Law firm Greenberg Traurig, which had the second biggest real estate division among New York City law firms according to The Real Deal’s 2010 ranking, added Peter Miller to its stable of real estate attorneys yesterday, the company said. Miller previously headed the real estate and finance practice group at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld and Stroock & Stroock & Lavin, where he represented real estate firms in major transactions throughout the city, most notably Silverstein Properties in its acquisition of a leasehold interest in the World Trade Center. Miller went on to represent Silverstein in negotiations for five separate leases covering more than 10 million square feet. Miller also represented Bear Stearns in its acquisition of 383 Madison Avenue, Edward J. Miskoff Equities in five transactions throughout the city and the Gotham Organization in the development of 200 West 72nd Street. TRD [more]

A. Eugene Kohn, founder and chairman of Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, the New York-based architecture firm behind the Hudson Yards master plan, expects the West Side mega-project to be completed in full by 2025, he told the New York Times. “That sounds like a lot of time, but look at the World Trade Center,” he said. Kohn, who was disqualified from the World Trade Center bidding after his designs were published in a magazine, said his planned JPMorgan Chase headquarters at 5 World Trade Center is also dead in the water, thanks to the bank’s Bear Stearns buyout. [more]

Manhattan-based property owner Tishman Speyer has reached a $1.4 billion loan restructuring agreement on a portfolio of five Chicago office buildings, according to Crain’s. A group of lenders, including the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, had assumed control of the loan following the collapse of Bear Stearns, the original lender, in 2008. Tishman has been in negotiations to restructure the loan for months, after the Fed froze the buildings’ reserve accounts, making it impossible to pay for building improvements and leasing commissions. Under the new restructuring agreement, Tishman hopes it will be able to attract more tenants to the 5.7-million-square-foot office building portfolio, which it acquired from Blackstone Group for $1.7 billion in 2007 with $1.4 billion in debt. [Crain's]

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Click chart for larger version (source: Prudential Douglas Elliman)

Cozy beach cottages are so 2001. Over the past decade, East End homes have gotten bigger, more elaborate and more expensive, according to a 10-year market report released today by Prudential Douglas Elliman. In 2009, the average sales price of a home in the Hamptons was $1.52 million, up 152 percent from $607,014 in 2000. The median sales price jumped 124 percent to $825,000 from $367,250 in 2000, the report shows. The increase reflects the addition of larger homes to the housing stock, said appraiser Jonathan Miller, president and CEO of Miller Samuel and the preparer of the report. (For a story on the East End residential market in the fourth quarter, click here.) “People were seeking larger homes in the country on larger pieces of property, and that became the new image of the Hamptons,” Miller said. Judi Desiderio, CEO of East End brokerage Town & Country Real Estate, said she began to notice the shift towards larger homes in the Hamptons around eight years ago. “Ten years ago, they weren’t buying McMansions,” she said. “They were buying a reasonable home, maybe around 3,000 square feet, which they could enjoy with their family and friends. Then all of a sudden, people started to build bigger. Bigger was better.” [more]

It must have been a very bad dream, which lasted the entire year. Yet
it actually happened: little or no activity took place in commercial
real estate in 2009. For those investment sales brokers who were so busy in 2006 and 2007
making mucho dinero, 2009 was a time to travel to Bora Bora for a
vacation since business was nonexistent. A leading sales broker, who preferred to remain anonymous, shared his struggle over the past year. “I was lucky,” he said. “I had one sale during the year. It was the
sale of a retail condominium in the Village. Two years ago I was the
broker of the year at my firm and now I have enough to pay for
Starbucks.” Another senior investment broker didn’t sound any more optimistic. [more]

In 2005, hedge fund manager Stan Druckenmiller received a visit in his office from a Bear Stearns analyst who advised him to start shorting the subprime market because it was going to crash. Soon after, an analyst from Lehman Brothers told him the same thing. Four years later, after Bear Stearns and Lehman each fell victim to the subprime mortgage collapse, the meetings appear to lend credence to the notion that investment firms were playing both sides of the market at the height of the housing boom. But although the firms are facing major criticism for making contrary bets, “it’s a huge leap from there to fraud,” said CNBC on-air editor Charles Gasparino, author of “The Sellout,” which depicts these scenes. The book, now in stores, argues that the real crime that went on prior to the housing crash was “30 years of mindless risk-taking, and the government basically subsidizing that risk,” Gasparino said. [more]

Prosecutors in the case against former Bear Stearns hedge fund manager and real estate investor Ralph Cioffi have asked a judge to postpone his ruling in the case. The prosecution said they need more time to examine information that could prove Cioffi improperly collateralized his investment in the fund for a real estate deal in Florida. Cioffi, along with former colleague and hedge fund manager Matthew Tannin, are set to go on trial next month for their alleged fraud. In a written statement, assistant Brooklyn U.S. attorneys Ilene Jaroslaw, James McGovern and Patrick Sinclair said that more time was needed to make a complete account of information available on Cioffi’s alleged impropriety. “The government discovered that, despite Bear Stearns Asset Management’s clear instructions to the contrary, Cioffi actually pledged his investment in the Enhanced Fund as collateral for the Florida construction loan anyway,” the prosecutors said.

Jeff Urwin, former co-head of investment banking at Bear Stearns and
now JPMorgan’s head of investment banking coverage in the Americas, has
cut the price of his Upper East Side townhouse to $26 million from
$32.8 million. The listing, with Corcoran Group’s Carrie Chiang and Loy
Carlos, says the mansion is in the low 80s between Fifth and Madison
avenues. The five-floor townhouse has 640 square feet of outdoor space.
The home first went on the market in mid-February, then went off the
market, was re-listed in March, removed from the market in May and
re-listed later that month, according to Streeteasy.com. [more]