What would you pay for a Park Avenue home originally designed by Sister Parish and Albert Hadley in the late 1960s for Brook Astor? Believe it or not, you still have to pay through the nose and cough up many millions for such a primo property, but it’s going down, down, down.

Originally listed at $46 million (well, prices are a bit higher in NYC), the Huffington Post reports the 14-room property was slashed 37% to $29 million. Hey, at that price it’s being called a “fire sale!”

On the market since May 2008, it swings through the entire 16th and part of the 15th floors of 788 Park Avenue. It features five bedrooms and four-and-a-half baths, six terraces, five fireplaces and ample views of Park Avenue and Central Park. Are you sold yet?

The so-called slashing is all part of the real estate wake-up call during a recession that makes us question such obscene prices – for an apartment, no less. When the market was flourishing, those with the liquidity didn’t flinch about the New York City real estate market, but rather, flexed their muscles by showing they could get in there and compete. Now it’s time to correct all that excess.

Had consumers refused to pay the soaring prices in the first place, they could have altered the market while directing their wealth elsewhere, perhaps investing in alternative fuels, electric cars or developing fair trade companies. Or how ’bout some text books for public schools?

According to HuffPo, other luxury residences are dipping down to the price level of insurance executive bonuses. A penthouse on the 40th floor of 15 Central Park West is down 40% from $80 million to around $47 million. An apartment in the newly renovated Plaza is down $38 million from $55 million. And a 14-room property in the Dakota (where John Lennon once lived) is now just $19.5 million, down 19% from $24 million in June.

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