New Construction Manhattan has been tracking the overwhelming demand of luxury apartments for ages, and the result of this needy market has made high-end NYC homes exceptionally hard to come by. Prices of luxury apartments have been on a steady increase, and with a relentless demand for these properties from wealthy locals and foreign investors, they are expected to continue rising.

As New Construction Manhattan recently reported, the record-breaking sale of a 6,744 square foot apartment at 15 Central Park West shook up the New York real estate market, as it was sold for $88 million. This sale marked the end of the apartment’s reign as New York City’s priciest condo. And now its co-op counterpart has hit the market, in the form of a newly listed 12,000-square-foot duplex penthouse, situated directly across the park.

If you didn’t know better, you would probably swear that the condos available at the W New York Downtown Tower are already occupied. Designer furniture, wide-screen HDTVs, Warhol Prints, mid-century antiques, animal-skin throw rugs: The luxury condos at the W Tower feature detailed furnishings that make them feel like homes in the fullest sense of the word. The idea of a turnkey apartment is fairly commonplace for luxury rentals, but the W Tower - located at 123 Washington Street a block away from the One World Trade Center construction site in the Financial District - is taking the idea of fully-furnished condos to a whole new level. This innovation is yet another sign of the times; developers need a marketing edge more than ever. The people keeping Manhattan’s sluggish condo sales market afloat are usually either wealthy internationals looking for a pied-a-terre or buyers looking to become one-off landlords by renting their Manhattan properties, and the turnkey condos at W Tower cater specifically to both these groups. So far it seems to be working. After losing buyers in droves after the financial collapse in 2008, this new marketing technique is stimulating sales at W Tower for the first time in years.

Before the ink dries on the contract, we’re going to tell you about the next completed development deal to happen in Manhattan. 71 Laight Street, a luxury Manhattan condo in Tribeca, has just been sold to Taconic Investment Partners for a cool $65 million, or around $600 per square foot. The transaction will officially close in May or June.

Alvaro Arranz, a Manhattan developer, currently owns the property, which is an old warehouse that doubles as a parking garage. He initially bought it in 2007 for $57 million. At first he conceived of converting it into a luxury residential building, but after a construction freeze he decided to sell the property instead. He put the site on the market in 2010.

When determining how much money they can spend on a Manhattan luxury apartment, many buyers of Manhattan real estate tend to take maintenance fees for granted, at least when compared to similar costs like property taxes and mortgage payments. But the changing landscape of Manhattan now demands that potential buyers of condo and co-op apartments become aware of maintenance fees, because they aren’t what they used to be. According to the Council of New York Cooperatives and Condominiums, median maintenance fees for co-ops on the West Side of Manhattan rose 59% from 2000 to 2009, a change indicative of Manhattan as a whole. These changes are directly related to the increased tax rates levied by New York City and their increased assessments of property values; most owners of luxury apartments in Manhattan have seen their maintenance fees increase on a yearly basis due to these factors. These days, maintenance fees for condos and co-ops in Manhattan can range from a couple hundred to thousands of dollars per month, and high maintenance fees often lower property value; apartments with low maintenance fees usually sell for more than comperable apartments with high maintenance fees. Most importantly, all buyers should know that if they want to live in an apartment with low maintenance fees, they should look for a condo rather than a co-op.