From left: Architect Costas Kondylis and Princess Katherine Karadjordjevic, developer Donald Trump, the Corcoran Group’s Pamela Liebman, Town’s Andrew Heiberger and wife Robyn, and marketing guru Louise Sunshine (credit: Clint Spaulding of patrickmcmullan.com). Click the image to see more photos.

Developer Donald Trump, who spent weeks courting the fringes of American politics in a possible presidential bid, stuck to real estate last night in brief remarks at the premier of a documentary produced by The Real Deal about the prolific and aging New York architect Costas Kondylis. (See more photos after the jump.)

Trump, who traveled the United States questioning President Barack Obama’s birth certificate, praised Kondylis — born in Africa to Greek parents — as a “great design architect.”

Kondylis was the architect on many of Trump’s buildings such as the Trump World Tower at 845 United Nations Plaza and an imposing row of residential towers that were critically panned called Riverside South, which face the Hudson River. [more]

From the February issue: When business is slow, some real estate agents hear bells. Wedding bells, that is. Faced with a market where down payments of at least 20 percent are the norm, Canadian agents Patricia Kiteke and Christina Carrick decided to help potential homebuyers by launching a down payment registry.

Launched in January, their site, Home for the Honeymoon, serves as an online wedding registry, allowing guests to use PayPal to make cash gifts to a registered couple. The gifts can then be used toward a down payment on a home.

Kiteke and Carrick, who are based in British Columbia, noticed that many otherwise well-qualified homebuyers had difficulty saving up money for a house. [more]

Andrew HeibergerFrom the January issue: Andrew Heiberger has decided that Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village is a neighborhood. Most New Yorkers think of the massive rental housing complex as part of the East Village. But it’s large enough to warrant its own neighborhood, at least according to the 42-year-old founder of Citi Habitats, who largely credits himself with creating the current layout of neighborhoods in Manhattan.

“When I first had Citi Habitats, Manhattan used to be divided into four neighborhoods — Upper East, Upper West, Midtown and Downtown,” said Heiberger. “I came into the business, and I said, ‘This is not how the city works.’ I put out a real estate map that most of the firms are still using today, which broke [Manhattan] into 13 neighborhoods.”

With Heiberger’s new brokerage, Town Residential, he’s at it again. [more]

From left: Jeffrey Apprel, Frank Tamayo, Ken Evans and 260 Madison Avenue (building photo source: PropertyShark)

Mortgage industry veteran Jeffrey Appel has left Bank of America to start a new team at MetLife Home Loans.

Appel — a well-known figure in the industry and host of the Real Estate Board of New York’s Real Estate Master’s Series — and his partner at Bank of America, Ken Evans, are joining forces with Brooklyn-based Trachtman & Bach alumni John Bach and Frank Tamayo.

“We have basically put together a dream team to cover Manhattan and Brooklyn with MetLife,” Appel said.
[more]

From left: Wendy Maitland, Reid Price, Jeffrey Appel and Itzaskun “Itzy” Garay

In addition to Brown Harris Stevens power brokers Wendy Maitland and Reid Price, new recruits to Town Residential — the new brokerage launched today by Citi Habitats founder Andrew Heiberger — include Citi Habitats managers Itzaskun “Itzy” Garay and Matthew Van Damm, and Bank of America’s Jeffrey Appel.

Town Residential has opened two branches with space for around 140 agents. The 16,000-square-foot flagship office is located at 110 Fifth Avenue, between 16th and 17th streets, and will house 115 agents. A 30-agent office at 88 Greenwich Street is located in the former sales office of Greenwich Club Residences, a new 452-unit condominium developed by Heiberger’s Manhattan-based development company, Buttonwood Real Estate. The building is now nearly sold out, the firm said, and Heiberger will continue to be active in development under the auspices of Buttonwood, which is a separate company from Town. [more]

From the March issue: On its Web site, the marketing pitch for the Fitzgerald, a condo in Harlem, has a decidedly pre-recession ring: “Where the living is grand and the financing is easy.” The mortgage terms sound that way, too: 5 percent down, with no worries about pesky approval requirements from a nitpicking bank. “The developer … will give you up to a 95 percent mortgage at favorable rates with reasonable conditions,” the Web site reads. But the reason buyers don’t have to concern themselves with a bank is very much related to the recession.

Richard Bouchner, managing director of the Commodore Property Group

From the February issue:
Everyone in the real estate industry knows that the price of admission for a mortgage has gone up. And just about everyone agrees there’s good reason for that, given that loose lending standards were largely responsible for the financial mess that plunged the economy into a recession and sent real estate into a tailspin. With the days of quick and easy jumbo loans and 100 percent financing now merely a memory, mortgage brokers have had to completely alter the way they do business. This month, The Real Deal talked to mortgage brokers and other mortgage industry professionals to find out how the industry is doing in New York City. While nearly everyone said business is up compared to a year ago, when they were dealing with the immediate aftermath of the Lehman debacle, new Federal guidelines designed to protect borrowers and inject more transparency into the system have slowed down the process of securing a mortgage. And the relationship between banks and mortgage brokers is strained, with fewer banks offering fewer products. As one mortgage broker said: “It’s all cookie-cutter stuff; not every borrower fits into a box neatly.” For more on which buyers and buildings are fueling mortgage activity in New York, what kinds of mortgages are being financed and the new standards mortgage brokers are dealing with, we turn to our panel of experts.  [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.

From the November issue: Mortgage broker and WPIX television show host Jeffrey Appel took a new
job at Bank of America last month after his former employer, Preferred
Empire Mortgage, was reconfigured in a joint venture with
California-based lender Wells Fargo Bank. Appel, now a vice president at Bank of America’s home lending
division, was a senior vice president at Preferred Empire Mortgage, a
mortgage brokerage owned by the city’s biggest residential real estate
brokerage, Prudential Douglas Elliman. In a past study, The Real Deal ranked Appel as one of the city’s top mortgage producers.
Preferred ceased operations as an entity in September and a new
company, DE Capital Mortgage, was created as a joint venture between
Prudential and Wells Fargo. Appel, who led a team of brokers that at
its height had seven members, said although he thought the joint
venture was a good decision, he opted to move to Bank of America on
Oct. 13.

From left: Hall Willkie, Diane Ramirez, Dottie Herman and Barak Dunayer

New York City real estate is headed for momentous changes, for better or worse, industry leaders say. “We’re not going to recognize our industry when we’re through these
next few years — in a good way,” said Hall Willkie, president of Brown
Harris Stevens, speaking on a panel discussion last night as part of
REBNY’s 2009 Real Estate Master Series. Other panelists included Diane Ramirez, president of BHS sister company
Halstead Property; Dottie Herman, president and CEO of Prudential
Douglas Elliman; and Barak Dunayer, president of Barak Realty. Jeffrey
Appel, senior vice president and director of new development financing
at Preferred Empire Mortgage Company, moderated the discussion.
[more]