From left: Robert Dvorin, Dottie Herman, Andrew Heiberger and Phillip Acha

A Prudential Douglas Elliman veteran and his team have left the firm in the wake of several high-profile departures over the last few months. Robert Dvorin, who was with the company for eight years and ranked among the top 25 agents at the company in 2008, 2009 and 2010, left to join Town, a relatively new residential brokerage and brainchild of Citi Habitats founder Andrew Heiberger.

Dvorin’s five-person sales team, including his wife, Young Lee, made the move with him. The broker was previously the director of sales at SoLofts and is currently marketing a 33,000-square-foot apartment building at 55 Warren Street in Tribeca for $29.9 million, which he took with him from Elliman.
[more]

From left: former Corcoran agents Bill Kowalczuk and Susan Singer; Town Residential founder Andrew Heiberger

Four agents from the Corcoran Group have jumped ship to Town Residential, the latest venture from Citi Habitats founder Andrew Heiberger.

Bill Kowalczuk, a senior vice president at Corcoran, brought his two-person team with him to Town, while Susan Singer, also a senior vice president who works independently, came on her own.

In July 2006, Kowalczuk brokered a deal for a 5,000-square-foot rental loft in the Meatpacking District for $33,000 a month, the highest residential rent ever paid in the neighborhood at that time. [more]

Andrew HeibergerFrom the January issue: Andrew Heiberger has decided that Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village is a neighborhood. Most New Yorkers think of the massive rental housing complex as part of the East Village. But it’s large enough to warrant its own neighborhood, at least according to the 42-year-old founder of Citi Habitats, who largely credits himself with creating the current layout of neighborhoods in Manhattan.

“When I first had Citi Habitats, Manhattan used to be divided into four neighborhoods — Upper East, Upper West, Midtown and Downtown,” said Heiberger. “I came into the business, and I said, ‘This is not how the city works.’ I put out a real estate map that most of the firms are still using today, which broke [Manhattan] into 13 neighborhoods.”

With Heiberger’s new brokerage, Town Residential, he’s at it again. [more]

For New York City real estate, 2010 in many ways marked a return to normalcy after the tumultuous aftermath of the financial crisis. As the ubiquitous real estate appraiser and Miller Samuel CEO Jonathan Miller put it: “it was a year of a sense of relief.” City home prices stopped their freefall and sales activity improved considerably from the post-Lehman doldrums. Stalled condominium projects like the Sheffield and 1 Rector Park re-started sales. Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim bought Tamir Sapir’s Fifth Avenue townhouse, the Duke Semans mansion, for $44 million. As the unspoken taboo on ostentatious spending faded, a number of high-end residential properties changed hands at the end of the year, including Brooke Astor’s 14-room duplex at 778 Park Avenue, which finally sold after two years on the market (albeit for a significant discount from its original asking price). Japanese retailer Uniqlo snagged 89,000 square feet at 666 Fifth Avenue’s former Brooks Brothers space for a record $300 million, demonstrating that retail is still thriving along the posh shopping corridor.
But the economic downturn continued to make its presence felt. The office market remained uneven and troubled lender iStar Financial fought to stave off bankruptcy amid lingering fears of a double-dip recession.
Here are The Real Deal staff’s picks for the stories that most altered the New York City real estate landscape in 2010, in alphabetical order. [more]

From left: Wendy Maitland, Reid Price, Jeffrey Appel and Itzaskun “Itzy” Garay

In addition to Brown Harris Stevens power brokers Wendy Maitland and Reid Price, new recruits to Town Residential — the new brokerage launched today by Citi Habitats founder Andrew Heiberger — include Citi Habitats managers Itzaskun “Itzy” Garay and Matthew Van Damm, and Bank of America’s Jeffrey Appel.

