From left: Sotheby’s Kathy Korte, Peter Ashe founder Asher Alcobi, CB Richard Ellis’ David Pogue, Related Companies’ Charlotte Matthews and Barak Realty founder Barak Dunayer

Compiled by Lauren Elkies

In honor of Earth Day, The Real Deal checked in with some New York City residential and commercial real estate companies — from Sotheby’s International to CB Richard Ellis to Related Companies — to find out about their latest green initiatives. While a number of companies said their clients don’t seem to care about their green efforts, the firms do. Click here to see what the real estate companies said about their latest green initiatives, their most interesting sustainability efforts and their plans for Earth Day. [more]

Vincent Peters, a vice chairman with Cushman & Wakefield, passed away Sunday, according to an obituary announcement from the Real Estate Board of New York. Peters, who died after a “short illness,” according to New York Post columnist Lois Weiss on Twitter, was 88. Peters, a REBNY member for 64 years, won the organization’s “Most Ingenious Deal of the Year Award” twice — in 1974 and 1985 while at Cushman. He was also influential in the real estate world beyond New York City, helping broker the development of Chicago’s famed Sears Tower. Cushman handed out an inaugural award in his name this past February. TRD

From the March issue: On an island with 450 million square feet of office space, an early 20th-century Midtown building of less than 100,000 square feet is a drop in the bucket.

But in January, the 13-story 681 Fifth Avenue was one of the flash points in a frantic contest between commercial brokerage rivals Cushman & Wakefield and Jones Lang LaSalle. At issue was control of roughly 20 properties, in play because JLL poached five top leasing brokers from Cushman.

In that contest — which is still in full throttle — both sides are bringing out their big guns because every square foot counts. And while lost leasing revenue is the immediate concern, the potential to sell or manage a building down the road is always on a firm’s radar. [more]

Midtown New York City is no longer the priciest office market in the Americas, after Rio de Janeiro’s average rents climbed 47 percent from this time a year ago, according to a Cushman & Wakefield international report released today. The report, which calculates the total average occupancy cost, shows that even as Midtown’s average rent climbed 10 percent to $115 per square foot, Rio de Janiero’s jump to $120 per square foot knocked Midtown out of the top spot in the Americas. Rio de Janeiro is the first South American location to accomplish this. TRD [more]

From the February issue: A year and a half ago, the New York City hotel industry was hurting badly, as tourists cut back on spending and business travelers stopped calling to book rooms.

But times have changed. Indeed, the industry, while not back to where it was at the market’s peak, has done a 180 and is now rebounding stronger and faster than most had expected.

This month, The Real Deal talked to hotel experts not only about the key metrics for evaluating hotel performance, but also about development, hotel sales and a host of other crucial industry markers. [more]

Top row, from left: Mitchell Konsker, Paul Glickman, Mitti Liebersohn and Alex Chudnoff. Bottom row, from left: 99 Park Avenue, 1290 Sixth Avenue, 681 Fifth Avenue and 1411 Broadway

Following the exit by five major leasing brokers from Cushman & Wakefield to Jones Lang LaSalle last month, there has been a behind-the-scenes battle over who is the landlord leasing representative for millions of square feet of Manhattan office space that had been handled by Cushman.

In that contest, JLL has picked up at least three buildings owned by Midtown-based Eastgate Realty with more than 1.7 million square feet.

The buildings are the 550,000-square-foot 99 Park Avenue, the 530,000-square-foot 120 Park Avenue and 665,000-square-foot 875 Third Avenue, data from CoStar Group shows. [more]

Carlo Sant’Albano, the newly announced chairman of the board at Cushman & Wakefield; Cushman President and CEO Glenn Rufrano; and John Cushman, who will become co-chairman

Cushman & Wakefield has tapped a new chairman of the board, effective in early March. The new chairman, Carlo Sant’Albano, has served as CEO of Exor, Cushman’s majority shareholder, for the last five years.

Sant’Albano, who will be based in London, has been a member of Cushman’s board of directors since 2007. He plans to stay on the board at Exor, but will officially be “a Cushman & Wakefield employee,” said President and CEO Glenn Rufrano.
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By Yaffi Spodek, Candace Taylor and Amy Tennery

After a mid-winter lull, The Real Deal is back in the swing of things, hitting up the week’s most exciting real estate events. We quizzed the experts at the Young Jewish Professional’s networking event, including Ilan Bracha, the New York Keller Williams franchise honcho who recently defected from Prudential Douglas Elliman, Crown Acquisitions CEO Stanley Chera, and Charles Bendit, the Taconic Investment Partners CEO, whose company recently sealed a $1.8 billion deal with Google. Also, we mingled at Soho rental building 55 Thompson’s cocktail mixer and caught up with Elizabeth Stribling, founder of Stribling & Associates, at the Brooklyn Roundtable, where she gave us the scoop on her move out of Manhattan. Click here to see more. [more]

The U.S. economy is poised for major acceleration in employment growth, with 3.2 million jobs projected to be added in the next 12 months, according to Cushman & Wakefield’s Economic Pulse regional reports, which provide a 2011 outlook for commercial real estate in the Americas, Europe and Asia Pacific. The projected acceleration in job growth in the U.S. will have major implications for all major sectors of the commercial real estate market, with office, industrial, retail and multi-family markets to benefit. In an environment of economic growth and declining vacancy rates, it is likely that rents will stabilize in 2011 and may begin to rise, particularly in markets that are tighter than the national average, the report says. TRD [more]

Commercial firms reported a strong increase in investment sales volume for the city overall in 2010. That activity, coupled with a higher average price-per-square foot for trophy office towers, has given a general impression that prices have risen overall in the city. For example Cushman & Wakefield in January showed a 73 percent increase in pricing from 2009 to 2010 for Manhattan’s prime office towers, even as it noted the sharp rise was based on a limited number of transactions.

But investment sales brokers Robert Knakal, Marco Lala and Shimon Shkury, tell Insights from The Real Deal (see video above) that not all of New York City is seeing strong increases in pricing, and in some areas of the outer boroughs, values are still falling.

Knakal, chairman of Massey Knakal Realty Services, says, “The trends in value continue to slide, however, in Queens and Brooklyn.” Knakal says that even in Manhattan values were weak, citing a Kips Bay owner who was converting a retail space to residential because commercial leasing was too slow.

Lala, an associate vice president of investments at Marcus & Millichap who specializes in Northern Manhattan and the Bronx, tells Insights from The Real Deal that, “There are some areas where I still think there is a lot of pain ahead.” He mentions Melrose, Soundview and the Highbridge areas of the Bronx as examples.

Parts of Northern Manhattan remain flat, says Shkury, president of Ariel Property Advisors. “I believe areas of East Harlem still have a ways to go up,” he says.
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