New York Living Solutions co-founders Michael Roche and Arnon Barzilai have parted ways, with Roche leaving the company to pursue other interests, Barzilai told The Real Deal. Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs has granted $302 million in contracts to minority and women-owned businesses for the construction of its new world headquarters, according to a statement released today. This awarding of contracts may mark the largest single project ever granted the M/WBE business program in New York State. Click here for more. [more]

From the August issue: Edward Milton Cisneros, a real estate agent at New York Living
Solutions, was surprised recently to receive a panicked phone call from
a family he is representing in the purchase of a Long Island City new
construction condo. The buyers said the appraisal for their new home —
a two-bedroom and studio they planned to combine into one unit — had
come in far below the agreed-upon purchase price.
“I got an alarmed phone call from my buyer,” Cisneros recalled. “The bank was questioning why they were paying so much.”
The low appraisal threatened to kill the sale, he said. The bank
would now only lend up to the appraised value, and there was no telling
whether the buyers would be willing or able to cough up the extra cash
needed to close the gap between the appraisal and the agreed-upon
price. [more]

From the May issue: Brokers famously sell the mantra of
location, location, location. But when it comes to their own offices,
that refrain may be changing. During the boom times, real estate
companies large and small rushed to open glittering storefront offices,
like Halstead Property’s mammoth 408 Columbus Avenue office across from
the Museum of Natural History, or the Tribeca office that Brown Harris
Stevens has on the ground floor of a 19th-century Romanesque Revival
building. The hope was to stake out their turf in prime neighborhoods
while attracting passersby. But New York’s housing slump has prompted
the rapid closing of some real estate offices, as firms seek to cut
costs, and the opening of others, as they seek to take advantage of
falling rents to gobble up new territory. And while closing an office
inevitably means ceding territory to competitors, with real estate
sales down nearly 50 percent from last year according to a quarterly
market report by Prudential Douglas Elliman, satellite offices are a
luxury many firms can no longer afford. [more]