Town Residential has opened two branches with space for around 140 agents. The 16,000-square-foot flagship office is located at 110 Fifth Avenue, between 16th and 17th streets, and will house 115 agents. A 30-agent office at 88 Greenwich Street is located in the former sales office of Greenwich Club Residences, a new 452-unit condominium developed by Heiberger’s Manhattan-based development company, Buttonwood Real Estate. The building is now nearly sold out, the firm said, and Heiberger will continue to be active in development under the auspices of Buttonwood, which is a separate company from Town. [more]

Wendy Maitland of BHS and 88 Greenwich

Last week, 88 Greenwich in the Financial District closed on its 407th
unit, making it more than 90 percent sold, a milestone for the
452-unit condo conversion that’s been on the market since 2007,
according to the New York Post. Developed by Andrew Heiberger’s Button
Real Estate, many industry insiders originally thought the project would not succeed.
But the building, which has an additional 10 units in contract,
decided to do its conversion in pieces. Units on the top floors were
spruced up with luxury finishes and, as construction wound down, the
existing rentals on the first three floors were vacated and sold off.
Overall, sales prices have been relatively modest, with apartments in the
building getting less than $1,000 per square foot. The remaining units
are, for the most part, being sold untouched, with prices between
$449,000 and $1.05 million. One exception is the 2,086-square-foot
two-bedroom, three-bathroom penthouse, which had been rented for
$15,000 per month until a few weeks ago and is now listed for $4.175
million with Wendy Maitland of Brown Harris Stevens. [Post]

[more]

Wendy Maitland of BHS and 88 Greenwich

Last week, 88 Greenwich in the Financial District closed on its 407th
unit, making it more than 90 percent sold, a milestone for the
452-unit condo conversion that’s been on the market since 2007,
according to the New York Post. Developed by Andrew Heiberger’s Button
Real Estate, many industry insiders originally thought the project would not succeed.
But the building, which has an additional 10 units in contract,
decided to do its conversion in pieces. Units on the top floors were
spruced up with luxury finishes and, as construction wound down, the
existing rentals on the first three floors were vacated and sold off.
Overall, sales prices have been relatively modest, with apartments in the
building getting less than $1,000 per square foot. The remaining units
are, for the most part, being sold untouched, with prices between
$449,000 and $1.05 million. One exception is the 2,086-square-foot
two-bedroom, three-bathroom penthouse, which had been rented for
$15,000 per month until a few weeks ago and is now listed for $4.175
million with Wendy Maitland of Brown Harris Stevens. [Post]

[more]

Greg Young is launching a new business, Broker Heaven NY

As director of sales at Citi Habitats, Greg Young received a nickname f [more]

Andrew Heiberger

Broker-turned-developer Andrew Heiberger is getting back into the brokerage game.
The Citi Habitats founder and former CEO is in the process of starting a new rental and sales firm, he told The Real Deal, under the umbrella of his development firm, Buttonwood Real Estate. “I am in the process of finalizing a business model for a new residential real estate brokerage focusing on both sales and rentals,” said Heiberger, who founded Buttonwood after selling Citi Habitats to NRT, parent company of the Corcoran Group, in 2004, for a reported $49.6 million. He remained mum about further details, saying: “It would be premature to announce any further details at this time but we look forward to creating a resource that will better Manhattan’s rapidly evolving residential real estate business. [more]

From the October issue: Despite its prime waterfront location and its disproportionate amount
of cutting-edge “green” architecture, Battery Park City is getting
slammed by the downturn more than many other Manhattan neighborhoods. Stephen and Mary Lacoff, for instance, have been trying to sell their
1,158-square-foot two-bedroom at 2 South End Avenue for more than a
year now. Despite dropping the asking price from $1.385 million to
$999,000, they’ve received no offers. The apartment — which, like everything in Battery Park City, is in a
land-lease building — has some of the higher ground rents in the area,
contributing to common charges of $2,003 a month, or $1.74 a square
foot. “There has been some intermittent interest, but no offers,”
Stephen Lacoff said. “What I’m taking from that is there’s not a huge
demand.”