AG sees spike in foreign projects pitched to New Yorkers

Developers with big-ticket projects across the globe are increasingly targeting New Yorkers. So far this year, 13 offering plans for non-New York projects have been filed in the state, compared with only six in all of 2012, according to the New York State Attorney General’s office. The number is well below the 46 offering plans filed for non-New York projects in 2007 at the height of the market, however.

One such development is Meier-on-Rothschild, a 42-story condominium in Tel Aviv designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Richard Meier. Developed by Berggruen Residential, a 15,000-square-foot penthouse at the tower is asking nearly $15 million. Other high-profile projects courting Big Apple buyers include London’s 5 Princes Gate and Singapore’s 18 Nouvel, two 36-story towers designed by Pritzker winner Jean Nouvel

“We have put our aims on New York because this is where a lot of potential buyers are,” Yigal Zemah, the founder of Berggruen Residential, told the New York Times.

Unlike the rest of the U.S., however, New York requires out-of-state developers to file offering plans with the AG if they want to sell to residents here. Top real estate lawyer Stuart Saft of Holland & Knight told the newspaper that “in the last two years, we have done as many New York offering plans for out-of-state offerings as we did in the previous five years.”

European cities such as Croatia’s Dubrovnik and Milan have been on New Yorkers’ radars in recent years, as The Real Deal reported. [NYT]  – Hiten Samtani