Silverstein Properties CEO Larry SilversteinSilverstein Properties President and CEO Larry Silverstein appeared on CNBC yesterday to discuss the commercial property market in the city and his developments at the World Trade Center construction site (see after the jump).

Silverstein said prices were “off the charts again” and even higher than they were before the crash. “There’s a huge amount of investment capital looking for a home,” he said. “That investment capital comes from all over the world, and its looking to invest, where? In America. Where in America? New York City.” [more]

Donald TrumpIn his inaugural appearance on “Squawk Box’s” new weekly feature, “Trump Tuesday,” Donald Trump said housing is the best investment right now, and railed on green office buildings.

Trump reasoned that because of the nearly $16 trillion national debt, “the greatest thing you can own” is real estate, unless the debt gets resloved the “old-fashioned” and “proper” way. Watch the entire video after the jump. [more]

Paul Ballew, chief economist of Nationwide Mutual Insurance, accompanied attorney Adam Leitman Bailey on CNBC yesterday to diagnose the state of the housing recovery. Each of their statements proved grimmer than the last. Bailey started by noting the three markets, the well-performing luxury market, the muddling lower market that could be damaged by the conforming loan limit and the foreclosure market, which he said may not be sorted through for another five years. Comments

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Frank Sorrentino, chairman and CEO of North Jersey Community Bank, appeared on CNBC today to discuss the national housing market (see video above). Though mortgage rates “are probably the lowest they’ve ever been” and U.S. housing prices are “incredibly low,” Sorrentino said “a crisis of confidence” is preventing consumers from making purchases. “People watch the news all day,” he said, “but if they would step back from that noise and they would look at their situations, [they would see] now is a really great time to buy a home.” [more]

Mortimer Zuckerman, founder and chairman of Boston Properties and owner of the New York Daily News, appeared on CNBC this afternoon to discuss the media business, the debt ceiling and the commercial real estate market. When CNBC noted the bifurcated nature of the market, which is seeing growth in the best markets, but rent declines in other large cities, Zuckerman said that the dichotomy does not concern him. “We’ve limited our own activities to Washington and New York, Boston and San Francisco and these are the best markets to be in,” he said. [more]

Richard LeFrak, head of the LeFrak Organization that owns some 25,000 apartments across the country, including the large apartment complex in Queens known as LeFrak City, appeared on CNBC this morning to discuss the current real estate market (see video above). LeFrak said the commercial real estate market has almost fully rebounded from the downturn, thanks to the cheap interest rates set by the Federal Reserve System. In fact, LeFrak said “trophy properties” in the commercial sector are “fully priced” and are so expensive they “may even be on the edge of another bubble.” [more]

Donald Trump appeared on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” this morning to respond to a New York Times story that honed in on two lawsuits filed against the real estate developer (see video above). One lawsuit alleges that Trump misrepresented his involvement in several Florida buildings that bear his name but were developed by a third party, while the other claims classes at his for-profit Trump University are little more than “infomercials.” Trump defended his licensing business by pointing out that prospective buyers are provided with paperwork that clearly detail his involvement in the residences, and reminded viewers that his university has garnered a 98 percent approval rate, and that the allegations are based on the opinions held by a select few who unfairly target him. [more]

CNBC’s Diana Olick talks about the best and worst local markets for 2011 in the video above. If investors want to buy, hold and rent out a home, the best places to buy, based on five metrics — price-income ratio, price-rent ratio, price declines, foreclosure rates, foreclosure resales include Poughkeepsie, NY, Harftord, Conn., and Pittsburgh, Penn. “Markets like Hartford and Pittsburgh are on that list because they’re about on par now so they’ve returned back down to their levels of affordability before the housing run-up,” said Stan Humphries, chief economist at Zillow. In Hartford, he added, “about 10 percent of monthly transactions are foreclosure resales.” The worst markets to invest include Atlantic City, Philadelphia and Baltimore. [more]

Could the foreclosure freeze lead to yet another housing crisis? The experts in this CNBC video say that the foreclosure moratorium that some banks are facing could cause major damage in the near future, particularly in the mortgage market.

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Though the banks are trying to work through the foreclosure mess as quickly as possible, putting a blanket moratorium on foreclosures now “will be a disaster for banks and the housing market, and the market won’t hit bottom,” said Steven Moore, senior economic writer for the Wall Street Journal, in the CNBC video above. “This crisis could not have come at a worse time,” Moore said, though he pointed out that, three weeks before the general election, it is playing into the hands of politicians, since it’s “a good populist issue.” According to CNCB’s David Faber, the key question is how to work through this crisis and how long it will take. “You need to sort of set the bottom,” he said. “To the extent that you delay sales of foreclosures, and have them out there weighing on the market, you won’t see prices hit where you attract buyers.” Moore also noted that these three or four extra months that banks can’t get payments will have a negative impact on the market as well.

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