THESE are nerve-racking times for brokers. Although prices are higher this year than last, the average sales price for luxury Manhattan apartments slipped 17 percent, to $6.4 million, from the first quarter of the year to the second, according to Prudential Douglas Elliman. Though many brokers and developers insist they feel no serious qualms yet — they are counting on the weak dollar to keep attracting foreign buyers — some are unveiling new stratagems for luring higher-end clients and the brokers who know them.

Tours, art exhibits, fashion shows, book signings and children’s’ fairs are all being experimented with.

Not every pitch is touched with genius. Last Tuesday, CityRealty.com sponsored a bus tour for two dozen brokers that included stops at three new developments.

The I-can’t-believe-this moment of this rambling and eclectic lurch around the Upper East Side came at the Georgica, on East 86th Street, when the sales manager, a former Broadway hoofer, began singing:

Start spreadin’ the news,

We’re buyin’ today

I want to be a part of it — the Georgica!

Some of the brokers, famished after a three-plus-hour tour, were too busy wolfing down the shrimp to applaud. Few even heard enough of the sales pitch to wonder whether it was really true that the kitchen counter they were jostling for position at was made of Calcutta Gold marble.

A few real estate professionals sneer at the whole notion of such special events. Michele Kleier, president of Gumley Haft Kleier, is cynical about trying too hard to catch the eye of the very wealthy. “It’s wasting their time,” she said. “Nobody who’s spending $13 million on an apartment cares about your free vacation to Disney World. Oscar parties? Chocolate tastings with five different chocolatiers? Who’s going to go out of their way to go to that? Those kinds of buyers will think, ‘If you need a gimmick to get me in, there’s something wrong with this apartment.’ ”

She learned the hard way, she said, when she staged a party for the Park Avenue holiday tree lighting ceremony. The setting was 603 Park, a red-brick Georgian mansion that she had listed at $30 million.

“I had 500 people come through,” she said. “I didn’t get one showing out of it.”

A truly one-of-a-kind event might work, she conceded: a fashion show by Oscar de la Renta, say, or a book signing by Candace Bushnell. But what are the chances of that?

“And what are you going to do, give away a Rolls-Royce?” she added. “The people you’re interested in can buy their own Rolls.”

Hall F. Willkie, president of Brown Harris Stevens, essentially agreed, saying that slow markets called more for price cuts than showmanship. “I’ve never been to an event that sold a property,” he said. “If it’s overpriced, an event is not going to sell it.”

There are also practical obstacles. As an example, he pointed out that the best prewar apartments were often in co-op buildings that forbid open houses.

But Mr. Willkie has not ruled out special events altogether. In a new development, his firm tried an exhibit of expensive jewelry, with a diamond expert on hand to chat. And recently, Brown Harris joined with Christie’s, with which it is affiliated, to hold the preview for an auction of modern South Asian art at 15 Union Square West, the 1870 former Tiffany’s store that developers have stripped back to its original cast iron, covered with glass and topped with penthouses.

“We got a tremendous turnout of a very affluent and sophisticated clientele,” said Shlomi Reuveni, the broker handling the building. That has not yet led to any offers, he conceded, but brokers told him they had a better feel for the condominiums “after seeing how they look with a 100-person cocktail party and an $800,000 work of art on the wall.”

Older condo buildings are also allowing experiments.

During fall Fashion Week, a huge loft in — appropriately enough — the former headquarters of the American Thread Company at 260 West Broadway was turned into a runway for Catherine Fulmer’s designs.

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DONALD G. MCNEIL JR

Source: New york Times – U.S.A.