Million-dollar Manhattan homes

Setting new records for the second year running, the median price of Manhattan apartments reached $1.1 million (1 million euros) in the first 11 months of 2015.

The data published on Wednesday by the real estate group "City Realty" showed an 11-percent increase on last year and a climb of 60 percent in a decade.

The mean price, commonly called the average, paid for an apartment in the prime area of New York this year was even higher, at $1.9 million. Total sales of residential property in Manhattan are predicted to reach $24 billion in 2015.

"The Year-end Manhattan Market" report distinguishes between condominium apartments, often within a complex - with facilities such as a gym, pool and security - and a co-op, where instead of buying the building, you buy shares in the corporation that owns the whole building.

The property group estimates that 12,700 apartments will be sold in 2015 at an average price of $2.6 million for a condo and $1.4 million for a co-op. But eight years after the financial crisis, the figure still falls short of the roughly 17,000 units sold in 2007, a peak year for sales.

Analysts say prices are rising, driven mostly by foreign buyers, despite a small fall in the number of units sold compared to last year, and waning demand for more expensive properties in the $10 million price range.

Instead, buyers have shown an increasing interest in new build properties, analysts said, where sales are predicted to be 60 percent higher than 2014, although sales prices are lower than last year.

The costliest of those new builds is the skyscraper "One57," Manhattan's seventh-tallest skyscraper nicknamed "The Billionaires' Building." Earlier this year, one mystery buyer bought a duplex on the 89th and 90th floors for $91.5 million.

Culmulatively, the 26 units at "One57" sold so far in 2015, have totaled $21.7 million.

Last month, the Financial Times reported that the median price for a home in Manhattan had reached $998,000.

Home to around 1.6 million residents, Manhattan is the most populous of New York's five boroughs, with a population density of more than 70,000 per square mile (around 27,000 per square kilometer).