Prosecutors have dropped charges against Ilan Nassimi, the New York real estate broker who had been accused of serving alcohol to minors after the teenage daughter of a U.S. ambassador fell 22 stories to her death from a party in his Herald Towers apartment in August. According to the Daily News, investigators were unable to prove that Nassimi, 25, had served alcohol to teens after his attorneys had argued that the 17-year-old John had boozed up prior to arriving at the 25th-floor pad at 50 West 34th Street. Nassimi, a licensed salesperson for Manhattan’s Metropolitan Property Group who goes by “Ilan Nass,” told The Real Deal that he was “overjoyed” by the decision but offered his condolences to the John family. TRD [more]

From left: vrbo.com has a nightly rental on the market at M127; units are rented on a nightly basis at Dexter House; a NYC hostel listed on tripadvisor.com

Illegal hotel operators are about to get a rude awakening with four state bills that, if enacted, would make it clearly illegal to rent residential apartments on a nightly basis, and would beef up city enforcement of the issue. Internet travel sites have enabled an explosion of illegal hotels in the city, which activists say diminishes the city’s supply of affordable housing and erodes the quality of life for neighboring residents. The Westside Neighborhood Alliance has a database of 297 hotels it suspects are illegal — mainly rent-stabilized or single room occupancy apartments in Manhattan that the group claims are poorly maintained, crammed with hostel-style bunk beds and rented to hard-partying tourists. The Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement has cracked down on some of these hostels recently, primarily because of safety and over-crowding concerns since they present a fire hazard. Assemblyman Richard Gottfried introduced one of the four bills yesterday that would authorize the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development to shut down these hotels from an affordable housing standpoint, rather than the agency currently charged with enforcing these violations, the state Division of Housing and Community Renewal. “HPD just has a much larger enforcement budget and more man power,” said Michael Kaplan, Gottfried’s deputy chief of staff. “The city, as far as I can tell, has not been very supportive of the idea,” he added, so HPD would have to voluntarily take on this role. “The better solution would be to improve DHCR, not to try to shift work to HPD without providing any funding for new responsibilities,” said a city source, who requested anonymity. [more]

Former Africa Israel USA chief executive Rotem Rosen has been named
president of Polar USA/HFZ Capital, The Real Deal has learned. Polar is a unit of Israel-based Polar-ZSG Group, a partnership formed
by real estate investors Ziel Feldman, Tamir Sapir and Giron
Development & Building Ltd., to buy distressed real estate. Rosen left Lev Leviev’s Africa Israel earlier this year amid increasing
turmoil involving the Israeli billionaire’s global real estate
holdings, which include the Apthorp, the controversial condominium
conversion at 390 West End Avenue, and 20 Pine Street, a condo where
Africa Israel wrested control from former partner Shaya Boymelgreen. [more]

From the December issue: Some real estate ads shouldn’t be left
lying on a coffee table when there are young children around. That’s
because real estate developers know sex sells — and they are
increasingly marketing their projects with explicit sexual images, or
at least sexual undertones, even at the risk of offending older buyers.
Spicy advertising has picked up in frequency in New York City in the
last few years, as the number of units coming online has increased and
developers have sought ways to distinguish themselves. At the William
Beaver House in the Financial District, there was a backlash against
ads that were deemed too racy. [more]