What does "under contract" REALLY mean

Link to"Past Sales" section:
http://streeteasy.com/building/160-leroy-street-new_york#tab_building_detail=2

I would trust it to mean "in contract" since I don't see how it would help a developer to take inventory off the market ... if things are slow, they just tend to slow the release of units.

on that front, don't put too much stock into a phrase like "60% sold." It doesn't always mean what a normal human would take it to mean (that, assuming a hundred-unit building, sixty units have been sold). It can mean that 60% *of what's been released to market * has been sold ... so if the developer has a hundred units, and has released twenty of them to market, putting twelve of them in the hands of buyers would be "60% sold."

ali r.
{downtown broker}