Good luck.

Long Island real estate scion Steven Klar was obviously not having much luck offloading his massive, octagonal condo at CitySpire Center with Douglas Elliman. The much-maligned "trophy" vanished from the market in January, when Mr. Klar  dumped the brokerage—a win for Elliman?—and decided to lick his wounds for a few months and/or get fired up for another try.

At $100 million, more than any home in New York City has ever sold for, the price was widely mocked. Why, people asked, would Mr. Klar think he could best One57's penthouses, which have reportedly entered into contract for more than $90 million, in a late '80s building and a unit that he bought for only $4.5 million in the early '90s (and hasn't renovated since)?

When the unit was taken off the market it seemed like Mr. Klar had finally come to his senses, but never fear, property schadenfreude fiends: Mr. Klar's unit is back! The price is the same—still a risible nine digits, albeit the lowest nine-digit number—but the brokers, Raphael De Niro and Victoria Logvinsky, are gone (and not returning our phone calls).

In their place is... Klar Realty! The penthouse at the mixed-use tower at 150 West 56th Street is now for sale by owner, in what we assume must be the most expensive for-sale-by-owner listing in world history.

"We did a great job with Douglas Elliman," Mr. Klar told The Observer when reached at his office this afternoon. "We were getting calls from other brokers, and I didn't want to deal with it that way."

Asked if he thought he could reach his ask, Mr. Klar responded, "When we finally sell it, we'll know the value." And would he take $50 million for it?

"Absolutely not."

"It could be for sale by the owner's maid," one top New York City broker told The Observer, "that's not the issue. The price and the product are the issue."

With a dated interior—disclaimed by its designer, Juan Pablo Molyneux, who told The Times, "I never thought that this horror would be published, and then everybody would blame me for having done it" (though at least the interior can be fixed, unlike the exterior)—and low ceilings, we'll be impressed if it sells for half its ask.

At $12,500 per square foot, half price—more than $6,000 a foot—would still be incredibly ambitious.

"Owners in love do all kinds of things," one broker said. "Not always the wisest."

More money for the neighboring towers?

It has been, thus far, a year of almost incandescent hopes for the Manhattan luxury market. The $88 million sale at 15 CPW, the $70 million sale at the Ritz Carlton and rising like a beacon to the south, the unfinished One57 tower, with a penthouse in contract for more than $90 million.

Indeed, the market has burned so brightly for the owners of trophy and would-be and could-possibly-be trophy properties that it may even have blinded a few to the realities of the real estate market—while it could be described as magical, it is not magic. Is One57 a rising tide that will lift all boats (yachts?) or an ultra-luxury development that most other buildings breaking the skyline can't compete with in finishes or prices? Or even worse: a view-blocker, shadow-caster and general reminder that places like the Time Warner Center and the Trump International are not as new as they once were?

CitySpire residents, for one, seem to believe that One57's existence gives them carte blanche to ask unheard of prices, not only for the market, but for the building.  From the $100 million triplex that was purchased for just $4.5 million in the early 1990s as raw space to the $9 million three-bedroom that came on the market yesterday—a condo that if sold at the asking price would more than triple the highest price ever paid for a finished unit in the building. It would also command $1,000 a square foot more than anything else at CitySpire ever has.

"It's the new normal! I know that these apartments will go very very high," declared Marie Bianco, the Prudential Douglas Elliman broker with the $9 million listing (she also has a number of other less expensive listing in the building). "This is priced right, you can't find them anywhere. The thing is, One57 just popped up and it's in the same vicinity, so why shouldn't it get these prices?"

One57 didn't block CitySpire's view, she reasoned, in fact, the two buildings basically shared a view. And while the building itself was older and in need of some "patching up," the apartment itself had been "perfectly renovated." In fact, she estimated that the average price per square foot had leapt from around $2,100 to somewhere between $3,000 and $3,500—though the building has yet to see a sale that would bolster such a reality.

Other brokers estimated that modest gains might be seen in other nearby towers, but not without merit. One57 could command such lofty prices because there was nothing like it. Did One57 change things?

"A little bit," said Corcoran broker Lauren Muss, who recently rented a 3-bedroom condo on the 75th floor of the Time Warner Center that had been listed for sale at $50 million. "It's going to help bring prices up, but only where it's deserving."

