From left: Donald Trump, president of the Trump Organization, Dottie Herman, president of Prudential Douglas Elliman, Elizabeth Stribling, president of Stribling & Associates, Stuart Saft, chairman of Dewey & LeBoeuf’s global real estate department, and Frederick Peters, president of Warburg Realty Partnership, and Lois Weiss, real estate columnist for the New York Post

Compiled by Lauren Elkies

In the wake of Sandy Weill’s reported $88 million sale of his 15 Central Park West penthouse, The Real Deal wanted to touch base and see if real estate executives had any last minute predictions for the New Year since speaking with the magazine for the December residential market report.

Dottie Herman, president of Prudential Douglas Elliman, and Frederick Peters, president of Warburg Realty Partnership, said to expect 2012 to be a bit of a repeat of 2011, while developer Donald Trump said “really good real estate will have excess value.” Elizabeth Stribling, president of Stribling & Associates, predicts a “continuing strong demand for new condominium offerings all over town,” while Stuart Saft, chairman of Dewey & LeBoeuf’s global real estate department, said “the euro will continue to be in trouble causing a flight to safety to the U.S. and particularly New York City, so New York City properties will trade at even lower cap rates.” Meanwhile, Citi Habitats President Gary Malin and Halstead Property Development Marketing President Stephen Kliegerman recently told amNY that 2012 would bring more development and fewer amenities to New York City’s real estate market. [more]

After months of rapidly dropping prices in Manhattan’s residential market, more brokers say they’re seeing seeing stabilization across all types of housing stock, according to Crain’s. The rebound has been so pronounced that some brokers, like Marketing Directors CEO Adrienne Albert, are even raising prices on new development units. Albert, who recently boosted prices by 3 percent to 5 percent at the 44-unit Apex condominium in Harlem, said she’s one of many who are feeling more bullish. [more]

From the December issue: Kitchen counters that can barely fit a coffeemaker, doors that swing the wrong way and terrace railings that hide views. These are just a few of the notorious apartment layout mistakes that regularly work their way into blueprints for New York City apartments. But if there is an upside to this long-standing problem, it’s that the downturn is having a corrective effect on floor-plan blunders. Unlike in the heady days of the boom, today there is little room for these sorts of layout and design miscalculations, brokers say. “I think the pressure on the development community to provide marketable product is so high today that people are now being sensitive to every single issue in order to build the best possible product,” said Adrienne Albert, CEO of The Marketing Directors. [more]

Andrew Gerringer, the erstwhile head of Prudential Douglas Elliman’s Development Marketing Group, has announced that he will move to new development sales firm the Marketing Directors.

The move marks a homecoming for Gerringer, who got his start in real estate at the Marketing Directors when he worked there as regional director of sales in the 1980s. “We’re delighted to welcome Andrew back,” Marketing Directors founder and CEO Adrienne Albert said in a statement released to The Real Deal. “Following his tenure with us… Andrew went on to become one of the top producers and most accomplished professionals in the industry. His resume speaks for itself, and we’re thrilled to have him back on our team.” [more]

Adrienne Albert, CEO of Marketing Directors

The residential market in the New York City metro area has bottomed out, according to Adrienne Albert, CEO of new development marketing firm Marketing Directors, but concessions still abound, for both buyers and renters, she said. Even so, Albert said that the incentives have begun to dwindle as the market stabilizes. “We don’t see this huge dumping of product into the rental market, so that’s why inventories keep coming down and the concessions get tighter,” Albert said. “In the condominium market, there was a time when everybody was terrified; sales came to a halt. You could get 20 percent, sometimes as much as 25 percent, off the list price.” Today, developers are “cautiously optimistic” about the future, Albert said, with a huge uptick in interest from foreign buyers helping to even out the industry.

Left to right: 452 Fifth Avenue, Stephen Siegel and Worldwide Plaza

CB Richard Ellis’s chairman of global brokerage, Stephen Siegel,
pointed to multiple bidders for Midtown office properties as evidence
of strength returning to the investment sales market. He said the 30 bids entered by last Friday’s deadline for 452 Fifth
Avenue at 40th Street, an office tower owned by HSBC Bank, and the 16
or 18 bids at Worldwide Plaza, at 825 Eighth Avenue, marked the
beginning of a coming wave of activity. And although the deal at Worldwide Plaza recently collapsed, he said there were “five or six backup transactions there.” Siegel said, “I think this is the beginning of what will be a very
accelerated pace by the end of the year and the first half of 2010.” [more]