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.

Judging by the numbers released in a first quarter sales report, the Manhattan sales market is nothing if not reliable. The market exhibited stability on both a quarterly and yearly basis, and one could argue that this consistency is its defining trait. In the context of heightened economic uncertainty caused by S&P’s downgrade of U.S. debt, the debt crisis that gripped the Eurozone, a volatile stock market, a credit crunch, and concerns about the state of Wall Street bonuses, this stability is all the more impressive. The ability of Manhattan luxury apartments to weather harsh economic conditions bodes well for the future because it further cements their reputation as safe investments. Plus, the low-end of the sales market is flourishing, serving as the engine for market activity in the first quarter; it's been strong enough to carry the market through these rough waters.

The New York Times reported a few weeks ago about an art show that doubled as an open house in an apartment building in the Chelsea neighborhood. The art on display was the work of Eve Plumb, the actress who played Jan Brady on “The Brady Bunch” in the early 1970s. The location was Carriage House, a new building on West 24th Street designed by Broad Mill Development Group, which had set up the showing. And the purpose of the event was, as Mrs. Plumb bluntly told the New York Times, to “have a drink, buy some art, get a condo.”

Mayor Bloomberg has always had an unshakable faith in the power of the free market, entrepreneurship, and the nascent tech-industry. Perhaps that’s why he’s doubled the budget of a little known government body during the course of his administration, giving over $500 million in taxpayer dollars annually for capital projects. It's time to get familiar with the New York City Economic Development Corporation, an organization specifically designed to stimulate the economy of New York City, but one that is controversial insofar as it straddles the murky area between the public and private realm, making it powerful and inaccessable at the same time.

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.