Daniela Sassoun of the Corcoran Group at 110 Central Park South, which has been popular with her South American clients.

From the February issue: International buyers — perhaps the most overhyped group of boom-time
property seekers — are back, brokers say, and they’re richer than
ever.
While much of the meager sales activity in New York has occurred at
the lower end of the market during the past year, experts say the new
wave of foreign buyers now trolling for Manhattan property tends to be
wealthier than previous foreign buyers, and they are looking for
pricier real estate. That’s largely because the New York market is no
longer as accessible to the working-class foreigners who invested in
homes here during the mid-aughts. With mortgages rarely available to
foreigners, international buyers must now often be able to plunk down
the entire purchase price in cash. That’s just one of the ways today’s foreign shoppers are different from their boom-time counterparts. [more]

From the January issue: Richard Bouchner, who co-founded real estate and mortgage brokerage
Commodore Property Group in 2003, thought last month that business was
returning after a tough year for mortgage brokers.
He’d gotten a referral for a borrower he described as a
well-qualified, financially savvy New Yorker buying her first
apartment. He’d arranged a 30-year fixed mortgage of around $480,000,
at 5.125 percent with no points. Then his client read the fine print, saw that he’d make $4,800 on the deal, and opted to get her loan from the bank instead.
“She said, ‘Rich, I don’t feel comfortable with this yield-spread
premium,’” Bouchner recalled, referring to the money a mortgage broker
makes for locking in an interest rate above par on a loan for a
borrower. Banks don’t have to provide similar disclosure on their
profit on a loan.