From left: the Empire State Building and Anthony Malkin of Malkin Properties

The owners of the Empire State Building sued a retired Florida man for selling the original tracings of the iconic tower, saying they could be used to facilitate terrorism, papers filed in the New York State Supreme Court show.

Empire State Building Company LLC — an entity backed by Malkin Holdings, the estate of Leona Helmsley and other investors in 350 Fifth Avenue — petitioned the court Friday to compel Sy Donner, a retired structural engineer, to release the names of anyone who has purchased the drawings and to cease further sales of the documents. [more]

Realogy CEO Richard Smith at center

Shares for residential brokerage company Realogy broke through the initial asking price of $27 a share and remained higher all day, closing at $34.45 per share.

This was the first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange for the Parsippany, N.J.-based company that is the parent of Corcoran and Citi Habitats, and is the largest residential brokerage company in the United States by revenue. [more]

From left: Richard Smith of Realogy, Pamela Liebman of the Corcoran Group and Gary Malin of Citi Habitats

After months of anticipation, Realogy — the largest residential brokerage franchisor in the world and the parent company to Corcoran Group and Citi Habitats — has priced its initial public offering at $27 per share today, the New York Times reported.

The move, which will be followed by a launch on the New York Stock Exchange tomorrow morning, will raise $1.08 billion through 40 million shares for the company. [more]

Realogy CEO Richard Smith discusses his company’s IPO on Fox News

Realogy Holdings will sell 40 million shares in its initial public offering at between $23 and $27 per share, Reuters reported, in an effort to raise $1.08 billion. Those numbers value the firm — the largest residential brokerage franchisor in the world and the owner of Corcoran Group, Citi Habitats and Sotheby’s International — at up to $3.51 billion, according to Reuters.

Realogy expects to list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “RLGY,” Reuters said. Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan are acting as representatives to the underwriters on the offering, a date for which has not been set. [more]

Real estate listings website Trulia.com could be set to raise as much as $100 million through its initial public offering, the New York Times reported. When the company filed to go public early this summer, it had said it would likely raise $75 million through the sale of six million shares. [more]

Tony Malkin and the Empire State Building

Malkin Holdings, operator of the Empire State Building is planning to raise up to $1 billion in its initial public offering, Bloomberg News reported, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing the company submitted today.

The company, which will list shares on the New York Stock Exchange, will consolidate a group of  companies to form a real estate investment trust as part of the IPO, which will be advised on by Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs Group, it said in a separate filing. [more]

Shares of real estate listings website Zillow.com have opened on the NASDAQ at $60 per share, technology blog TechCrunch.com reported, giving the company a $1.6 billion valuation. Zillow priced its initial public offering at $20 per share yesterday, after increasing the pricing of its IPO to $16 to $18 per share. The company raised $69 million in the offering.
Zillow is the third most visited real estate-related site in the U.S., according to Experian Hitwise, and received 5.36 percent of all real estate traffic in March, up 53 percent from March 2010. However, the company has been seeing losses in net income over the past three years, TechCrunch said.
In the three months ending March 31, Zillow generated revenue of $11.3 million, an increase of 111 percent from the same period in 2010…. [more]

Zillow, the online U.S. home price estimator, is going public, the company’s newly appointed, 34-year-old CEO, Spencer Rascoff, told Bloomberg News. He wouldn’t say how much money would be raised in the company’s initial public offering or when shares would be sold, but he did say that his taking the helm from co-founder Rich Barton was part of the plan. Founded in 2005, the company has raised $87 million in financing and generates revenue from advertisements on Zillow.com and its mobile applications, but has yet to post a net profit. The website attracts 12.5 million visitors each month, the company said. [Bloomberg]

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A glut of real estate investment trusts are going public in the coming weeks, buoying optimism that national commercial real estate prices could see a short-term boost, according to National Real Estate Investor. The hope is that these REITs will continue to rake in capital through the end of 2010, which would, in turn, be funneled into the battered commercial market. … [more]

Two mortgage real estate investment trusts, Colony Financial and Apollo Commercial, halved their initial public offerings yesterday, causing concern over soon-to-be-announced IPOs in the sector. Colony said that it would sell just 12.5 million shares, instead of the 25 million planned, while Apollo said it would sell 10 million, as opposed to 20 million. American Realty Capital CEO Nicholas Schorsch said that the market may be burdened with an overabundance of distressed mortgage REITs, like Colony and Apollo, creating weak demand. “People are assuming the market is unlimited, but institutions don’t want to be overweighted in the sector,” Schorsch said. “The market doesn’t have the capacity to absorb this many deals.”