"One57 is a product of its own," she added, and for $90 million, an apartment would have to be just as nice as the penthouse at One57—which is no easy feat to pull off.

"It has to have those views, unobstructed views, it has to have double-height ceilings, it has to have a brand-new renovation."

Of course, for some buildings, One57 has been only a nuisance. It's a fact of life in New York that, all broker boasts to the contrary, very few views are forever views. Metropolitan Tower, a 78-story office-and-condo combo that sits across the street from One57 at 146 West 57th Street, is not benefiting from Gary Barnett's stellar sales record. Besides having a construction site as a neighbor all these years, its views now look directly out onto Extell's tower. So long, Central Park.

Halstead broker Renee Fishman told us that she'd had a difficult time selling a 50th floor apartment at the tower, even though you could only see the rising tower from one of the rooms. Barely. By pressing your nose against the window and angling your neck.

"People would go right up to the window and crane their neck and look up and say they could see One57."

Buyers are spooked by rising buildings, Ms. Fishman told us, but the fear dissipates once the building nears completion. People can see that many of the tower's apartments still have expansive views (and can confirm that One57 will not obliterate the sun).  She even thought that One57 would help draw those who might have been hesitant about Metropolitan Tower's Midtown location in the past, encouraging "buyers who may have previously dismissed this area to give the neighborhood another look, and this can help boost prices generally in the area."

After all, if 57th Street is good enough for billionaires...

Does it matter where your condo tower was located, then? Did it matter at all?

"One sale doesn't make a market, so I guess you could say one building doesn't make a market," said appraisal guru Jonathan Miller when we asked him about the impact of One57 on condos in and around Columbus Circle and just south of the park. "You do have people that are trying to take advantage of a new high water mark in an area and believe that it transfers to every other unit in the area. You see people test it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't."

But would they get it? And as much as $1,000 a square foot more?

He laughed before answering. "My sense is that it's a plus for the immediate area in the general sense—there's a beautiful new building and you'll see an upgrade or expansion of residential services, street level retail in the small radius of the building. But it's not a redefining, it's not like there's a sea change and you flip a switch and there's a new market."

kvelsey@observer.com

Mr. Lorber, giving a tour of the apartment to CNN is asked if the apartment's views—as amazing as they are—are really going to get $100 million.

"Pricing apartments today, it's not a science, you know. If this is what the owner wants for the apartment, it will either sell, or it won't sell," Mr. Lorber responds.

Apparently, he does not feel, as Mr. Klar told the The Times that “Art is what people are willing to pay for, and an apartment like this is like a piece of art."

Mr. Lorber even seems lukewarm when asked if there is interest in the apartment.

Mr. Lorber looks downright glum to be stuck with the task of showing the apartment. (We guess the press-shy Raphael De Niro, did not feel like making an appearance?) At one point he half-heartedly points out the view from the kitchen sink, which is about as animated as he gets.

The actual tour of the interior is somewhat limited, but we do learn that the owner of the penthouse controls when the CitySpire dome is lit. Maybe Mr. Klar should have used that as the selling point, rather than the art argument?

More, more, more!

So many of 15 Central Park West's residents have flipped their apartments for such massive sums that it sometimes seems like the whole building is cheating at tiddlywinks with the New York real estate market. Especially after the $88 million sale of Sandy Weill's apartment, residents might be forgiven when they list their apartments for prices that seem somewhat deluded. Still, Leroy Schecter's bid to make $40 million for tearing down a wall seems straight-up delusional.

The octogenarian steel magnate is aiming to break sales records and pocket tens of millions of dollars by conjoining two 35th-floor apartments that he paid a total of $18.9 million for, The Wall Street Journal reports. The asking price? $95 million.

If you think that's audacious, consider, also, that Mr. Schecter's apartment is 20 percent smaller than Mr. Weill's and that he listed the same two apartments—unconnected—for $55 million in 2010. Mr. Schecter told The Journal that he walked away from a $48 million offer for the duo back then, apparently feeling that two and a half times what he paid for the units was simply not enough.

