300 East 64th Street and RFR Realty's Aby Rosen (credit: PropertyShark)

RFR Realty is selling a 16-year-old, 27-story apartment building in Lenox Hill, Crain’s reported. An unnamed source told Crain’s that the building, a rental property at 300 East 64th Street and Second Avenue, could yield $100 million from the sale, equaling $715 per square foot.

According to Robert Knakal, chairman of Massey Knakal Realty Services who is marketing the property, the company is selling the building to meet investors’ interest in residential properties. He told Crain’s that whoever buys the building could convert it into a condominium or continue to operate it as a rental building. Knakal declined to tell Crain’s how much the property would sell for. It is also currently not listed on Massey Knakal’s website. [more]

From left: Aaron Feldman and Jordan Vogel, principals of Benchmark, and 156 Sullivan Street

Two-year-old Benchmark Real Estate Services has listed a multi-family property at 156 Sullivan Street for $15.75 million, aiming to repeat the success of a profitable flip this fall.

Benchmark, which was formed in 2009 by Aaron Feldman and Jordan Vogel and owns 10 buildings with about 400 rental apartments in total, purchased 156 Sullivan Street, a 40-foot-wide walk-up with 22 fair-market and rent-regulated apartments, last year for $6.05 million. The fair market apartments have been fully gut renovated, according to the listing. Benchmark sold its first building, at 142 Sullivan Street, in October for $9.4 million. [more]

From left: Ellaina Dreifach, former director of retail for Massey Knakal, Benjamin Fox, executive vice president of retail leasing, and Paul Massey, CEO of Massey Knakal

Ellaina Dreifach, who was nabbed by Massey Knakal Realty Services from Eretz Realty earlier this year to run day-to-day operations for its new retail division, has left the firm after only nine months, she told The Real Deal today, citing an unfair commission split and uncomfortable working conditions at the New York City investment sales firm.

Benjamin Fox, executive vice president of retail leasing at Massey Knakal, brought Dreifach over to the firm in January in his effort to staff up what was then the firm’s new retail leasing division, which he heads.

Dreifach was promoted to first vice president of retail leasing from director of retail leasing at Massey Knakal in October, focusing on the Tribeca and the Financial District neighborhoods. [more]

Timour Shafran of Capin & Associates in front of the Hamilton Heights building where he has a syndication deal pendingFrom the October issue: It’s a deal that blends the American Dream with a touch of globalization, and hints of a bubbling trend.
Fifty-three Chinese-Americans pooled $160,000 each to buy a corner at Delancey and Pitt streets on the Lower East Side for $8.5 million this summer. They each plan to contribute $240,000 more to fund the construction of a 53-unit condo to replace the auto shop that is there now, said seller Anthony Marano, a principal at Ozymandius Realty.
“Fifty of the units are already spoken for,” Marano told The Real Deal. “It’s not a building that will be vacant or unfinished. We wish we could have done it, but there’s no construction financing to speak of.”
[more]

From left: Tamir Shemesh of Corcoran Group, the first-place team and Bob Knakal of Massey Knakal Realty Services

From the August issue: The Real Deal and guests hit the links last month for the magazine’s first annual Invitational Golf Tournament. Some 31 industry professionals donned their plaid pants and headed to Hampton Hills Country Club in Westhampton Beach to try their luck in the scramble-style tournament. Other guests stopped by for lunch on the patio and post-golf cocktails. The winning team included Harry Zapiti and John Bennardo of Manhattan-based Legacy Builders, who partnered with ERG Property Advisors’ Michael Guarino Jr. and Jason Au of JG Capital. The team was awarded a trophy, and each team member received a $75 gift certificate to the Hampton Hills pro shop. Other guests included Bob Knakal of Massey Knakal Realty Services; Georgia Malone of Georgia Malone & Company, Michael Duckfield of Israel Berger & Associates; A.C. Lawrence & Company co-founders Anthony DeGrotta and Larry Friedman, and chairman Marc Lewis. Click here for pictures from the event. [more]

In early 2008, Francis Greenburger’s Time Equities began demolishing three buildings at 50 West Street to make room for a $600 million, 62-story hotel and residential development. A few months later, the development was put on hold as a result of the financial crisis.
“Market conditions were too unstable to proceed at the time,” Greenburger said. “We just secured the site and decided to wait until conditions improved.”
Time’s prospective development was just one of many stalled construction sites on a 650-building list compiled by the city’s Department of Buildings in 2009, Crain’s reported. Now, two years later, construction is recommencing at some of those sites — about 550 sites have restarted in the two years the list has existed, including 111 Kent Avenue and 175 Kent Avenue in Williamsburg — but not as quickly as some might hope. Experts say it may take longer than it did after the last downturn in the early 1990s for all of these projects to get going again. [more]

The family of former Gov. Eliot Spitzer has sold a medial office condominium at 345 East 37th Street for $31 million, Crain’s reported. The 81,000-square-foot space was purchased by medical property investment firm ProMed, which plans to renovate. The 57-story building, also known as the Corinthian, has upwards of 860 residential condos in addition to the medical offices. Last year, the Spitzer family sold off the building’s 186-space parking garage to Alliance Parking owner Gregg Reuben for $10.2 million. [more]

Although developers Larry Silverstein and Harry Macklowe headlined the impressive list of speakers at Massey Knakal’s Commercial Real Estate Investment today, it was developer Sharif El-Gamal who jazzed up the audience at the second-floor auditorium in the McGraw-Hill Building in Midtown.

Speaking as part of a panel that included Brookfield Properties CEO Richard Clark, George Comfort & Sons CEO Peter Duncan and Himmel + Meringoff Properties’ managing partner Stephen Meningoff, El-Gamal talked about his company’s competitive advantages. [more]

Robert Knakal, chairman and founding partner of full-service property sales firm Massey Knakal Realty Services, was a freshman at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1981 and wanted to be a Wall Street trader (a la Gordon Gekko, the main antagonist of the 1987 film “Wall Street”) when he walked into Coldwell Banker for a summer job, thinking it was a bank. He took a market research position there and embarked on his real estate career. Knakal talked about his 27-year real estate career including co-founding and building Massey Knakal Realty Services at a lunch yesterday at the Cornell Club, at 6 East 44th Street. The event was held by the New York Metro chapter of CCIM, a global commercial real estate network. See photos from the event above. TRD

A portfolio of more than 200,000 square feet worth of northern Manhattan investment properties has hit the market and could go for close to $100 million, which, according to the Observer, would make it among the largest deals of its kind since the Lehman Brothers crash. The portfolio, which is being marketed by Massey Knakal Realty Services, consists of six development sites and income-producing properties. The last deal to rival this portfolio in size was in 2007, when 47 buildings in East Harlem and seven condo units in the East Village were sold for $225 million to British investment firm Dawnay Day. The firm has since folded. [more]