Singer Billy Joel is in contract to purchase a Manhattan townhouse for close to its $6 million asking price. The deal comes just 10 days after Mr. Joel and his wife, Katie Lee, put another lower Manhattan home on the market for $5 million.

Mr. Joel, 56, is buying the Greenwich Village home of artist Seward Johnson, grandson of Robert Wood Johnson Sr., a founder of drug company Johnson & Johnson. The three-story, red brick building on Perry Street has a lap pool on the garden level, a full-floor master-bedroom suite with a terrace, and a restored stoop entrance that leads into an open loft-like double parlor. The building was on the market for more than a year with an original asking price of $6.7 million. The price was lowered in April. Erin Boisson Aries, of Corcoran Group, had the listing. A spokeswoman for Mr. Joel, Claire Mercuri, declined to comment.

The six-room apartment the couple is selling is in the TriBeCa neighborhood. It measures 2,681 square feet, and has three bedrooms, three and a half bathrooms and floor-to-ceiling windows. The couple paid $3.9 million for the home just eight months ago, according to public records. The furnishings, except for the piano, can be negotiated in the sale, according to Donna Senko, of Sotheby's International Realty, who has the listing.

Mr. Joel also owns a renovated 18th-century home in Sag Harbor, N.Y. that he recently took off the market; it had a $4.2 million asking price. In 2000, he sold his East Hampton house to comedian Jerry Seinfeld for a then-record $32 million. He also owns a home on Centre Island, off the North Shore of Long Island, near his boyhood home in Oyster Bay.

Split Decision

After testing the high end of the Hawaiian real-estate market for nearly a year, Hollywood movie executive Peter Guber is splitting up a 171-acre property he's had for sale at $46.5 million. He is now offering a 30-acre portion of the property, with a main house, for $29 million. The move signals a retreat for Mr. Guber, who has been on the selling end of a number of blockbuster real-estate deals in the past, including a 650-acre ranch in Aspen, Colo. he sold last year for a state record $46 million.

Mr. Guber, producer of the films "Rain Man" and "Batman," paid nearly $7.3 million for the oceanfront property in 1998. He made the purchase through Mandalay Properties Hawaii LLC, a real-estate holding firm he owns. Located on the eastern side of the island of Kauai, the property includes a 15,000-square-foot plantation-style main house, two 4,000-square-foot guesthouses, a swimming pool, beach cabana, yoga studio and horse trails. Though a smaller parcel of the property is available, buyers can purchase the entire 171-acre property for the original asking price of $46.5 million, according to the home's listing agents, John Ferry and Barbara Sloan of Coldwell Banker Bali Hai Realty.

A former chief executive of Sony Corp.'s Sony Pictures Entertainment, Mr. Guber is chairman and CEO of Mandalay Entertainment Group, a Los Angeles-based entertainment company. He declined to comment.

Hot in Hawaii

Elsewhere in Hawaii, former Warner Music Group Corp. Chairman Michael Fuchs is developing property he owns on the Big Island, the largest of the state's eight islands. Mr. Fuchs, who was also the former chief executive officer at Home Box Office, purchased about 65 acres of property on the island in 2002. He's now selling one-acre parcels, including oceanfront property, ranging in price from $1.5 to $9 million. The development, called Ke Kailani, is also selling about 20 villas ranging in price from $3.5 to $4.4 million. Of its 50 to 60 parcels, about 75 percent have been sold, according to Mr. Fuchs.

In recent years, real-estate values have soared on Kauai, the most remote of the main islands. The median price of a single-family home on the island reached $665,000 in May, a 43 percent increase over May 2004, according to figures released by Hawaii Information Services. (Maui has the highest median price for a single-family home in the state at $780,000.)