From left: renderings of Three Northside Piers, 388 Bridge Street and 88 Willoughby Street

As space for residential development dwindles in Manhattan, developers are turning to Brooklyn, the Wall Street Journal reported, but they must be careful if they want to appeal to the different sensibilities of Brooklyn renters.

Citing a report by Nancy Packes, a consultant to some of the city’s largest developers, the Journal said 14,000 new residential units are being planned for Brooklyn in the coming years, compared to just 5,000 in Manhattan. [more]

From left: L+M Development Partners CEO Ron Moelis, Columbia Hicks and PS 90

Manhattan condominium projects are dropping dramatically in size, as banks remain reluctant to finance megaprojects and developers have difficulty finding sites for large-scale construction, the Wall Street Journal reported.

“You’re going to be very, very hard pressed to build a condo in this city for a number of years that has more than 100 units,” Ron Moelis, chairman and CEO of L+M Development Partners, which built the 1,000-unit Northside Piers in Williamsburg, told the Journal.

According to data compiled by Streeteasy.com, new condo projects hitting the market in 2005 and 2006 had an average of 83 units per building. That number has decreased to just 34 units in 2011. [more]

New York City home sales prices inched upward, while sales activity blossomed in the second quarter of 2011, according to a report released today by the Real Estate Board of New York.

Sales activity increased 10 percent from the first quarter of 2011, but is down four percent from the same period a year ago due to “unseasonable fluctuations” caused by the looming expiration of the homebuyer’s tax credit, according to Steve Spinola, REBNY’s president. Meanwhile, sales prices increased 2 percent from last quarter and 3 percent from the same period a year ago. In the second quarter “we saw a return to normal cyclical market patterns,” Spinola said. – Adam Fusfeld [more]

A group of condominium owners at Toll Brothers’ Northside Piers complex on the Williamsburg waterfront have come forward with charges of “shoddy” construction, including leaky windows, moldy walls and defective plumbing systems, the Post reported. Prices at the 450-unit complex, which consists of two towers on Kent Avenue overlooking the Manhattan skyline, range from $512,000 for studios to $2.8 million for the penthouses. But the paper interviewed six unhappy owners who say their jaw-dropping views have been tainted by wind and rain seeping through their window panes, among various other problems with the workmanship in their units. ” class=”read-more-link”>[more]

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From the March issue: Two years ago, the Magic 8-Ball for Williamsburg condo developers would have read, “Try Again Later.” With condo inventory peaking at almost 700 units in February 2009 (according to StreetEasy), developers and brokers in the throes of the recession were grappling with a stock of residential units roughly three times the size of early 2007′s. It wasn’t a good time to open a building. But now some brokers say the dust has settled, and inventory in the neighborhood, once the poster child for the condo glut, is actually tightening. “I’m seeing my listings shrink; I’m seeing my inventory shrink,” said David Maundrell, president of aptsandlofts.com. [more]

Rendering of living room at Two Northside Piers

Two Northside Piers, a new 30-story waterfront condominium in Williamsburg is 50 percent sold out and the first residents have moved in, the developers announced today. The residential project, a joint venture between Toll Brothers City Living, RD Management and L+M Development Partners, is the second of two glass buildings in the Northside Piers community that also includes the One Northside Piers condo, which is now completely sold out. Building amenities at the two towers include an indoor pool, residents’ lounge, fitness center and rooftop cabanas. TRD [more]

Northside Piers

From the December issue: With the market creeping back, developers now can start to figure out
what saved some of them from ruin. Rent-to-own programs likely won’t be
on that list.
The buzzworthy idea of 2008 seems to have produced little sales for
struggling condos during the depths of the recession. A few leases,
sure, but not the kind that turned into sales contracts.
Rent-to-own, which allows renters to put their monthly payments
toward the cost of buying their home, seemed like a way for developers
to turn renters into buyers.
Toll Brothers’ Adam Gottlieb, the project manager at the Northside
Piers condo in Williamsburg, said that while the strategy did bring in
foot traffic, a lot of the potential deals never materialized. [more]

From left: Christine Blackburn of Prudential Douglas Elliman, the Edge, Highlyann Krasnow of the Developers Group, Northside Piers

For all the flack it gets, Williamsburg is still a hot place to live — at the right price. But even developers and brokers, perennial optimists even during real estate’s darkest hours, seemed a bit surprised by a recent spike in activity at some new buildings.
Northside Piers, the 450-unit waterfront project that has consistently been a top seller citywide since broadcasting aggressive price cuts early last year, just logged its best month since opening during the boom year of 2007, said Scott Avram, senior project manager for Northside Piers developer Toll Brothers City Living.
Forty contracts were signed in the past four weeks. Avram wondered “if everyone was having the same experience.”
So, The Real Deal made some calls around the neighborhood. While nobody quite scored 40 buyers in one month, it does seem like sales and leasing activity has been strong at projects with some combination of the following three winning characteristics: “location, price and the finishes,” as broker Christine Blackburn of Prudential Douglas Elliman put it. [more]

David Von Spreckelsen, a senior vice president with Toll Brothers, and the Northside Piers development

Developer Toll Brothers plans to start closings on the second of its two waterfront Williamsburg developments, known as the Northside Piers towers, in September. David Von Spreckelsen, senior vice president with Toll, said that 2 Northside Piers is currently 30 percent in contract. Asking prices for units range from $493,990 for a one-bedroom to $2.34 million for the priciest of the three-bedroom offerings. Sales at the building began in September 2008. [more]

From left: Twins Andrew and Kenneth Herzberg of Sirius

The depressed market for new condominium apartments is driving the creation of new incentives to facilitate the sale of distressed units. To that end, developers have been trying mortgage payment guarantees and buyback guarantees, with little indication of success. Toll Brothers, developer of Northside Piers in Williamsburg, offered a mortgage protection plan at the condo, but scrapped it last summer. And a little over a year ago, in December 2008, condo developer Rockrose Development, which has split into Rockrose and TF Cornerstone, said it would give 20 buyers at the View in Long Island City the right to sell their unit back in five years to the developer at the original sales price. It was not clear if that had any impact. Now a new financial firm based in Manhattan is setting its sights on a national price protection program, but some industry experts are uncertain about its chances for success in New York City. The company, Sirius Value Protection, headed by identical twins Andrew and Kenneth Herzberg, is talking with developers about its program that offers a qualified price guarantee to buyers, Andrew, a co-managing partner, told The Real Deal. [more]