After cooling off from a peak in 2004, the real estate market for luxury residential properties in Manhattan again surged at the end of 2005 -- and that surge has continued into February 2006, according to Stribling & Associates, a New York real estate firm that specializes in the sale and rental of luxury apartments, townhouses, co-ops, condos and lofts.

Kirk Henckels, executive vice president and director of private brokerage at Stribling & Associates, said in a statement, "Surprisingly, the luxury real estate market managed to add yet another record-breaking year to its upward and seemingly unending spiral. The pleasant surprise has been the surge in activity of the $20 million-plus market, which is not dependent upon salary or bonuses."

Stribling released a Manhattan luxury market report today. Among the findings:

The lack of "trophy" quality inventory since last spring's peak resulted in fewer high-end sales in the third and fourth quarters of 2005.

Due to new trophy inventory at the end of 2005, there have been at least five co-operative deals with asking prices at or above $20 million.

Three contracts were signed since mid-December 2005 on trophy townhouses with prices ranging from $20 million to $40 million. These three deals plus the two previously signed $20 million-plus townhouses show that there will be five townhouse sales over $20 million in 2006, already tying those in 2005.

The total sales of $5 million or more cooperatives came close to the $1 billion mark, increasing 19.8 percent to the $980.4 million in 2005 from $818.6 million in 2004.

A total of 31 cooperative sales over $10 million in 2005 compared to 24 comparative sales in 2004.

Stribling reported the $25 million sale of a 9,800-square-foot loft on Prince Street, "demonstrating the growing parody in prices of trophy properties uptown and downtown," the company reported.

Of the 13 cooperatives priced over $10 million and signed by the end of January 2006, four were over $20 million, one of which was over $30 million, compared to the 16 signed by the end of January 2005, which also had four over $20 million.

The volume of townhouse sales increased to 21.7 percent in 2005, totaling $775.6 million, compared to $637.1 million in 2004. Residential townhouse sales over $10 million increased to 22 in 2005 from 16 in 2004. A total of 35.6 percent of all townhouses sold for over $5 million in 2005 were downtown.

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