Are there really buyers out there who hate the idea of undertaking (or more accurately, supervising) a renovation so much that they're willing to pay a premium of $40 million to have someone else do it for them? Although combined apartments are traditionally worth more than two separate apartments—a phenomenon appraisal guru Jonathan Miller refers to as the 1+1 = 2.5 principle—a $95 million ask far exceeds that rule.

But Mr. Schecter tells The Journal that he is not worried.

"Nobody knows what the right price is," he said. "If you had $10 billion and you are trying to put in a good place, you aren't going to put it in a bank, you are going to try to buy good real estate with it."

While Dmitri Ryboloblev's $88 million purchase has been an inspiration to so many of the city's most avaricious property owners (ahem, CitySpire) it's far from clear that the sale has ushered in a new era of astronomically high gets so much as an era of astronomically high asks. After all, rumors abound that Mr. Ryboloblev's cavalier way with a checkbook may have had more to do with keeping money from his soon-to-be ex-wife than anything else. The realities of the fertilizer king's divorce notwithstanding, the one-off nature of his big, big buy would seem to be borne out by the fact that the other trophy sales during the last six months have been in the $50 million-to-$70 million range.

But nothing wrong with a little ambition, right? Apparently, Emily Beare, Mr. Schecter's broker at CORE, didn't see any reason to dissuade him from a $95 million ask. If the place doesn't sell, he can always try to set rental records (Mr. Schecter once collected $70,000 a month in rent from the two units—leased to A-Rod and Henry Silverman, the founder of Cendant Corp).

And even as Mr. Schecter licks his lips at the prospect of making a $76 million profit, he's always thinking of the little guy. A least a little bit. He tells The Journal that a portion of the proceeds from the sale will go toward his charitable foundation, which is planning to help people living in poverty in the New York area. By contrast, Sandy Weill claims (!) to have given all the money from his place to charity. What noblesse oblige!

kvelsey@observer.com

The octagonal condo on the 73rd, 74th and 75th floors of the mixed-use midtown tower at 150 West 56th Street is certainly "one-of-a-kind," as the Prudential Douglas Elliman listing boasts, but the question remains whether it can best the prices claimed by the premiere units in newer, lovelier buildings. The listing was first reported by The New York Times.

At 12,500 per square foot, the condo is only slightly less expensive than the Weill penthouse (which came in at just over $13,000 per square foot).

"In the the last year, the rules have changed," said real estate appraisal guru Jonathan Miller when we reached him on the phone. "I'm not speaking of this specific apartment, but the idea of cracking the $100 million threshold is now tangible."

And while it's an unusual property, it lacks the polish, the prestige and building amenities of more recently built and renovated buildings like 15 Central Park West, the Plaza, the Ritz-Carlton or the Time Warner Center. Also, the CitySpire penthouse kind of looks like a villain's lair in an early 90s movie.

Still, Mr. Klar, president of the Klar Organization, is hopeful. “Art is what people are willing to pay for, and an apartment like this is like a piece of art,” Mr. Klar told The Times.

The six-bedroom, nine-bath home occupies the top three floors of the building, which tops out at 814 feet. Terraces—3,000-square-feet of them—wrap around the exterior of the apartment. They are said to be the highest in the city, but with enough width for only one person to walk on, they are not for the faint of heart or those with a fear of falling.

Mr. Klar bought the raw space used to craft the apartment for a mere $4.5 million back in 1993, according to The Times, and spent an equivalent amount designing the pad. Chilean-born interior designer Juan Pablo Molyneux spent the months designing a classical-style space with super-high end finishes—a look that did not, unfortunately, age as well as the Greek and Roman structures that it took its inspiration from.

The condo, listed with brokers Raphael DeNiro and Victoria Logvinsky, also comes with a guest suite on the 72nd floor, along with a "wine closet" that can store up to 1,000 bottles and a private internal elevator, in addition to the external elevator that services the building. (There's a mahogany staircase as well).

Mr. Klar told The Times that while he watched the Time Warner Center and 15 Central Park West rise from his window, he was not so impressed with their offerings.

“I am looking at that and I am saying, ‘They cannot go outside on the terrace and see the city of New York the way I do.'"

Any other Russian billionaires out there looking to buy an apartment for their daughter?

kvelsey@observer.com