Gary Jacob, executive vice president of Glennwood Management and the Emerald Green

Developers are increasingly including affordable units within luxury
rental buildings as part of the 80/20 program, the New York Times reported.

Steven Spinola, the president of the Real Estate
Board of New York, says at least six 80/20 projects are being planned
in Manhattan that will add some 1,500 affordable and rent-stabilized
apartments.
Previously, when
developers of market-rate residential buildings included affordable
housing in exchange for tax incentives, the affordable units were
often in another complex or even in another borough altogether. But in
2008, the city changed regulations in a way that made it almost
impossible for developers to include the affordable units outside the
luxury buildings. [more]

Gary Jacob, who oversees site acquisition, financing, leasing and financial projections for Glenwood

From the April issue: At 90-something years old, Leonard Litwin has outlasted most of his real estate rivals. He builds his high-end rental towers to do the same.

The soft-spoken chairman of Glenwood Management has been constructing and operating luxury apartment buildings in Manhattan for almost 50 years, and he hasn’t sold one yet.

Glenwood’s focus exclusively on rentals might have looked myopically old-school during the recent real estate boom, when new development condos and condo conversions drove sales prices into the stratosphere.

But it looks pretty wise in this down market.

“Glenwood is a quintessential New York builder that has always very conservatively leveraged their investments,” said Robert Knakal, chairman of Massey Knakal Realty Services. “If there’s one lesson to come out of this downturn — every downturn — it’s that when times are good, leverage enhances return, but when times are bad, leverage can be very punishing. And if you don’t have excessive leverage you are in a great position to take advantage of the marketplace.”

That’s just what Glenwood appears poised to do. [more]

From the October issue: Back in 2006, when Glenwood Management began assembling parcels on the
eastern edge of the then newly rezoned Hudson Yards district to make
way for Emerald Green, it knew the project would have plenty of company
when it opened. Thousands of high-end apartments in several massive
rental projects were slated to hit the market in the emerging
neighborhood at the same time or soon after. What they didn’t anticipate was the mess of a market they’d be entering. The 24-story, two-tower building, located at 320 West 38th Street, has
just begun renting its 569 apartments, not long after the release of a
quarterly market survey declaring the past year a disaster for rentals. more