The average price paid for Manhattan apartments hit a new high of $1,690,995 in Q1 2008, up 47% compared to the same period one year ago, according to Brown Harris Stevens. The rise was due in large measure to the highest end of the market, including 15 Central Park West and the Plaza, which saw a 318% rise in the number of closings over $10 million, including four recorded closings over $30 million. The median figure also set a new record of $855,000 and was up 13% from Q1 2007.

However, those numbers can be read too simply, in the view of Jim Gricar, EVP and director of sales at Brown Harris Stevens. "In the report, we provide two numbers: with 15 Central Park West and the Plaza factored in and factored out. In fact, neither number, if you think about it, is entirely accurate because if you leave them in, it skews the average. Yet if you take them out, you're pretending that they didn't happen, but they clearly did happen and therefore are a reflection of the market. Instead of blending it or coming up with some methodology that we think is reflective of what actually happened, we let the reader decide."

Do big-ticket items skew numerical averages? "They can, certainly," Gricar says. "But one thing that is pretty clear is that there is activity in the market, although it seems to be dictated almost entirely by the amount of inventory in that category. In that hyper-luxury market, there are more buyers than there are properties and so that's keeping the prices artificially high. The inventory of one- and two-bedroom apartments is more plentiful and the prices are a little softer as a result. Three-, four- and five-bedroom apartments are not plentiful, and in those categories, the prices are being held up. It's the most simple supply-and-demand argument you can imagine, but so often with real estate, it really does boil down to fundamentals."