At The Real Deal‘s seventh annual forum last week’s at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall, real estate pros gathered to watch debates between real estate attorneys Adam Leitman Bailey of the eponymous firm and Stuart Saft, chair of law firm Dewey & LeBoeuf’s global real estate department; developer Billy Macklowe of William Macklowe Company and John Catsimatidis, CEO of the Red Apple Group; and Frederick Peters, president of Warburg Realty, and Lockhart Steele, founder of Curbed. In attendance were Faith Hope Consolo, chairman of Prudential Douglas Elliman’s retail leasing and sales division, Jonathan Miller, president of appraisal firm Miller Samuel and Andrew Barrocas, CEO of brokerage MNS, all of whom stepped outside to talk to The Real Deal about the state of the market (see video above). — Katherine Clarke

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The Real Deal’s seventh annual forum, “The Debate,” at Avery Fisher Hall in Lincoln Center. Starting at 6:30 p.m., developer Billy Macklowe will debate Gristedes magnate John Catsimatidis. Then Curbed founder Lockhart Steele will face off against Frederick Peters, president of Warburg Realty Partnership. Finally, attorneys Stuart Saft of Dewey & LeBouef and Adam Leitman Bailey of his eponymous firm will go head-to-head. CNBC anchor Bill Griffeth will be moderating the event. It’s the big event of the year. If you move fast, you can still make it! Please tweet about the event and send questions using hashtag #trddebate. Comments

Stuart Elliott,
editor-in-chief of The
Real Deal

From the November issue: We won’t be bringing you a crowd that’s going to boo a soldier, cheer executions or applaud the death of an uninsured man, like we’ve seen at this year’s Republican presidential debates. But this month at Lincoln Center, The Real Deal‘s first debate — in which real estate bigwigs will square off against one another — promises to be a heated discussion of some of the key issues facing the industry today.
As far as we know, it will be the first real estate debate of its kind in New York City. The format is a departure from our usual annual panel discussion.
We have a bunch of prominent debaters lined up, and the issues that will be on the table on Nov. 16 are central to the livelihoods of those who work in real estate here in the city. [more]

Curbed kicked off the July 4 Hamptons holiday weekend with an opening party last Thursday at the new Banzai Burger at 2095 Montauk Highway on on the Napeague Stretch in Amagansett (see photos above). Hosting were Curbed’s own Lockhart Steele and Nick Leighton. As The Real Deal reported last month, Banzai Burger is the brainchild of well-known hospitality publicist and Hamptons regular Steve Kasuba and restaurateur Alex Duff. The pair signed a 15-year lease for the 3,000-square-foot space, which seats 100 people and is shoes-optional.
– Richard Lewin
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Without the Lower East Side, there might have never been a Curbed.com.

The neighborhood’s rowdy nightlife proved irresistible fodder for a personal blog launched by founder Lockhart Steele soon after he began living there in 2001.

Three years later, those rants spawned the website Curbed, which today chronicles the ups and downs of New York’s real estate and that of five other markets, with a new site, about Seattle, to be unveiled in April.

But the place where it all began is no more. At the beginning of March, in a move that seems worthy of one of his posts, Steele traded the one-bedroom walkup rental at 110 Rivington Street where he had been for a decade, for a two-bedroom, two-bathroom rental in an elevator building at 36 Peck Slip at the South Street Seaport (see gallery above). [more]

Brutal web comments create new level of accountability, prompting changes to listings and projects

From the September issue: Last month, Prudential Douglas Elliman agent Ellen Rick got an unexpected e-mail.

“A very nice young man e-mailed me and said, ‘I wanted you to know that you’re being trashed on StreetEasy,’” Rick recalled. Unbeknownst to her, a StreetEasy.com user had created an online discussion board entitled “Deception by Elliman broker, Ellen Rick.”

The comments pointed out that two of Rick’s listings at 30 Fifth Avenue — units 4A and 10H — displayed the same photos. StreetEasy users thought she was trying to pull the wool over their eyes, but Rick said the photographer that shot 10H had mistakenly loaded the photos for 4A as well. She immediately called the photographer to fix the snafu.

“I’m glad that somebody made me aware of that, and I corrected it,” she said, adding that the incident has made her more vigilant about problems with her listings.

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137 Crestview Lane and Scott Resnick

Developer Scott N. Resnick, scion of one of Manhattan’s most prominent real estate families, has listed his oceanfront Hamptons spread for $26.75 million, according to a source and property records (see more photos of the home after the jump).

Resnick is the son of Burton Resnick, the CEO of Jack Resnick & Sons, one of New York’s largest owners of office properties. Scott was formerly the company’s president and COO, but left the family business in 2007 to form his own company, real estate firm SR Capital.

Resnick’s seven-bedroom home at 137 Crestview Lane in Sagaponack, which hit the market in March, is situated on 2.4 oceanfront acres.

The listing broker, John Healey of Town & Country Real Estate, declined to name the owner, but property records show that Resnick and his wife, Kimberly, bought the spread in October of 2007 for $18 million from Philip D. Turits, the co-founder of Manhattan telecommunications firm Fusion. [more]

Prudential Douglas Elliman today announced the launch of a rental listings Web site, Ellimanrentals.com, on which potential renters can search for Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Hamptons and Long Island listings. Elliman is also partnering with Jonathan Miller, president and CEO of Miller Samuel, to launch a quarterly rental market report, and with Curbed.com, which will list only Elliman rental properties on its site for the next three months. Elliman is also opening a new rentals-only office at 205 East 42nd Street. TRD [more]