Amid real estate slump, can this $18 mn penthouse in New York find buyers?

The building will begin sales next week with prices that land squarely in the market's weak zone

The developer Cary Tamarkin bought at the top of the market. His $50 million purchase in 2014 wasn’t a luxury apartment though; it was a former Catholic school at 555 West End Avenue, on New York’s Upper West Side. 

Tamarkin and his partner, CL Investment Group of China, decided to convert the building into 13 luxury condominiums. They later announced that the apartments’ prices would start at $7.9 million, and construction began in late 2015. 

Tamarkin, a trained architect whose company, Tamarkin Co., has developed multiple high-end condominiums in New York over the last 20 years, was not in a cave and