From left: 451 Avenue S, 74 Hicks Street and 420 Avenue S (building credits: PropertyShark)

Despite hot new neighborhoods sprouting up in seemingly every corner of Brooklyn, Gravesend and Brooklyn Heights proved they were still the destination for the highest priced real estate in 2011, according to an analysis by Brownstoner. Of the five priciest sales in the borough this year, two were in the Heights and three in Gravesend. The most expensive sale was a 2,914-square-foot townhouse at 451 Avenue S in Gravensed, that sold for $10.25 million in May. The price per square foot was likely the highest ever paid in the borough, according to Brownstoner, but the total amount still trailed the townhouse across the street at 450 Avenue S, which sold for $11 million in 2003. [more]

Properties owned by the Watchtower Society

Massey Knakal Realty Services will be marketing three properties in Brooklyn Heights known as the Watchtower buildings that are valued at $18.45 million altogether, the Commercial Observer reported. But the buildings — at 183 Columbia Heights, 50 Orange Street, and 161 Columbia Heights — will be marketed individually. For decades, their owner has been the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, a wing of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. And in previous instances when the buildings were up for sale, there was no asking price and no brokerage to handle the sale, the Brooklyn Eagle noted. Richard Devine, a spokesperson for the Watchtower Society, said that this was a new approach by the religious organization. [more]

From left: the condominium at 170 East End Avenue and the Brooklyn Heights townhouse

Real estate developer Alexandre Bosoni and his wife, Maria, are asking $70,000 per month to rent their penthouse at newly constructed condominium 170 East End Avenue, formerly Doctors’ Hospital. The Parisian couple paid $11.8 million in 2009 to buy the nine-room spread from the sponsor, according to city records. Meanwhile, Daniel Shefter, a new partner at Goldman Sachs, and his wife, Lucyna, put their Brooklyn Heights house at 26 Garden Place on the market last week for $5.5 million. City records show they purchased it in 2007 for $4.9 million. Click here for more.

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A segment of the Brooklyn Bridge Park

The first sections of the Brooklyn Bridge Park greenway have opened, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced today, connecting Old Fulton Street to Pier 2 along the East River with a 2,000-foot bicycle and walk lane. The 30-foot wide greenway, which is being developed in conjunction with the Brooklyn Bridge Park, will stretch approximately 14 miles along the waterfront when completed. An additional five acres of park space was also opened today at the Brooklyn Heights recreation space. Once completed, Brooklyn Bridge Park will be roughly 85 acres in size, according to Bloomberg. So far, the city has committed $194 million to the project, while the state has contributed $85 million. TRD

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A Brooklyn Heights building’s transformation from office to residential space has begun, according to Brownstoner. Although developers garnered approval to convert 75 Clinton Street, a one-time bankruptcy court location, into an apartment building in 2007, the plan stalled for unknown reasons. The conversion plans, as written in 2007, call for the addition of six floors to the top of the structure. No word yet on how many units it will contain or whether it will be rental or for-sale.

Actor Paul Giamatti, best known for his roles in movies like “Sideways” and “Cinderella Man,” has purchased a $1.3 million condo in Brooklyn Heights, according to Real Estalker. The 1,400-square-foot, three-bedroom, two-bathroom home is the second-known abode that Giamatti owns — the other is located in Venice, Calif. The Brooklyn pad is outfitted with hardwood floors and marble kitchen countertops, and contains a 29-foot-deep living room.

The Bloomberg Administration and environmental officials have named the Jamaica Bay as their next cleanup target area. Meanwhile, Chase, the consumer and commercial banking arm of JPMorgan Chase, announced today the opening of two new centers in the tri-state area to help distressed homeowners avoid foreclosure. Click here for more. [more]

737 Drew Street

From the January issue: Minority and working-class Brooklyn neighborhoods like Bed-Stuy,
Canarsie and East New York have been suffering from high concentrations
of foreclosures since before 2007.
But recent statistics indicate that distress is creeping into
gentrified neighborhoods like Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Fort Greene and
Brooklyn Heights now, too. The Williamsburg-Greenpoint area saw a 141 percent quarterly
increase in foreclosure filings during the first three quarters of 2009
compared to 2008, while Fort Greene and Brooklyn Heights saw a 71
percent jump. Brooklyn-based appraiser Sam Heskel counted 99 distressed real
estate listings in Williamsburg, including 44 condominiums that are in
“pre-foreclosure.”

Nancy Packes, president of her own new development marketing firm, at 316 11th Avenue, where she is the leasing consultant. The building is slated to begin renting units this winter.

From the December issue:
Once the province of a few niche players, the new development rental
sector is becoming a hotly contested battleground as brokerages look to
replace once-lucrative condo deals.
In the booming economy of the mid-2000s, many new development
marketing firms focused most of their attention on sales, while a few
firms had the rental field to themselves. But now, as marketers migrate over from the stagnant condo market,
newly built rentals are emerging as an increasingly important source of
revenue. And the sector is only expected to grow more competitive in
2010. “During the condo boom, they only focused on condos — that’s where
the money was,” Citi Habitats President Gary Malin said of new
development marketing firms. “Their condo stuff has slowed down, so
they’re trying to get in [to the rental market]. They’re looking to
find other revenue streams,” he added. While the pipeline of condos coming to market is slowing, brokers anticipate a healthy number of new rental buildings in 2010, largely because they have proved easier for developers to finance in the current climate. Some 2,935 rental units have come online in Manhattan so far this year, compared to 1,482 in 2008, according to a market report by Nancy Packes, the president of Brown Harris Stevens Project Marketing and founder of her own new development marketing firm, Nancy Packes, Inc., which does both new development sales and rentals.  More

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Robert Nocco recently moved out of his rent-controlled home, where his
parents had first lived around 50 years ago, the New York Times
reported, but it wasn’t of his own accord. The building’s owner, Dexter
Gurrieri, president of Vandenberg Real Estate, accused Nocco of
violating the terms of his rent-control agreement more than 30 years
ago. Turns out Nocco had signed an affidavit asserting that his parents
had moved out of the apartment in 1976, the same year he moved into the
space; in order to take over the rent-controlled unit, Nocco had to
have lived with his parents for two years before they move out. Nocco
asserts that his father lived in the unit almost 10 years after Nocco
moved in — so Nocco believes he should have been allowed to stay. But
Nocco, who paid $212 a month for the unit, one floor of a Brooklyn
Heights townhouse, took a settlement and moved on. [more]