(Clockwise from left) Brokers Richard Steinberg, Steve Kliegerman, Stacey Max, and Victoria Shtainer talk about real estate priorities post-election.

New construction helped define the legacy of Michael Bloomberg’s first two terms as mayor, whether it was parks, schools, apartments, or more controversial mega-projects. That came in lockstep with a wholesale reordering of what should go where in New York, as Bloomberg rezoned 20 percent of the city, which was the most in four decades. But in Bloomberg’s third term, which he won yesterday in a close election against city Comptroller William Thompson, the city’s real estate community seems focused on different issues — some more far-reaching than others.
Some brokers hope lessons have been learned, like with the Second Avenue Subway, whose famously disruptive construction has hurt sales at the Upper East Side’s Georgica condo, said Richard Steinberg, an executive managing director with Warburg Realty Partnership. [more]

From left: Diane Levine of Sotheby’s International Realty, 168 West 73rd Street, Neil Binder of Bellmarc Realty

While a significant portion of listings — roughly 33 percent,
according to Streeteasy.com — saw price cuts last month, there was an
increase in sales and many brokers started elevating asking prices to
enhance their units’ image, to leave room for haggling or because they
thought the market was turning around. Upwards of 850 homes in Manhattan sold in August, according to figures compiled by The Real Deal
using Streeteasy.com data, up from approximately 760 deals made a month
prior. Almost 5 percent of all Manhattan homes on the market last
month, the data shows, saw price increases; those price changes
averaged 6.4 percent. And those price increases were seen across the price spectrum. [more]

$26 million 15 Central Park West apartment (left) and $275,000 530 Manhattan Avenue unit

The most expensive home to come on the market this week in Manhattan is a
three-bedroom, four-bath condo at the Robert A.M. Stern-designed 15
Central Park West, according to Streeteasy.com. The home is listed for
$26 million with Brown Harris Stevens. The least expensive home listed this week is a two-bedroom,
one-bath co-op unit at 530 Manhattan Avenue. The Corcoran Group is listing the home for $275,000. TRD [more]

Neil Binder, co-founder of Bellmarc Realty and author of four real estate books, sat down with The Real Deal to
talk about the market, cutting costs at the firm to survive the
downturn and how a cheating girlfriend got him into the real estate
business. 

There are tons of predictions about when the market will bottom. Do you have one? Yes, and mine is the right one. (laughs) It already has. There are
three [economic] states that economists talk about: one is an L — we
go down and we stay down, one is a V — we go down and we pop up and
the W — we go down, we go up, we go down, we go up. I truly believe
[this] will be a W.

How are you trying to cut costs? We closed our main location,
we consolidated staff, we repositioned our advertising a little bit and
made cuts wherever we could make them and still be able to service
customers. Nothing was sacred. I think we were the first ones to get
out there and start doing things and everybody said ‘Oh, Bellmarc’s in
trouble, Bellmarc’s going down, Bellmarc’s bankrupt.’ I’ve been in
business 30 years, and for at least 20 of them, someone has told me I’m
going bankrupt. We just had our 30th anniversary. [more]

From the May issue: Brokers famously sell the mantra of
location, location, location. But when it comes to their own offices,
that refrain may be changing. During the boom times, real estate
companies large and small rushed to open glittering storefront offices,
like Halstead Property’s mammoth 408 Columbus Avenue office across from
the Museum of Natural History, or the Tribeca office that Brown Harris
Stevens has on the ground floor of a 19th-century Romanesque Revival
building. The hope was to stake out their turf in prime neighborhoods
while attracting passersby. But New York’s housing slump has prompted
the rapid closing of some real estate offices, as firms seek to cut
costs, and the opening of others, as they seek to take advantage of
falling rents to gobble up new territory. And while closing an office
inevitably means ceding territory to competitors, with real estate
sales down nearly 50 percent from last year according to a quarterly
market report by Prudential Douglas Elliman, satellite offices are a
luxury many firms can no longer afford. [more]

Co-ops in the city have raised their maintenance charges by as much as
15 percent recently as a result of rising property taxes and operating costs.
John Janangelo, president of Bellmarc Property Management, said taxes
for some of the buildings the company manages have risen by 35 percent this year. “It comes
at the worst time,” Janangelo said, adding, “You don’t want to pass through
these huge increases because people can’t afford them, but you have no
choice.” Buildings whose property values have soared in recent years
are experiencing even bigger tax increases because the assessed values
of their buildings have gone up. David Kuperberg, president of Cooper
Square Realty, said the assessments have increased based on last year’s
market, and assessments often take a while to catch up to the current
market.