It’s time for the kitchen supply stores to move aside. These longtime denizens of the Bowery south of Houston Street have reminded New Yorkers why the famed boulevard got its reputation in the first place, but their days there may be numbered. The Bowery is distancing itself from its past with every passing day. New retail boutiques, high-end restaurants, and hotels are opening up, and luxury apartment buildings are on the way too. And that’s not to mention the New Museum and a Whole Foods. In other words, all the telltale signs of gentrification have surfaced, which means the Bowery will finally join the rest of downtown Manhattan’s real estate boom. The few luxury apartments for sale on the Bowery have already generated a ton of attention, and the ones that have sold so far have done so for prices comparable to trendy Manhattan neighborhoods like SoHo and Tribeca.

The Flatiron District in Midtown south is home to some of Manhattan’s most prolific commercial and residential buildings. From the famed Flatiron Building at 175 Fifth Avenue, to One Madison Park at 22 East 23rd Street, the Flatiron District is anything but shy when it comes to generating buzz in . What was once the center of New York City’s industrial community, the Flatiron and Garment District were discarded by many New Yorkers as inhospitable for the longest time. Nowadays, the strip of Midtown south from the Avenue of the Americas to Park Avenue South, between 14th and 23rd Streets are attracting an impressive wave of old-world residential conversions and new Manhattan construction.

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.

Buyers and sellers take note: the Manhattan sales market is traveling in two different directions at once. According to a new market report, buyers signed 1,213 new contracts forManhattan luxury apartments in March, the highest volume of new deal activity forluxury apartments in Manhattan since the recession. It’s also a 15.7% increase in new deal volume from March of 2011 (and a 39% increase from February 2012). Simultaneously, the trend of declining supply for new apartments for sale in Manhattan continued. Combine this with an unprecedented pace of demand, and it becomes clear that today’s buyers of Manhattan apartments are quick to recognize a deal when they see one, and, moreover, they’re quick to sign a contract for a property.

The boom years were all about big names, high-end amenities, and niche details, features that attracted buyers of Manhattan luxury condos by the boatload. It turns out that many of the design features that characterized the new construction frenzy haven’t aged well. Unforeseen drawbacks of many of these high end fixtures and finishes have made it all too obvious to many of those buyers that the things that made theirManhattan luxury apartments so attractive were more flash than substance. To make matters worse, the rush to cash in on the high demand of the boom years led many developers to cut corners, which is all the more reason to tread carefully when purchasinga new condo in Manhattan.

Manhattan is home to some of the best private and charter schools in the United States. The quality of some of the city’s learning institutions is one of the things that makes New York City so desirable for residents seeking luxury condos for sale. City residents routinely site the quality of nearby schools when explaining why they made the decision to live in the Manhattan neighborhood they moved to. With such a reputation for educational prestige, its no wonder that educators and developers would want to build newer and even better flagship schools in the city. And with that information in tow, we present to you Avenues School, a K-12 institution in West Chelsea that promises to deliver an education experience completely unique to our world.

Add Northern Tribeca to the list of Manhattan micro-neighborhoods that have gone from under-the-radar to next-big-thing. This section of Tribeca stayed underdevelped for years, but no longer: developers are responding to high demand by building numerous luxury apartment buildings in Northern Tribeca. It was only a matter of time before the westernmost section of Canal Street became the next hot section of Manhattan, and now . Pioneering Manhattanites are paying top dollar to live in this enclave, partly because it has that up-and-coming cachet that gives buyers of Manhattan luxury apartments the feeling that they’re living in the “It” neighborhood, and partly because the luxury apartments for sale in Northern Tribeca cater to current tastes. They're large, converted industrial spaces, exactly the kind of Manhattan properties that buyers of luxury apartments in Manhattan love.

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.”

For buyers of Manhattan luxury apartments, there are many ways to get leverage when it comes time to make an offer for a condo. Knowing the tricks of the trade is essential, because there are numerous ways to tell if a price is negotiable, but if you don’t know the subtleties of the Manhattan condo listings and real estate market, you may miss out on saving money. We want buyers to know the basics when it comes to knowing if a price is negotiable, plus we want them to know how to behave at open houses so that they don’t hurt themselves once it comes time to make a deal. Luxury real estate in Manhattan is scarce these days and the competition is tough, so even the slightest edge matters. Here’s how to make it happen.