Rendering of the building’s children’s playroom

The new owners of the Sheffield (formerly Sheffield 57) are tryi [more]

Adrienne Albert of the Marketing Directors and Liberty Luxe (left), Liberty Green

Two new Battery Park Ctiy condominiums, Liberty Luxe and Liberty Green, opened their sales offices yesterday, according to Curbed. The openings for the Luxe and the Green, which are 32 stories and 22 stories, respectively, come shortly after Fannie Mae agreed to step up its financing on Battery Park City homes. Although floorplans and pricing are currently available for the Milstein Properties-developed buildings, details on the two neighboring properties have emerged. Both properties are seeking LEED gold certification and will include a fitness center, pool and spa. The Marketing Directors is in charge of sales. [Curbed]

[more]

Charles Russell, formerly a managing director at Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group, has moved over to the competition: Prudential Douglas Elliman’s new development division.

Russell, who has worked at the Corcoran Group and Corcoran Sunshine for nearly 20 years, has been named a vice president at Elliman’s development marketing group and his first day was today, according to a spokesperson for Elliman, who added: “Prudential Douglas Elliman is very excited to have him.”

Reached on his cell phone, Russell confirmed that he’s moved to Elliman but didn’t provide further details. The Elliman spokesperson said Russell will be recruiting new business and consulting on new condominium projects. [more]

Adrienne Albert, CEO of Marketing Directors

The residential market in the New York City metro area has bottomed out, according to Adrienne Albert, CEO of new development marketing firm Marketing Directors, but concessions still abound, for both buyers and renters, she said. Even so, Albert said that the incentives have begun to dwindle as the market stabilizes. “We don’t see this huge dumping of product into the rental market, so that’s why inventories keep coming down and the concessions get tighter,” Albert said. “In the condominium market, there was a time when everybody was terrified; sales came to a halt. You could get 20 percent, sometimes as much as 25 percent, off the list price.” Today, developers are “cautiously optimistic” about the future, Albert said, with a huge uptick in interest from foreign buyers helping to even out the industry.

From the December issue: In New York City real estate, buyers have had the upper hand for a
while. With transactions virtually frozen in the wake of last year’s
collapse of Lehman Brothers, sellers grew alarmed, dropping prices and
offering incentives to tempt purchasers. For the first time in a year, however, New York is no longer a
buyer’s market, brokers say. Or at least not the intense buyer’s market
of recent months.
“Neither buyers nor sellers have an obvious upper hand over each
other right now,” said Ric Swezey, a senior associate at the Corcoran
Group.
As the stock market recovered and prices dropped, more buyers –
especially those who put off buying during the financial crisis — came
back into the market, searching for bargain prices. [more]

Linden78 and Chris Westley of the eponymous marketing firm

New York real estate sales and marketing representative Chris Westley of CW Management, whose most recent project was attempting to turn around sales at condominium Linden78 at 230 West 78th Street, is setting up shop in Hollywood. Linden78,  Urban Residential’s development, whose exclusive sales and marketing agent is the Marketing Directors, has weathered broken contracts and construction delays and saw around 90 percent of its buyers pull out when the recession hit, the New York Daily News reported. Westley, who is considered by some to be a guru of selling units in troubled buildings, said he plans to use his same repackaging skills on the other coast. “The idea is to generate sales of underperforming properties whose initial efforts didn’t deliver desired results,” Westley said. “My role is to… tweak the asset identity and manage the sales.

In a bid to attract more foreign buyers, the developer of Midtown condominium-hotel Cassa has hired brokerage Prodigy International to handle sales, replacing new development firm the Marketing Directors. Developer Solly Assa, a head of Assa Properties, told The Real Deal today that Prodigy is now the exclusive marketing and sales agent for the 48-story glass tower, located at 70 West 45th Street. “We’re targeting more of an international client,” he said. “Prodigy is really catering to international consumers.” Assa said that the Marketing Directors sold nearly 40 percent of the project’s 57 condo units since sales began in June. The building was designed by Cetra/Ruddy and TEN Arquitectos, the Mexico City firm headed by Enrique Norten. When completed this spring, it will house 166 hotel rooms operated by Desires Hotels. [more]

Linden 78

The Marketing Directors has replaced Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group as the exclusive marketing and sales agent at Upper West Side condominium Linden 78 — the latest in a series of shakeups for the project. The Marketing Directors released a statement earlier today announcing that it is now handling sales at the 34-unit condo, which is located at 230 West 78th Street. Corcoran Sunshine has been marketing the building since it went on sale in 2007 and had sold nearly all of the building’s units by the end of 2008. But the project hit a major speed bump in April, when it was required to offer all of its buyers the opportunity to back out of their contracts.  More

[more]

From the October issue: Zhann Jochinke, an associate broker at Argo Residential, put an alcove
studio on the market last year for $525,000. But the offers that came
in were as low as $390,000. “People were putting bids out there just to
see if the person had to sell,” he recalled. More recently, however, he
convinced the seller to drop the price to around $490,000. Offers began
coming in at “5 percent or less off the asking price,” he
said. Now, the listing is in contract, and expected to close in the
next month. After months of uncertainty, Manhattan buyers and sellers
are finally
making a market.

Elie Pariente said he has seen a number of AIG execs relocating to 15 Broad Street

Brokers who work in the Financial District say they are seeing an increase in the number of financial services executives posted abroad who are relocating back to New York, and specifically to newer developments in the Financial District. Elie Pariente, managing partner at Urban Sanctuary, said he has done four deals in the past 45 days with AIG executives returning to the U.S. from Tokyo and Singapore, to work for Chartis Insurance, an AIG spin-off. Three of the apartments that Pariente, who said he has a history of deals with AIG employees, sold were in 15 Broad Street. All four were two-bedroom apartments, which Pariente called “standard” for financial services executives. The apartments ranged in size from 1,200 to 1,600 square feet and in price from $1.1 million to $1.5 million. [more]