The recent downturn in condominium sales statewide doesn't concern the developers of three luxury condo towers in downtown Providence.

Intercontinental Real Estate Corp., The Procaccianti Group and BlueChip Properties are in the midst of constructing 426 high-end condos that are priced between $400,000 and $2.5 million each.

All three developers said this week that interest from buyers has remained strong and they are confident condos in the complexes will continue to sell.

"I'm not worried about [the market] at all," said Nicholas Iselin with Boston's Intercontinental Real Estate, which is putting up two towers next to the Providence train station that will contain 193 condos.

Buyers have already signed purchase-and-sale agreements on eight of the units, said Iselin, and in total, 33 are under reservation. While that's down from the 80 units under reservation last year, he said, the developer doesn't see it as a problem.

"There's not a huge incentive to jump off the sidelines and I think people can afford to have a wait-and-see attitude. And that's fine," said Iselin, who added that interest is strong and he expects people to commit once the building has a more finished look and sample condos. Intercontinental has kept its price range for the units between $400,000 and $1 million.

"We didn't imagine when we underwrote the project that we would be sold out when we opened," said Iselin. Intercontinental, which is raising steel for its two towers, expects to open the project at the end of next year.

Condominium sales across the state were off significantly during the second quarter of the year, dropping 22.6 percent compared with the second quarter of 2005, according to the Rhode Island Association of Realtors. While sales were down, the median price during the second quarter rose about 8 percent to $236,000, according to the association.

Nationally, prices for condos in metro areas remained flat during the second quarter compared with last, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Providence's luxury condo developers, though, say they are targeting a different market, selling urban housing that is new to Providence and intriguing to high-end shoppers.

For BlueChip Properties, about 19 of the 130 condos it is proposing for One Ten Luxury Residences are under agreement, said Jerry O'Connor, development director for the project.

"There's been a traditional summer slowdown -- but we're happy where we are on sales," he said of the residential skyscraper project set to go up next to the Arcade on Westminster Street.

While there may be a residential real estate slowdown nationally, O'Connor said the concept of urban living in Providence is still striking a chord with the high-end buyers BlueChip is targeting. Plus, he said, it will take over two years to finish the project, giving people planning to trade large suburban homes for city condos plenty of time to sell even if the market for single-family houses slows even more. BlueChip is keeping prices for the condos between $400,000 and $2.5 million.

"For these people, an extra couple of months on the market does not derail them . . . and they have a lot of locked-in appreciation, so they are pocketing significant gains" even if prices drop, said O'Connor.

Due to construction delays this summer involving the bracing of the facade of the historic Providence Bank building next to the project, the finish date has been moved out a few months, to November 2008, he said.

The most confident is The Procaccianti Group, whose 103 condos in the addition to The Westin Providence will be the first downtown luxury condo complex to be completed. Construction is on schedule and Procaccianti plans to have buyers start moving in at the end of September 2007, according to Tom Niles, executive vice president of development for Procaccianti.

About 31 of the units have already been sold, and traffic from prospective buyers was strong this month, he said. Right now, Niles said, the company is not seeing any negative effects from the softening U.S. housing market.

"Right now, we are on target with our absorption and we've had sales every single month. And we are happy with where we are," he said.

The company is deliberately keeping some units off the market for now, so it will be able to stagger move-in dates for residents when the tower opens, said Niles. Procaccianti still expects to have at least 50 percent of the units sold by the time it opens next fall, he said, and as the company puts more units up for sale, it may even consider raising prices.

"We haven't had price objections on the project," said Niles.

astape@projo.com / (401) 277-7269