From left, Prudential Douglas Elliman’s Dottie Herman, Halstead Property’s Greg Heym and the Corcoran Group’s Pamela Liebman The volume of Manhattan home sales declined at least 12 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011, although prices continued to hold steady, according to quarterly reports issued today by the city’s largest residential real estate brokerages. Experts proffered a host of explanations for the drop in sales activity, from global economic chaos to low inventory levels to financing issues for buyers in the middle of the market. [more]

From left: Donald Trump, president of the Trump Organization, Dottie Herman, president of Prudential Douglas Elliman, Elizabeth Stribling, president of Stribling & Associates, Stuart Saft, chairman of Dewey & LeBoeuf’s global real estate department, and Frederick Peters, president of Warburg Realty Partnership, and Lois Weiss, real estate columnist for the New York Post

Compiled by Lauren Elkies

In the wake of Sandy Weill’s reported $88 million sale of his 15 Central Park West penthouse, The Real Deal wanted to touch base and see if real estate executives had any last minute predictions for the New Year since speaking with the magazine for the December residential market report.

Dottie Herman, president of Prudential Douglas Elliman, and Frederick Peters, president of Warburg Realty Partnership, said to expect 2012 to be a bit of a repeat of 2011, while developer Donald Trump said “really good real estate will have excess value.” Elizabeth Stribling, president of Stribling & Associates, predicts a “continuing strong demand for new condominium offerings all over town,” while Stuart Saft, chairman of Dewey & LeBoeuf’s global real estate department, said “the euro will continue to be in trouble causing a flight to safety to the U.S. and particularly New York City, so New York City properties will trade at even lower cap rates.” Meanwhile, Citi Habitats President Gary Malin and Halstead Property Development Marketing President Stephen Kliegerman recently told amNY that 2012 would bring more development and fewer amenities to New York City’s real estate market. [more]

Marion Hedges, an agent at Prudential Douglas Elliman, has been seriously injured after being hit by a shopping cart thrown off the fourth floor of a parking garage in East Harlem, the New York Post reported.

Hedges, who works out of Elliman’s office at 575 Madison Avenue, was hit while shopping for candy with her 14-year-old son on the ground floor of the garage and rushed to Harlem Hospital where she remains unconscious.

“It’s just her lying in a bed unconscious with 50 thousand tubes in her,” her father-in-law told the Post. “She’s stable, they’re keeping her stable and her respiratory system is functioning.” [more]

Douglas Elliman Florida CEO Vanessa GroutFrom the South Florida website: After years of sitting in the shadows, Douglas Elliman Florida is taking center stage, trying to steal some of the limelight from its New York counterpart, Prudential Douglas Elliman, also owned by Howard Lorber’s the Vector Group.

With a new website launched today, a new Facebook page with multiple listings service capabilities, key new hires and new offices, the Miami-based brokerage, which specializes in luxury properties throughout South Florida, is pulling out all the stops under the leadership of Vanessa Grout, who was appointed president and CEO in 2010 following three years as vice president of acquisitions for New Valley, the Florida real estate division of Vector.

In the short time since she took the reins, Grout has grown the Florida company’s revenue by more than 400 percent, she told The Real Deal, and has acquired three office locations in Miami including a new headquarters in the Herzog & de Meuron building at 1111 Lincoln Road. [more]

More than 250 real estate professionals joined Dottie Herman, president of Prudential Douglas Elliman, and Howard Lorber, Elliman’s chairman, at a celebration of the start of the fall sales season at the Trump Soho Hotel Condominium at 246 Spring Street (see photos above).

The guests enjoyed cocktails and hors d’oeuvres at Bar d’Eau, the seventh floor seasonal indoor-outdoor bar located alongside the luxury hotel-condo’s 6,000-square-foot outdoor pool deck, and toured the only duplex penthouse, one of 11 at the property, according to a press release from Elliman. – Miranda Neubauer [more]

Prudential Douglas Elliman CEO Dottie Herman appeared on Fox Business this week (see video above) to talk about the consistently fluctuating housing market. Reports such as the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index give a view of the national as a whole, she said, but don’t reflect activity in unique markets such as New York. “You have to really look at your local market to determine what’s going on… Interest rates are the lowest they’ve been… the banks just really have to start lending,” she said. While national home prices are continuing to exhibit seasonal strength, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices’ data through July, Herman said she expects the housing slump to continue for another year at least.
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Prudential Douglas Elliman is expanding its Long Island division with the opening of an office in Garden City, the residential real estate brokerage announced today. The new premises, the company’s 40th on Long Island, will be located at 753 Franklin Avenue, at the corner of Stewart Avenue. Elliman has more than 60 offices in the New York City, Long Island and the Hamptons.

The office will be operated under the leadership of real estate veterans Ed D’Ambrosio and Helena Veloso, both vice presidents at Elliman and part of the strategic management team of Long Island. “Garden City is a sought-after town to live in, known for its gorgeous residential neighborhoods… and its great proximity to five LIRR stations and New York City,” said Dottie Herman, president and CEO of Elliman. “This new office is a great opportunity for us to solidify our presence in a strong market place and I expect our agents to be very successful there.” – Katherine Clarke [more]

From left: Mary Ann Tighe, MaryAnne Gilmartin, Pamela Liebman and Dottie Herman

Brokering Conde Nast’s relocation to 1 World Trade Center earned CB Richard Ellis’ Mary Ann Tighe the top spot on this year’s Crain’s list of the 50 most powerful women in New York City. Tighe, who is also the first female to lead the Real Estate Board of New York, came in third on the list last year, but that was before the $2 billion Conde lease, which is widely considered a catalyst for the Financial District’s rebirth. Earlier this month, when Tighe became the first female recipient of the NYU Schack Institute of Real Estate’s Urban Leadership Award, James Kuhn, president of Newmark Knight Frank, said the lease “might turn out to be the biggest transformational deal in [his] lifetime.” More powerful New York females after the jump. [more]

Dottie Herman, the president and CEO of Prudential Douglas Elliman (credit: Marilynn K. Yee / The New York Times), and Howard Lorber, the company’s chairmanFrom the June issue: Prudential Douglas Elliman has the most agents of any real estate brokerage in the city. Its offerings account for nearly one-quarter of Manhattan’s listed apartments, and it turns 100 this year.

But in recent months, the firm’s top-banana status may have slipped somewhat.

In the last year, Elliman has seen its Manhattan listings decline from 2,010 to 1,320 as of May 2011 — a drop of 34 percent, the largest dip among Manhattan’s major firms. Perhaps more important, the total value of those listings fell sharply, from $3.8 billion to $2.6 billion, according to The Real Deal’s analysis of data from On-Line Residential.

A busier residential sales market may bear some of the responsibility for that slide. Because The Real Deal’s data does not include properties that have recently sold, a drop in the value of a firm’s listings could mean that fewer homes are lingering on the market.

However, even if that’s the case, competitor companies seem to be replacing their sold listings at a quicker clip than Elliman is. [more]

Prudential Douglas Elliman is partnering with United Kingdom-based real estate agency and consulting firm Knight Frank Residential in a bid to promote exclusive properties among their combined international client pools and boost sales. European and other global properties should begin to appear on Elliman’s website in the coming weeks, according to Crain’s. Elliman CEO Dottie Herman said: “There’s a high percentage of international buyers who like to invest in New York real estate. They feel it’s a good investment.” [more]