Nobody Quits at the Bristol: Twelve Resales from Asking Price to Closed Price

Every Resale from Start to Close

Every sale has two prices worth knowing: what the seller first asked and what the buyer finally paid. Since 2022 the median Bristol resale has closed 15.5 percent below its original asking price. The table below shows each sale in full: what the seller first asked, what they were asking at the end, and what the buyer paid.

The table splits into two eras. The early rows are the 2022 market, when a correctly priced residence found its buyer in days and closed near its original asking price. The later rows are the current market, where the same building takes most of a year to sell. The gap between the original asking price and the closed price has become the central fact of the negotiation.

What Waiting Costs

The pattern in the table is consistent. The single sale that closed at its asking price was a zero-day transaction, agreed before the listing formally reached the market. The three longest listings ran 307, 368, and 499 days and gave up a median 18 percent from the original asking price. The longest of them produced the deepest discount in the whole record. The seller of unit 2203 asked $24,950,000, accepted $15,175,000, and waited 499 days to get there. Buyers were willing to buy the residence, just not at that price.

Days on market also understates the wait, because the count stops at the contract date. Add the escrow period and the median resale here ran 311 days from the first day on market to the closing. A seller who opens with an ambitious price at the Bristol should plan on the better part of a year before the sale closes.

Where the Discount Happens

The listing portals show only part of the negotiation. Six of the twelve sellers never touched their published asking price, and among the six who did, the public reductions ran 4 to 11 percent. Those are modest moves for a market where relisted properties routinely return a fifth cheaper. The larger concession happened privately, at the closing table. The median sale since 2024 has closed at 85 percent of the final asking price, a pattern our current report card measures year by year. Most of the discount at the Bristol never appears in a public price history.

Why Nobody Quits

In most buildings a listing that goes unsold too long is eventually canceled and comes back later at a lower price under a fresh listing id. That has never happened at the Bristol, and the main reason is the floor: the building's resale record has held at $2,786 per square foot for four years. A seller who knows the worst recorded outcome to the dollar loses little by waiting in public. What an ambitious seller does lose is time, and then whatever discount the final negotiation requires. The negotiating mechanics are covered in our buyer's guide.

The scarcity math explains the patience. Twelve resales across four and a half years, in a tower of 69 residences, is an annual turnover rate under four percent. Most owners here are not trying to sell at all, and the few who list can afford to wait. The record shows they do, for months and sometimes for more than a year.

What Never Happens Here

Elsewhere, expiration is the normal outcome for an ambitious luxury listing. On Palm Beach island alone, 180 listings expired across 2025 and 2026. The ones with a verifiable later sale closed a median 21.7 percent below their original asking prices after 310 total days. We documented that pattern in our expired listings autopsy. The Bristol's complete record since 2018 spans 92 closings and four active listings, with not one expired, withdrawn, or canceled listing among them. Scarcity explains part of that, with only 69 residences in the building. The rest is the floor and the owners themselves: sellers who know the building's worst recorded outcome, and who can afford to wait for their price.

The Four Listings on the Market Now

The record above describes the four listings on the market today as much as it describes the past. The asking prices are $14,950,000, $15,500,000, $24,950,000, and $78,900,000. The two lower numbers sit inside the closed record at $3,335 and $3,458 per foot. The two upper numbers ask buyers to pay far above any closed sale in the building's history. In the record above, prices like that sold slowly and closed well below where they started. Every listing in the building's record has eventually closed, so each of the four should close too. The open questions are how long each will take and how far below the asking price each will land. Our report card measures that distance against the closed record.