NYC luxury housing market starting to experience problems

There's nothing like a financial crisis to ruin the New York City luxury housing market:

For a while, even as the rest of the housing market sputtered, the luxury sector had looked strong, wealthy home buyers packing cash were largely unaffected by the mortgage meltdown and foreign buyers, for a time, were still buying. Now…not so much, foreign buyers have lost interest, according to Barron’s, and “big stock-market losses, a sagging economy and massive layoffs in financial services are sorely affecting the liquidity, wealth and confidence of potential buyers of high-end homes.”

Those still in the market for a fancy house can find some huge discounts. ...

Because of the troubles on Wall Street and in the finance sector, the worst-off areas in coming months are likely to be Manhattan and surrounding suburbs...

All told, luxury-home prices in and around Manhattan could drop by as much as 20% to 25% over the next 12 to 15 months...