All this talk of slowing home sales isn’t stopping some of Lawrence’s newest and most high-priced listings from moving off the market.

So far this year, five new homes in town have sold for at least $750,000.

The highest – $857,000 – tops the high sale of $840,000 a year ago and $720,000 in 2004.

Less than two weeks ago, an existing home on Palmer Court went for $965,000. And don’t look now, but an even bigger contract – $1.4 million for a home on Prestwick Drive – is pending, in what would be Lawrence’s first-ever seven-figure resale through the open market.

Area Realtors are finding that the sky is far from falling, no matter how many times the Fed bumps up interest rates, builders struggle to pay increasing materials prices and the U.S. Census reports that Lawrence’s population actually is declining.

People still are paying a pretty penny for homes.

“Five homes at $750,000? That’s better than a poke in the eye,” said Mike McGrew, vice chairman of Coldwell Banker McGrew Real Estate in Lawrence. “That high-end number certainly has been moving up faster than inflation.”

The average price paid in May for any single-family home in Lawrence – new or existing – was $205,858, according to a report from the Douglas County Appraiser’s Office. The office tracks North Lawrence (average price in May: $115,900) as a separate market.

The May numbers are up 15 percent from the same month a year earlier, when homes in Lawrence went for an average price of $178,593. The average price in town for all of last year was $190,591.

“It all seems to follow,” McGrew said. “Lawrence is becoming a little bit more expensive all the time.”