From the December issue: New York City is known for its sky-high rents. But lately, tales of Brooklyn’s hot rental market have become as numerous as the 20-somethings flooding into the borough.

Two Trees recently finished leasing up its 103-unit rental at 25 Washington Street in Dumbo, where all 80 of the market-rate units were rented in four months at prices of roughly $50 per square foot, according to company vice president Jed Walentas. At JMH Development’s 184 Kent Avenue, a Williamsburg warehouse converted into a 340-unit rental building, leasing was completed within 10 months, according to Jason Halpern, managing partner at JMH. Now, with some of those leases starting to turn over, interest in the building is stronger than ever — so strong that the rental office inked eight new leases and fielded 25 walk-in inquiries during one week last month, Halpern said. [more]

Two New York City construction unions filed a racketeering suit in federal court in White Plains, N.Y., alleging that Manhattan-based JMH Development and Long Island-based Lalezarian Developers colluded with HRH Construction to cheat workers out of $7 million in wages and benefits over the past four years, Crain’s reported.
According to the suit, filed by Metallic Lathers Union Local 46 and Mason Tenders District Council, the developers directed payments that should have gone to HRH Construction, once one of the city’s largest union contractors, to a dummy organization established by the three parties. [more]

From the September issue: The developers of 184 Kent, the high-end rental building about to open in Williamsburg, will be hitting the streets of the Lower East Side in a van, looking to take well-to-do hipsters to the Brooklyn waterfront.

They won’t actually be driving them there. But the idea is to troll for arty, young Lower East Side-type professionals where they live and hang out, parking the van — plastered in ads based on the quirky “WilliamsburgLove” mock dating site — in front of popular clubs.

“We’re looking at the Avalon Bowery project on Chrystie Street in the Lower East Side as comparables,” says Jason Halpern, managing partner of the building’s owner, JMH Development. more [more]