In 1626 Peter Minuit, director general of the Manhattan Colony, purchased Manhattan Island from the American Indians for the legendary price of 60 guilders. Today, 378 years later, the price of land and ancillary development rights in Manhattan and the other four boroughs has reached record heights.

Last week, Jerry Speyer of Tishman Speyer Properties appeared at the Real Share New York and said “happy days are here again.” Howard Rubenstein of Rubenstein Associates agreed, saying, “There are no bad neighborhoods in New York.” Today, there are more than 30 new residential areas where people are flocking to live. It appears that investors from around the world concur with these gentlemen as they seek to acquire nearly any piece of land on which they can build residential housing. This is evident when you consider recent sales of every type of land, with prices ranging from a low of $30 a buildable foot to as much as $400. Sites include vacant parcels, parking garages, gas stations, movie theaters, warehouses, four story walk-ups, as well as office buildings.

The highest price of a foot of developable land for a large-scale residential or commercial development was recorded this summer. A partnership of William Lie Zeckendorf and his brother Arthur W. Zeckendorf, the Whitehall Fund, a proprietary investment fund managed by Goldman Sachs, and Caryle M.G. Limited closed on the acquisition of the 18-story, 365-room Mayflower on the Park and the large vacant lot adjacent to it on Broadway off 62nd Street. The partnership paid $401 million, or about $690 a buildable foot. The partnership is planning to demolish the hotel and construct a residential condominium.

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Demolition has been completed by the new owners of the two-story retail site that formerly housed The Wiz electronics store at 212 East 57th St. Last week, the developer, Broadway Management, placed a sign in front of the site advertising the planned “Sutton 57,” a residential tower with 38 condominium units. Earlier this year, it purchased the site for $14.2 million, or $251 a developable square foot. The developer also bought the additional 25,230 square feet of transferable development rights from the adjacent apartment house at 209 East 56th St. The estimated cost of the development rights is approximately $2.5 mil lion. To increase the size of the development, the developer also bought rights available under certain zoning provisions known as “inclusionary zoning.”

Directly across the street from this development is 207 East 57th St., the site of the former Sutton movie theater. Last month, Clarrett Capital closed on the acquisition of the building itself, the air rights above the Wendy’s restaurant and the Liberty Travel on the corner of 57th Street, and the inclusionary zoning. The total cost was about $22.3 million, or $154 a buildable foot.

Restaurant reviewers did not approve of the addition of the famed Market Diner restaurant, which never made the Zagat survey. This spring, Joseph Moinian paid $5.9 million for the site of the former diner at 572-578 11th Avenue, at the corner of West 43rd Street. Current zoning allows the new owner to develop a residential rental or condominium tower. The cost for each buildable foot was $118.

More than 100 bidders wanted to buy the 17,600-square-foot parking lot owned by Con Edison off the corner of West 25th Street and Sixth Avenue. The winning bidder for the Con Edison property paid about $44 million, or $250 a buildable foot, for the site. Under the new zoning, the developer can build a 177,000-square-foot as of right residential tower.

This summer, Citigroup announced plans to build a $200 million, 14-story office building on the parking lot across the street from its property in Long Island City. Next week, a vacant one-story, 18,750-square-foot warehouse and the adjacent 13,600-squarefoot vacant lot at 45-56 Pearson St., two blocks from Citigroup Tower, will be sold for about $9.5 million, or $56 a buildable square foot.

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Massey Knakal Realty Services recently sold a freestanding KFC restaurant and parking lot at 4070-4076 Broadway in the Bronx. The price per developable square foot is $62, even though the restaurant lease will not expire until June 2007.

The New York Sun has learned that one of Manhattan’s most active developers has finally concluded on a four-year assemblage, which will allow them to build a 300,000-square-foot, 56-story residential tower on 29th Street between Fifth Avenue and Broadway for a price of $100 a buildable foot.

Massey Knakal co-founder Paul Massey provided this columnist with his insight on the pricing of land. Mr. Massey noted that land prices in Manhattan are ranging from $100 to $300; $50 to $100 in Queens; $40 to $130 in Brooklyn; $25 to $50 in the Bronx, and $40 to $70 in Staten Island.

Massey Knakal is marketing an assemblage on Mrytle Avene in downtown Brooklyn with an asking price of $21 million and 190,000 square feet of buildable space for about $110 a foot.

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Assemblers of land are flipping ownership of their property overnight. This happened with the sale of a West Chelsea development site at 519 West 23rd St. A developer bought the 25-footby-99-foot site with a total buildable square footage of 18,565 for $2.5 million. The contract was then flipped for sale at a price of $3.4 million.

Last year a group of investors purchased a site on Third Avenue and East 23rd Street. They vacated 40 tenants from the tenement buildings and are marketing the property for close to $75 million, or $300 a developable foot. Originally, they acquired the property and zoning rights for a total cost of about $30 million.

Unfortunately, this writer does not have a crystal ball and still remembers the Times Square area before the redevelopment and construction of the new office towers the late 1990s. In 1999, Gotham Partners built the Gotham at 523-527 West 42nd St. on a 166-foot-by-200-foot site. They paid only $1.623 million, or $8 a buildable foot, to construct the 33-story rental tower. This year, less than two blocks away, two Manhattan developers purchased property slated for residential development at prices of about $160 a buildable foot.

I concur with the director of Eastern Consolidated Properties, Alan P. Miller, when he says, “Every land owner is trying to cash in on the big land grab.” He continued, “They are basing their selling price on the fact that these savvy New York developers as well as the national developers coming to the New York area for the first time are going to build high-end condos, and they feel that these real estate professionals should be able to afford the pie in the sky or dream prices that they are seeking.”

With all of the equity capital out there as well as the low debt environment and the fact that there are many groups chasing few deals, the law of supply and demand is coming into play and driving up prices even further.

Due to the high cost of land, few developers are neither able nor willing to develop these sites for residential rental housing. Unfortunately, only a limited segment of the population can afford to purchase a condominium at a price of $1,000 a square foot. With rising interest rates and more apartments becoming available, I wouldn’t want to be the last developer in the ground if or when the real estate market tumbles.

Mr. Stoler is a television broadcaster and vice president with First American Title Insurance Company of New York. He can be reached at mstoler@nysun.com.