Manhattan luxury homes saw predictably slow activity during the week of Independence Day, according to a weekly report from Olshan Realty.
Buyers signed 18 contracts for homes priced at $4 million or more in the week ending Sunday, one more transaction than in the week leading up to the Fourth of July, said the Monday report.
More:Check Out More News from Manhattan's Luxury Market
"Nothing to party about, but we’ll take it: After all, July 4th blew a hole in the week, as many buyers evacuated the city for fireworks elsewhere," said Donna Olshan, president of Olshan Realty.
But it was a relief for those sellers who did bag a contract last week, as they’d been trying to sell their homes for an average of more than 15 months. The average seller also reduced the listing price a whopping 20% to get the deal done.
In total, $135.86 million in luxury homes went into contract last week, the lowest total volume in more than a month, the report found.
The reported top seller during the holiday week was a perfect example of long sales times and deep price cuts in the current luxury market climate: a condo asking $27.5 million on the 33rd floor of 50 Central Park South. The 4,536-square-foot home was on the market for five years and was once priced as high as $50 million.
The condo has 73 feet of direct views over Central Park, two bedrooms and three-and-a-half bathrooms.
The second most expensive home to find a buyer last week was a 25-wide townhouse asking $12.25 million.
The house needs a lot of TLC if the buyer wants to make it a single-family home, as it was subdivided into six apartments and still has an occupied doctor’s office on the first level and two rent-stabilized tenants in the building.