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]

From the March issue: Why is Pottery Barn moving to Brooklyn Heights
but not to Astoria?
Why does Park Slope have numerous Starbucks while there are none in nearby Fort Greene?
And why are store clerks in Williamsburg
suddenly asking to know your zip code? The one word answer is psychographics,
an art/science that uses the growing mountain of consumer data now available to
help retailers, and marketers in particular, make decisions about real estate. Analysts
use psychographic information to define consumer categories, which are often
given colorful names such as “Shotguns and Pickups” and “Blue
Blood Estates.” The results are used to decide where to locate stores,
restaurants, banks and even medical facilities.

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