*Except for the westernmost flank, which rates 7.5.

MIDTOWN EAST AND WEST
Thank the Irish, the Russians, and the Koreans—and a lot of other foreign buyers, for that matter—for keeping midtown on an even keel. It is and will continue to be the choice of overseas pied-à-terre buyers who want to be near shopping, theater, and Central Park. The Plaza’s nearly sold out, at completely mad prices ($3 million for a one-bedroom!). Even when you get away from the trophy properties, the picture’s still pretty rosy. Tudor City’s holding its own despite the long subway schlep, says Corcoran’s John Gasdaska. Beekman Place and Sutton Place have reached near parity with Park Avenue, and their glory trickles outward to nearby blocks. “A lot of the buildings right on Sutton and Beekman are at least 50 percent down,” and require large cash reserves, meaning “you can’t even dream of getting in unless you’re totally financially stable and beyond,” says Janice Silver, sales manager of Bellmarc’s East Side office. (These days, they operate like Gold Coast buildings: no open houses, stringent vetting, requirements of gobs of liquid cash.) The optimism wanes considerably when you head far west, beyond the lively Ninth Avenue corridor, where some properties have asking prices rivaling those in more desirable locales. In a heated market where everyone’s hyped up to buy, that’s acceptable behavior, but not now. “It’s a whole different world,” says Silver. “It’s a market that went up when there was nothing else.” As one industry insider puts it, “No one really says, ‘I want to live on 55th Street and Eleventh Avenue.’ ”

CHELSEA
What will save Chelsea from a major meltdown? Two words: High Line. Green space is at a premium, and far West Chelsea has zoomed from industrial no-man’s-land to must-have address. It’s helped along by daring architecture (André Balazs’s Standard Hotel) and the still-growing gallery scene. Enthusiasm for the new park, which is scheduled to open in 2008, is going to keep buyers coming for a good long while, as is proximity to super-desirable areas like the West Village and the Flatiron district. The western arts district is “pretty well insulated,” adds Core Group Marketing’s Shaun Osher. “Chelsea five years ago was a B neighborhood. Now it’s an A neighborhood,” and it has a good chance of staying that way even if next year’s bonus season is disappointing. Those well-kept houses on the landmarked side streets around Eighth and Ninth Avenues are likeliest to hold their value in a downturn, but look out as you head to the neighborhood’s eastern boundaries. A real weak spot are those scads of new towers along Sixth Avenue, says JC DeNiro managing director Christopher Mathieson. “I don’t understand why people are spending millions there. It’s commercial and chaotic. You walk out, and there’s an onslaught of traffic and pedestrians.”

MURRAY HILL, THE FLATIRON DISTRICT, AND GRAMERCY PARK
Yes, Murray Hill is sort of boring. But so are T-bills, and in a downturn, they’re a godsend. “Instead of living in a glamorous neighborhood where you’re paying for the brand name, you’re paying for the [actual] space,” says Corcoran’s Anne Marie Salmeri, who has lived and worked in the area for a decade. The preponderance of co-ops here means buyers usually have funds in reserve and won’t be hit by interest-rate spikes. As a result, property values are far from peaking. Gramercy, being closer to downtown, is likewise rot-resistant, notably in buildings fronting the keyed park. (Last year, fewer than 50 apartments on Gramercy Park proper went on the market, says Warburg Realty’s Judith Thorn.) Move farther east, though, and the prettiness and its attendant market buffer fade. In particular, a number of new condo slabs along Third are going to raise inventory without making the neighborhood any more charming. As for the Flatiron district, remember how small it is—roughly from 18th Street to 23rd, between Broadway and Sixth Avenue—and note how few new buildings are here, apart from the nearby towers on Sixth (see “Chelsea” for a discussion of their prospects). “It’s a little enclave that people really love,” says Toni Scott of Prudential Douglas Elliman. Exhibit A: 141 Fifth Avenue, near 21st Street. The condo conversion went on the market at midsummer and sold out 80 percent of its 38 units in three months at $2,000 per square foot. All that without running a single ad, says its marketing chief, Shaun Osher.

EAST VILLAGE AND LOWER EAST SIDE
These neighborhoods are no longer “emerging”—they have emerged, and we are not going back to dodging crack dealers on Avenue A. (Gripe all you want about gentrification, but “the quasi stripping of character—it’s a double-edged sword,” says Barry Silverman of Halstead Property.) “We’ve seen strong growth there,” says Halstead’s chief economist, Gregory Heym, adding that the average price per square foot has risen 87 percent in the East Village just since 2002. That said, a big market swing could certainly hit here, because these areas are still most attractive to the young, and young buyers can be fearless. “They take more chances and they’re more aggressive, the kind of people who put more of their assets into living where they want to live,” says Citi Habitats agent Noah Rosenblatt, a former Wall Street trader who now blogs about the market on Urbandigs .com. “They haven’t seen a major crash and don’t know that they may get salary restrictions or that their bonuses may not go up as much. No good time lasts forever.” (Stable exceptions include complexes like Coop Village—“You cannot get into buildings there if you are shaky,” says Silverman—and the few available properties in Chinatown.) As ever, prices in these areas fall as you drift east from Third Avenue and south below Houston. That won’t change until the Second Avenue subway reaches down here around 2025. “You really don’t want two commutes to work: one to the subway, and then the subway itself,” adds Silverman.