The Real Deal New York

From left: Sheikh Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Saud Al Thani, Tony Malkin and the Empire State Building

Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund has acquired a stake in New York City’s Empire State Building through a $622 million deal for a minority stake in publicly-traded Empire State Realty Trust. [more]

London office skyline

How much of a toll did Brexit take on the U.K.’s commercial property market? Top question, lads.

With little data to go by and few deals since the June referendum, brokers and landholders are relying on educated guesswork to figure out on how much property values have slipped, with ranges running from 2.8 percent to 5 percent or more.

Data firm MSCI, for example, estimated a 2.8 percent drop while property broker CBRE said it believes U.K. real estate values dropped 3.3 percent in July. Norway’s sovereign wealth fund came up with a 5 percent figure, as did Aberdeen Asset Management, which initially said property values were down 17 percent, according to the Wall Street Journal. [more]

60 Wall Street in the Financial District

Paramount Group and Morgan Stanley are shopping a majority stake in downtown office tower 60 Wall Street. [more]

From left: 25 West 39th Street, Joseph Sitt and Christophe Garnier

Spark Labs, the media- and tech-focused co-working firm, is quadrupling its New York City footprint.

The firm inked a 15-year lease for 20,000 square feet at 25 West 39th Street, roughly four times the size of its current digs at 833 Broadway near Union Square. [more]

George Gleason of Ozarks Bank

From the August issue: For the bulk of its 113-year history, Bank of the Ozarks was a small community lender with a few branches in Arkansas’ mountainous western region, from which it takes its name. But since the bank entered the New York City arena in 2012, it has become one of the most active construction lenders throughout the boroughs.

Now, with its biggest competitors pulling back from ground-up condominium, office and hotel projects in need of debt, a growing number of major real estate players have started to call on Bank of the Ozarks as a key source of financing. [more]

Larry Kaiser

Larry Kaiser, who cofounded Key Ventures in 1968, is one of the few consistent elements of the city’s ever-changing real estate market. He’s lived through shifting tastes, laws and economic cycles, and still refers to brokerage as “a profession that wraps its arms around you.”

Click here to watch the veteran broker talk about how the industry has changed since the city saw its first $1 million residential sale in 1978.

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From left: Andrew Heiberger and Wendy Maitland

A judge will decide by the end of the month whether to enforce Wendy Maitland’s noncompete with Town Residential, which would effectively block her from continuing much of her work at Brown Harris Stevens.

The judge overseeing her case has called for a Aug. 29 hearing, during which arguments can be made to determine if the firm’s former president of sales should be banned from doing any real estate-related business for any customer or client with whom she did business during her tenure at Town, according to legal documents. It would also prevent her from soliciting any employee, customer or client of Town at BHS, where she recently signed on as a resale and new development broker. [more]

420 Fifth Avenue

The Girl Scouts of America is selling the equivalent of roughly 12.3 million boxes of Thin Mints. [more]

The Real Deal is picking up stakes and heading out west! The inaugural edition of our Los Angeles Market Report will arrive in L.A. in early September, with additional distribution in the New York market. [more]

Renderings of Pierhouse at Brooklyn Bridge Park and 1110 Park Avenue (inset: Toll Brother’s Douglas Yearley)

Toll Brothers’ focus on “moderate luxury” in the face of a high-end slowdown appears to be paying off: the Pennsylvania-based homebuilder saw profits soar 58 percent as revenue jumped 24 percent during the third quarter, the company reported Tuesday. [more]

From the August’s issue’s “In their words” feature, a roundup of the funniest and most insightful comments on real estate:

To read other smart and/or funny sayings, click here for the full feature.

Rendering of the streetcar and the streetcar map

This streetcar is named Desire — desire for a train yard, that is. [more]

315 Seigel Street in Brooklyn (inset from top: Sugar Hill’s David Schwartz and Acuity’s Elliott Neumann)

Sugar Hill Capital Partners bought a 51-unit rental building in East Williamsburg once owned by slain landlord Menachem Stark. [more]

Home for sale (credit: MLS)

Home sales shot up last month, nearly hitting the highest level seen in the past nine years.

Sales reached the fastest pace seen since October 2007, jumping 12.4 percent to an annualized pace of 654,000, Bloomberg reported. New data from the Commerce Department shows strong housing demand in the U.S., especially in the south, reduced inventory and a spike in entry-level homes sold. At the same time, median sales price of a new house dropped 0.5 percent from July 2015 to $294,600. [more]

The Real Deal is bringing a cleaner design and more seamless navigation to our latest mobile update, which is now available for download in Apple’s App store and the Google Play store.

The latest version of our app includes a separate feed for our new Los Angeles website, which joined The Real Deal‘s family of news websites in January. An updated navigation bar allows readers to access each of the three markets with ease, and a new ‘National’ tab aggregates our New York, South Florida and Los Angeles websites into one stream. [more]

Kips Bay Court and Blackstone Group’s Jonathan Gray

To finance its $620 million purchase of Kips Bay Court, Blackstone Group plans to assume the existing $200.1 million Fannie Mae mortgage and will not seek additional debt, sources told The Real Deal. [more]

Clockwise from top left: Bruce Mosler, Sharif El-Gamal, Don Peebles, Christopher Wein, Jonatham Miller, Jay Neveloff, Nick Mastroianni II and Chris Marlin

News of Chinese investment in U.S. real estate continues to roll in this week, with highlights including Xinyuan Real Estate’s $66 million purchase of a Flushing development site, Extell’s score of Chinese investment firm Shanghai Municipal Investment as an equity partner in Central Park Tower, and Joe Sitt’s pronouncement that despite a lull at the start of the year, Chinese interest is back, big time.

The Real Deal has once again taken note, and we’re heading back to China this November for our second U.S. Real Estate Showcase & Forum in Shanghai.

The event will take place at the five-star Jing An Shangri-La Hotel from Nov. 17 to 19. Our 2016 show will bring prominent industry professionals and investors from the United States to Shanghai, including former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who will be delivering this year’s keynote address. [more]

55 Hudson Yards (inset: Richard McVey)

An electronic trading platform is ditching its Park Avenue digs for Hudson Yards. [more]

Bruce Ratner and David LaRue

Forest City Realty Trust is launching a “strategic review” of its retail portfolio, which could lead to asset sales, according to a report.

The Cleveland-based company owns 14 shopping malls and another 19 retail properties across the U.S. In New York City, it owns retail properties at Atlantic Yards, 234 West 42^nd Street in Times Square, and 94 Court Street in Brooklyn, among others. [more]