From left: Stephen Kliegerman, Roberta Benzilio and On Prospect Park

Brown Harris Stevens is now handling the marketing of Richard Meier‘s On Prospect Park, taking over from the Corcoran Group, BHS said today.

SDS Procida Development Partners, the developer of the 80-percent sold glass condo tower at 1 Grand Army Plaza in Prospect Heights, has tapped BHS’ Stephen Kliegerman, president of Brown Harris Stevens Development Marketing, and Roberta Benzilio, executive director for Terra Development Marketing, to lead the sales of the 21 units remaining on the market. On Prospect Park has been on the market since 2008. [more]

Dottie Herman, president
of Prudential Douglas Elliman

Though pricing indicators were mixed, the volume of Manhattan residential sales increased in the third quarter of 2011, creating an overall picture of stability in Manhattan’s residential market, according to quarterly reports issued today by the city’s largest real estate brokerages.

The market’s bright spots included an uptick in sales at the most expensive end of the market — larger or relatively high-end properties (those at $5 million and above) — as well as an overall decrease in inventory, which buoyed prices, and an influx of foreign buyers investing in condominiums, experts said.

The median sales price hardly budged since last year, dropping a mere 0.3 percent to $911,333, an increase of 7.2 percent over the previous quarter, according to a report from Prudential Douglas Elliman. As The Real Deal reported in the October issue, the number of sales rose 16.7 percent year-over-year and 17.2 percent since last quarter, hitting 3,106, the report said. [more]

From the July issue: After years of working separately, father-and-son broker team Siim and Rudi Hanja recently joined Brown Harris Stevens, where Siim is now a senior vice president and his son is a licensed real estate salesperson. Siim moved to BHS after spending a decade at Stribling. Rudi previously worked at Prudential Douglas Elliman. The two have spent the majority of their professional careers working with the real estate market downtown, where they have both lived for most of their lives. But until now, they’ve never officially worked together as real estate brokers. [more]

The Manhattan residential real estate sales market can best be characterized as stable, according to second-quarter reports issued by the city’s largest real estate brokerages, signaling strength amidst an uncertain economic climate elsewhere in the country. Reports from Prudential Douglas Elliman, the Corcoran Group and data from sister firms Halstead Property and Brown Harris Stevens show mixed but healthy indicators. In a still strict lending environment, it comes as little surprise that the best performing sectors of the market — the top end of the market where buyers are wealthiest, and the bottom end of the new development market where units qualify for Federal Housing Authority-approved loans — were those where financing came easiest. [more]

Bruno Ricciotti (l) and Noah Freedman, founders of Bond New York

From the May issue: This year, for the first time, scrappy upstarts ousted 138-year-old Brown Harris Stevens from its longtime berth among the city’s five largest firms. Since The Real Deal began its annual ranking of Manhattan residential firms in 2004, the same four sales firms — Prudential Douglas Elliman, the Corcoran Group, Brown Harris Stevens and Halstead Property — have dominated the top of the list. For years, these companies have reigned supreme as the largest firms in the city, with the most agents, the most listings and often the most exposure. [more]

By Sarabeth Sanders and Amy Tennery

The Real Deal  attended an event celebrating the launch of Barbara Corcoran’s new book, “Shark Tales: How I turned $1,000 into a billion dollar business,” last night inside 15 Union Square West’s apartment 5B, which Brown Harris Stevens is currently marketing for $8.1 million. The party was chock full of nautical delights — including shirtless, so-called surfer boys, twin retro bathing suit ladies and a bathtub mermaid — and awash with mai tais and champagne, as well as custom sushi rolls. It drew both real estate bigwigs and Corcoran’s other business buddies, including several co-judges from her entrepreneurial reality show, “Shark Tank.” [more]

From left: Elliman’s Dottie Herman, Corcoran’s Pamela Liebman, Halstead’s Diane Ramirez and Brown Harris Stevens’ Hall Wilkie

Tight credit, a harsh winter and a return to seasonality led to a relatively quiet first quarter in Manhattan, according to several residential sales market reports released today by some of New York City’s top firms. While reports from Prudential Douglas Elliman and the Corcoran Group show a rosier picture than those from sister companies Brown Harris Stevens and Halstead (which release the same data), experts across the board agreed that the market is stable.

The median home sales price dropped to $782,071 in the first quarter of the year, down 9.9 percent from the same time a year earlier and 7.4 percent from fourth-quarter 2010, according to the Elliman report. [more]

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: 200 West 79th Street and 128 East 74th Street

The name “Café Lalo” has been well-known to dessert-lovers — and hopeless romantics — since the cozy restaurant appeared in the 1998 film “You’ve Got Mail.” The Upper West Side café, known for its cakes, pies and frothy coffee drinks, provided an idyllic setting for Meg Ryan’s character to await her mystery Internet love interest, and has since drawn legions of fans retracing her steps. Apparently, that’s translated into big bucks for Café Lalo owner Haim Lalo, an Israeli-expat who opened the cafe in 1998. Lalo recently purchased a unit at the city’s most expensive apartment building, 15 Central Park West, and he’s now selling the duplex co-op he’s owned for years at the Gloucester on 79th Street. The unit is listed for $1.89 million with Greg Kammerer, a senior vice president at the Corcoran Group. Meanwhile, last week, Brown Harris Stevens’ Paula Del Nunzio listed a townhouse at 128 East 74th Street for rent at $63,000 per month. The unit is one of the priciest rentals in the city, behind an 80th Street townhouse (also listed by Del Nunzio) which is on the market for $210,000 per month, and the $140,000-a-month “Cole Porter” apartment at the Waldorf Towers. Click here for more.

[more]

Listing agent Paula Del Nunzio of Brown Harris Stevens and images of 4 East 84th Street (interior listing photo obtained via the Times)

An Upper East Side townhouse originally commissioned by Frank Woolworth is about to shatter New York City records when it hits the market for $90 million, likely the highest-ever official asking price for a single-family home in Manhattan.

According to the New York Times, Brown Harris Stevens townhouse guru Paula Del Nunzio is readying that listing for 4 East 80th Street, the 17,676-square-foot mansion currently owned by the estate of fitness mogul Lucille Roberts, who died in 2003.

Industry sources said its $90 million asking price will by far eclipse any other for a townhouse in New York City history; Aby Rosen’s 22 East 71st Street and the mansion near Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s, at 1016 Madison Avenue, were each, in 2008, asking $75 million. Neither property sold, and both have since slashed their asking prices. [more]