Manhattan's luxury condos drawing local big spenders

HOW do you offload luxury condos in Manhattan, where there's a glut of offerings and the foreign investors have disappeared? You attract the locals.

Billy Macklowe's Greenwich Village tower, rising at the site of the former Bowlmor Lanes, booked more than US$60 million in contracts last month - including the sale of two duplexes to a single buyer listed for a combined US$23.5 million, the developer said. About 65 per cent of the project's 52 units have found takers, most of whom are native New Yorkers. Many already live in the neighbourhood.

"It is a New York building, for New Yorkers, and the people buying are going to live here," Mr Macklowe, who's building the tower with Goldman Sachs Group Inc, said in an interview.