in the fourth quarter of 2008, 52 days longer than it took to sell them in the last three months of 2007.
