May continues to be a record-breaking month for Manhattan real estate, as the sale of a Park Avenue apartment proved to be the most paid for a co-op in city history. The 30-room unit is spread out over two of 740 Park Avenue's floors, one of New York City's oldest, highest-profile residences. Although the childhood home of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was initially listed at $60 million, it was purchased for $52.5 million by investor Howard Marks.

There is perhaps no part of Manhattan that is more coveted than Columbus Circle. Downtown neighborhoods like Tribeca and Soho may have the highest average sales prices in Manhattan, but by any measure Columbus Circle, the small area consisting of a few square blocks on the southwestern corner of Central Park, holds its own against those popular areas. After all, anyplace where a penthouse can sell for $88 million – as a pied a terre, no less – must be doing something right. As we’ve written about previously, the most popular condos for sale in Columbus Circle make it clear that the ultra-lux sales market in Manhattan is as strong as it ever was. It’s hard to draw any other conclusion when a penthouse in one of the best newly constructed buildings Manhattan has ever seen is asking for $110 million, and we’d be willing to bet they’ll get it.

It seems as though the buyers of Manhattan’s real estate market are leaving flashy, over-designed apartments behind, as many are beginning to seek residences that embody subtle elegance. The Citizen, a 29-unit building located at the nexus of Chelsea and the Flatiron District, is a great example of this shift in taste. The newly constructed building, which sits at 124 West 23^rd Street between 6^th and 7^th avenues and stands 16 stories tall, is a place where environmental sustainability and contemporary design are seamlessly combined. Hitting the market within the last month, the Citizen steers clear of the excesses of other luxury condominiums, providing apartment buyers in Manhattan with a space where less really is more.

In a city where it’s already illegal to smoke in restaurants, bars, parks, and beaches, smokers could always retreat to their apartments to light up. Those days may be over. Condo and Co-op boards in Manhattan that want to ban smoking in their buildings may soon have the legal means to do so, because both Mayor Bloomberg and the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY) proposed new policies this week that would facilitate the creation of smoking bans in Manhattan apartment buildings. Many condominium and co-op boards are increasingly considering banning smoking, and not just for health reasons: in the past, boards worried that smoking restrictions would limit the amount of potential buyers, but now the national rate for smokers is roughly 20%. With non-smokers significantly outnumbering smokers, many boards believe that banning smoking in their buildings will actually become a marketing advantage that helps attract potential buyers.

It’s been a long time coming, but the luxury apartments in One Madison Park may finally be put back on the market. Anyone who knows the history of this luxury condo knows that this is no small victory; the legal quagmire that included involuntary bankruptcy, defaulted loans, and ownership changes looked hopeless as recently as a few months ago. But now, a group of creditors including Related Companies., HFZ Capital, and CIM Group won control of One Madison Park last week - a federal court approved their plan to take the glass condominium tower out of bankruptcy. Related Cos. agreed to settle the majority of the outstanding claims (estimated to be in the tens of millions of dollars) a move that will allow them to complete construction at the site. According to the developers, sales on the 55 luxury condominiums in One Madison Park that are unsold could begin by the end of this year.