Related Companies President Jeff Blau

From the July issue: Jeff Blau is president of Related Companies, one of the largest private real estate development firms in the country, with a portfolio valued at over $15 billion. Earlier this year, Related launched MiMA, a 1.2 million-square-foot, mixed-use development on 42nd Street in Manhattan. The company is also developing the 26-acre Hudson Yards, the largest development site remaining in Manhattan, with plans for up to four corporate headquarters, a retail complex, a hotel, a public school and nine residential buildings. Click here for the complete Q & A. [more]

From left: 740 Park Avenue, 834 Fifth Avenue, 4 East 66th Street and 2 East 67th Street

From the June issue: Like mushrooms, glass-walled condos and fancy rentals with wine storage popped up with fury across the city in recent years, and seemed to fundamentally alter New York’s housing stock in the process.

No longer would the pinnacle of city living be the exclusive Uptown co-ops that had ruled the roost for decades, the trend seemed to suggest, but instead this new crop of buildings with impressive architecture and an A-to-Z range of luxuries. It didn’t hurt that they were a lot easier to get into.

Indeed, why would a buyer subject himself (or herself) to invasive co-op board packages and taxing interviews, the thinking went, when that buyer could get just as nice a home without having to trot out reference letters galore?

But then a funny thing happened when the recession hit: Many condos tanked in value, in part because their open-door policy was seen as exposing them to risks like job-challenged residents missing maintenance payments. Meanwhile, co-ops, whose residents are required to have deep cash reserves, generally weren’t so hard-hit. [more]

Tony thoroughfare go loafer to loafer on sales

From the June issue: The rich are different, and so are their comps. Just take Fifth and Park avenues. The two tony thoroughfares, between East 59th and East 96th streets, share much in common: large apartments in architecturally striking doorman buildings, with socially prominent neighbors on leafy Upper East Side blocks. Yes, Fifth Avenue units are almost always more expensive, a premium that can be explained by their proximity to Central Park. But for the last decade, the difference in prices has varied wildly year to year, from as little as 8 percent to as much as 38 percent.

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Tony thoroughfare go loafer to loafer on sales

From the June issue: The rich are different, and so are their comps. Just take Fifth and Park avenues. The two tony thoroughfares, between East 59th and East 96th streets, share much in common: large apartments in architecturally striking doorman buildings, with socially prominent neighbors on leafy Upper East Side blocks. Yes, Fifth Avenue units are almost always more expensive, a premium that can be explained by their proximity to Central Park. But for the last decade, the difference in prices has varied wildly year to year, from as little as 8 percent to as much as 38 percent.

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From left: Ara Hovnanian, the townhouse at 16 West 12th Street, and 820 Fifth Avenue, the Hovnanians’ former home (Building photos source: PropertyShark)

Developer Ara Hovnanian and his wife Rachel closed on a townhouse at 16 West 12th Street earlier this week, the Post reported. The home, which was originally listed for $24.975 million early last year, belonged to divorcing couple Luke and Julie Janklow, the Sweetiepie restaurant founder, who purchased it for $4.5 million in 2004. The most recent asking price was $17.9 million. Paula Del Nunzio of Brown Harris Stevens had the listing. The Hovnanian’s sold their 820 Fifth Avenue apartment to socialite and philanthropist Lily Safra last year for $33 million — they were asking $35 million — but not before a $31 milliion bid by Jeff Blau, president of the Related Companies, was famously rejected by the building’s co-op board. [Post]
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From left: Lily Safra, Ken Griffin and 820 Fifth Avenue (Building photo source: PropertyShark)

In a high-end game of musical chairs, socialite and philanthropist Lily Safra sold one cooperative apartment at 820 Fifth Avenue at 63rd Street for $40 million to a hedge fund manager and on the same day bought another in the same building for $33 million from home building CEO Ara Hovnanian.

Safra closed on the sale of the 12th-floor unit to Kenneth Griffin as well as the purchase of the fourth-floor unit from Hovnanian, CEO of Hovnanian Enterprises on Dec. 16, city property records show. Residential real estate Web site Coopsales.com first reported the $40 million Safra sale today. Reports from October said Griffin, founder of the $13 billion hedge fund Citadel Investment Group, was going to buy Hovnanian’s fourth-floor unit, but instead he bought Safra’s, city records show. Safra is the widow of Edmond Safra, a billionaire banker.

Hovnanian Enterprises is in a difficult financial period, reporting this month its 13th consecutive quarterly loss.

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Serena Boardman (Photo credit: Patrick McMullan)

From the December issue: It’s 2005, and golden-haired socialite
Serena Boardman is sunning herself on a yacht near the coast of
Sardinia in Italy. Nearby, her friend Dori Cooperman — now best known
for befriending actress Lindsay Lohan in rehab — is on the phone with
a reporter from W Magazine, chronicling the addictive qualities of
photo Web site PatrickMcMullan.com. Boardman interjects with her
opinion of the site, which documents the social lives of New York
City’s glitterati. “Tell him it captures a moment,” she shouts. Until
recently, the scene was typical for the 39-year-old Boardman, the
jet-setting heiress to a banking fortune whose stepmother is a European
princess. Along with society pals like Alexandra von Fürstenberg and Blaine Trump, Boardman spent her 20s being photographed in couture gowns at galas and benefits all over New York and Palm Beach, often with her equally glamorous sister, Samantha. Magazines chronicled her taste in clothes (Roberto Cavalli ruffled cocktail dresses) and jewelry (Verdura). She held jobs at the Web site Luxuryfinder.com and in the jewelry department at Sotheby’s. But to the media they were a postscript to Boardman’s glamorous social life. So it comes as a surprise to those who know Boardman that only a few years later, she’s morphed into one of the most successful real estate brokers in the business. [more]

Related Companies President Jeff Blau may not have met the standards of the co-op board at 820 Fifth Avenue, but apparently Kenneth Griffin, CEO of Citadel Investment Group, does. Griffin, who has an estimated worth of $3.7 billion and whom Forbes named the 97th richest American, paid just below the fourth-floor unit’s $35 million asking price, the New York Post’s Jennifer Gould Keil reported. The Upper East Side home, once owned by Tommy Hilfiger, is currently owned by home builder Ara Hovnanian.

From the September issue: No one knows exactly why Jeff Blau, the 41-year-old president of the
Related Companies, was denied a co-op board interview this spring at
exclusive 820 Fifth Avenue. In what would have been one of the biggest
deals of the year, Blau reportedly planned to pay $31 million for a
fourth-floor spread at the limestone building between 63rd and 64th
streets, where each apartment takes up a floor.
Many possible explanations for the high-profile turndown have been bandied about by real estate observers.
Was it the fact that Blau is in real estate, at a time when the
city’s housing market has slumped? Was it the fact that he’s Jewish, in
a city where many of the most exclusive buildings were forged in a
crucible of anti-Semitism? Was there bad blood between Blau and a
building resident? [more]