Final sales at Pier Homes project in Baltimore, six years after the first changed hands

That whooshing sound you hear is a huge sigh of relief from the Pier Homes' developer and financier.

The last of the luxury townhomes -- a project built on piers in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor -- just sold, six years after the first buyers moved in.

McWilliams Ballard, a Washington-based real estate sales team that took over the Pier Homes at HarborView project two years ago, announced the final settlements Wednesday. (They're not all on the record yet online, but nearly all are.)

You might recall that nearly half the 88-unit project was unsold two years ago, prompting the developer to auction off 18 of the homes at big discounts to get buyers looking again. Prices at that June 2010 auction ranged from $516,000, 40 percent off the asking price, to $956,000 for a unit with an earlier asking price of nearly $2 million.

Sale prices this year ranged from $550,000 to $1.1 million, according to state records. Average price: $745,000.

The Pier Homes, like several other pricey developments along Baltimore's waterfront, hit the market too late to reap much benefit from housing-bubble insanity. The peak was 2005. By 2010, when the Pier Homes auction was held, high-end sales were extremely slow.

The auction was pitched as a way to get the log-jammed luxury market going again by giving buyers -- and other developers -- more clarity about what people were willing to pay.

Those lower prices really pinched early buyers, though. Consider a Pier Homes unit on Ponte Villas South that changed hands for more than $1.2 million in 2006, then resold for $700,000 early last year.

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