From the October issue: The scenario is now vexingly familiar to Tali Berzak, a vice president at NestSeekers International: Potential buyers at 99 John Street, a Downtown condo conversion where she is the project manager, come to the sales office believing the Financial District is depressed, and make lowball offers accordingly.
In reality, the Financial District submarket has posted sharp gains in the last year, both in sales volume and in prices per square foot, according to the website StreetEasy and brokers who work in the neighborhood. The larger problem, brokers contend, is that accurate sales figures about FiDi are often not widely disseminated. The lack of information, they say, leads to lower offers being rejected — and, in many cases, frustrates potential buyers into looking elsewhere.
“That’s causing deals not to happen that should be happening,” said Prudential Douglas Elliman’s Heather McDonough, who currently has five listings at William Beaver House, the newly constructed condo and rental building at 15 William Street. [more]

From the June issue: Shortly after the financial crisis of 2008, experts worried that the market was in even worse shape than it appeared. The culprit? Thousands of stalled and vacant condo units that were being held off the market — so-called shadow inventory — threatening to add years to New York City’s real estate recovery.

In today’s improved economy, many in the industry are wondering what happened to all that inventory. With sales picking up and some new condos morphing into rentals, everyone agrees that the number of shadow units has dropped. But no one knows by exactly how much. [more]

Since its inauguration in the last couple of years as an epicenter for young families, developers in the Financial District have sought to mold it as a toddler-oriented mecca, a sort of southern Tribeca for clans that can afford it, the Observer reported. The $4.5 million Imagination Playground and good public schools continue to attract families, as do the European-feeling streets that are quiet as soon as the closing bell rings. But the “baby boomlet,” as the New York Times called it in 2009, seems to have crested in FiDi, with luxury rentals now more likely to be converted to hold roommates than playpens. According to resident Angela Tai, a creative recruiter originally from Taiwan, each FiDi high-rise has its own identity. Her own building, at 2 Gold Street, is in the mid-range — somewhere between 99 John Street, which is teeming with young children and families, and 200 Water Street, which is “like a “high-end dorm,” she says. Her own building is a good mix of people like her: “childless, but with some money — and dogs,” she says. In addition to the families and singles, amenities for older folks keep popping up in FiDi as well, such as Todd English’s Libertine at the Gild Hall hotel, and Bayard’s Blue Bar. [NYO]

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From the May issue: A year ago this month, New York’s real estate community experienced one of the darker moments of the recession when Coldwell Banker Hunt Kennedy — one of the city’s largest and most established firms — announced it would close. However, CBHK turned out to be the only major firm that disappeared. Business, meanwhile, has steadily improved for months. “New York has had a very good rebound,” said Pamela Liebman, CEO of the Corcoran Group. [more]

Patrick Boland, a construction company owner based in New York City, pleaded guilty today to conspiracy to evade payroll taxes and to file false currency transit reports, according to a statement released today from the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of New York. Boland, who had owned two construction companies, Alcon Associates and Alcon Builders Group, which worked on residential, retail and medical building projects including the Ripley’s Believe it or Not Manhattan location, was accused of paying his employees in cash from January 2000 to January 2008. In the process, Boland failed to remit upwards of $298,546 in Social Security, Medicare, and other taxes. He faces up to five years in prison and is scheduled to be sentenced April 30. TRD