Both employing data from ValuExchange, Brown Harris Stevens and Halstead Property reported that the average apartment price in Manhattan was up 36% from Q2 2007 to $1,663,533, while the median price rose 23% year-over-year to $979,000, a new record. Diane Ramirez, president of Halstead, says in a news release that the average price would be up 21% to $1,485,784 if sales at 15 Central Park West and the newly reopened Plaza were taken out of the equation.

Using different sources for its data, the Second Quarter 2008 Prudential Douglas Elliman Manhattan Market Overview puts the average sales price for all Manhattan apartments at $1,669,729, up 25.2% from Q2 '07. For cooperatives, the average sales price is $1,280,201, up 11.2% year over year; for condominiums, it's up 21.8% to $1,267,000. Representing the upper 10% of both condo and co-op sales, the average price for luxury apartments in Q2 '08 is $6,364,000, up 38.4% from the same quarter last year.

At the same time, Prudential Douglas Elliman's report found that the number of sales dropped 21.8% in Q2 '08 to 3,081 units, compared to the 3,939 units sold in Q1 '07. Listing inventory increased 31.2% to 6,869 units, up from 5,237 units in the same quarter last year. Also up was the average number of days each property spent on the market: 135, as against 117 days in '07's first quarter.