The Real Estate Board of New York held its 23rd annual Residential Deal of the Year Awards and Charity Gala last night at Pier 60 at Chelsea Piers. The top prizes went to Sharon Baum, senior vice president and director of the exclusive properties division of the Corcoran Group, who received the Henry Forster Award for Lifetime Achievement, and Norman Horowitz, executive vice president at Halstead Property, who won the first prize Residential Deal of the Year Award in  sales. The Rookie Salesperson of the Year Award was given to Sarah Williams, an agent with Halstead Property, for what REBNY called “her impressive entry into New York City’s residential sales market.” – Miranda Neubauer [more]

Dottie Herman, president
of Prudential Douglas Elliman

Though pricing indicators were mixed, the volume of Manhattan residential sales increased in the third quarter of 2011, creating an overall picture of stability in Manhattan’s residential market, according to quarterly reports issued today by the city’s largest real estate brokerages.

The market’s bright spots included an uptick in sales at the most expensive end of the market — larger or relatively high-end properties (those at $5 million and above) — as well as an overall decrease in inventory, which buoyed prices, and an influx of foreign buyers investing in condominiums, experts said.

The median sales price hardly budged since last year, dropping a mere 0.3 percent to $911,333, an increase of 7.2 percent over the previous quarter, according to a report from Prudential Douglas Elliman. As The Real Deal reported in the October issue, the number of sales rose 16.7 percent year-over-year and 17.2 percent since last quarter, hitting 3,106, the report said. [more]

From left: RentJuice’s David Vivero, Noah Rosenblatt of Urbandigs and a screenshot of RentJuice

San Francisco-based online rental management company RentJuice, which launched in 2009 and expanded to New York earlier this year, has launched a new Facebook-inspired feature.
The RentJuice Directory offers real estate pros the ability to browse and search for other real estate companies in their area, establish new partnerships, and send and receive a continual stream of rental listings, via one dashboard, the company said.
Sharing rental listings has always been tricky, with new property listings coming from various different sources, including big-money brokerages as well small, independent real estate firms. Sites such as listings and real estate information site Streeteasy.com and Brooklyn’s Multiple Listings Service,have made strides in bringing all the listings to one place, but the battle is never completely won.
While the majority of brokers say they embrace the market’s ever-growing transparency, some have responded by becoming less willing to share information than before. Hoping to give themselves an advantage in the market, some brokers hang on to listings and keep stum. [more]

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]

Harrison Ford’s 206 West 17th Street apartment, John Madden’s 1 West 72nd Street apartment and Billy Joel’s Sagaponack home

Few things add to the cachet of a residential listing better than a recognizable owner, and Forbes gathered a list of the biggest stars whose homes are on the market. Harrison Ford’s $16 million Chelsea penthouse, John Madden’s Upper West Side apartment and Billy Joel’s Sagaponack oceanfront property each made the list (see photos above).

Ford, who starred in the original ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Indiana Jones’ series and spends most of his time in his Wyoming home, is listing his 5,664-square-foot apartment with a private roof deck at 206 West 17th Street for $16 million with Deborah Grubman and David Dubin of the Corcoran Group.
[more]

Corcoran Sunshine’s Division III softball team
By Omari Allen and Candace Taylor

From the July issue: It’s shaping up to be an intense summer for the city’s major residential real estate firms, not only at the closing table but on the playing field as well.

Several of the city’s major residential firms — the Corcoran Group, Prudential Douglas Elliman and Halstead Property — play against each other in the NYC Metro Sports League, which includes about 200 co-ed corporate softball teams from different industries.

The Douglas Elliman Rock Stars compete against the Halstead Homers and Corcoran Closers in the “serious and competitive” Division II, explained Mark Baum, an associate broker at Elliman and manager of Rock Stars.

Elliman also has another other team, the Greatest Hits, who play in the more-laid-back Division III, Baum said. Corcoran Sunshine’s team also plays in Division III.

Real estate brokers are naturally competitive, so for many of the players, the league is no laughing matter.
“We’re disciplined, and we’re serious about it,” said Baum, adding that “it’s more fun to win than lose.”

[more]

From left to right: David Greczek and Ammanda Espinal, on-site sales agents for Azure; Karen Mansour of Prudential Douglas Elliman;
John Caiazzo of the DeMatteis Organization; and Doug MacLaury of the Mattone Group (standing). Right: Azure at 333 East 91st Street.

From the July issue: A luxury apartment building towering 34 boxy stories above low-rise Yorkville shops, Azure has always been nondescript by design, and yet theatrically imposing in reality.
Launched in 2007, the project was aimed at Manhattan’s growing population of families. Marketing materials emphasized child-oriented neighborhood amenities and focused on the customizable, three-, four- and five-bedroom units on offer. Azure was not meant to excite comment; however, time and again, it has failed.
In May 2008, five months after Azure’s initial sales launch, a 200-foot crane collapsed at the site of the project, killing two construction workers, forcing a temporary shutdown of then-agent Nancy Packes’ marketing efforts, and sealing the building’s fate as headline fodder in the still ongoing legal saga that followed. (Crane owner James Lomma is currently awaiting trial on manslaughter charges after a judge turned down his bid to have the case dismissed.) [more]

Karen Heyman and Alan Heyman, Sotheby’s International Realty

From the July issue: The business of selling Brooklyn real estate has changed drastically in recent years. When Brooklyn native Karen Heyman first started selling Dumbo lofts in the 1990s, Manhattan residents refused to take the subway there. “I used to have to send my driver over the bridge to pick people up,” recalled Heyman, now a senior vice president at Sotheby’s International Realty. Today, “those same people are now on their third or fourth Dumbo apartment.” Brooklyn brokers have seen their business (and wallets) expand exponentially over the past decade, as a trickle, and then a flood, of resettling Manhattanites ventured across the East River. In particular, agents have benefited hugely from the condo boom of the mid-2000s, which greatly upped Brooklyn sales prices (downturn notwithstanding). [more]

The Manhattan residential real estate sales market can best be characterized as stable, according to second-quarter reports issued by the city’s largest real estate brokerages, signaling strength amidst an uncertain economic climate elsewhere in the country. Reports from Prudential Douglas Elliman, the Corcoran Group and data from sister firms Halstead Property and Brown Harris Stevens show mixed but healthy indicators. In a still strict lending environment, it comes as little surprise that the best performing sectors of the market — the top end of the market where buyers are wealthiest, and the bottom end of the new development market where units qualify for Federal Housing Authority-approved loans — were those where financing came easiest. [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]