From left, Prudential Douglas Elliman’s Dottie Herman, Halstead Property’s Greg Heym and the Corcoran Group’s Pamela Liebman The volume of Manhattan home sales declined at least 12 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011, although prices continued to hold steady, according to quarterly reports issued today by the city’s largest residential real estate brokerages. Experts proffered a host of explanations for the drop in sales activity, from global economic chaos to low inventory levels to financing issues for buyers in the middle of the market. [more]

From the South Florida website: South Florida hasn’t seen a residential real estate market like this, especially on the high
end, since 2005 and 2006, according to Corcoran CEO and President Pam Liebman. “On an
overall basis, South Florida is starting to really recover,” she said in the video above. “On a sales volume basis, sales are up about
12 percent this year, and we’ve seen a lot of very good movement in the
high end.” Liebman estimated that there were likely more sales over $10
million in South Florida this year than in any time in recent years.
“The volume of sales is up,” she said. “But prices are still flat.”

From the July issue: Big brokerages, says Pam Liebman, president of the Corcoran Group, are often stereotyped as being somewhat stiff. But, she says, that’s not a fair characterization. And, in her office at 660 Madison Avenue, where the music is usually on and Liebman can occasionally be found putting golf balls, she is bucking that image. That might be because business has been pretty good lately, despite the economic uncertainty. While the $500,000 to $1.5 million Manhattan home market has softened since the early spring, Liebman points out that the highest-priced properties are flourishing. Plus, in May, Corcoran ranked tops in the city in terms of listings — 1,815 of them, at $3.5 billion. Click here for more and to take a peek at her desk.

From left: Mary Ann Tighe, MaryAnne Gilmartin, Pamela Liebman and Dottie Herman

Brokering Conde Nast’s relocation to 1 World Trade Center earned CB Richard Ellis’ Mary Ann Tighe the top spot on this year’s Crain’s list of the 50 most powerful women in New York City. Tighe, who is also the first female to lead the Real Estate Board of New York, came in third on the list last year, but that was before the $2 billion Conde lease, which is widely considered a catalyst for the Financial District’s rebirth. Earlier this month, when Tighe became the first female recipient of the NYU Schack Institute of Real Estate’s Urban Leadership Award, James Kuhn, president of Newmark Knight Frank, said the lease “might turn out to be the biggest transformational deal in [his] lifetime.” More powerful New York females after the jump. [more]

Click for more rankings

From the May issue: The land grab is on in Brooklyn. With prices and sales activity rebounding, the borough’s major real estate firms are competing for market share as smaller mom-and-pop firms disappear.
The borough’s three largest firms — Fillmore Real Estate, the Corcoran Group, and Prudential Douglas Elliman — have all added more Brooklyn agents in the past year.
The 45-year-old, family-run Fillmore jumped to 350 agents on The Real Deal’s ranking of biggest firms in the borough this year, taking the top spot. That was up from 288 last year, and last month the firm had some $130.8 million worth of active residential sales listings. [more]

With the stock market picking up steam and the worst of the recession apparently in the rear-view mirror, high-end home purchases are on the rise. According to CNBC, sales of homes worth more than $1 million nationwide have risen in most states and real estate professionals say people are bidding up the price for expensive homes for the first time since the market crash. Pamela Liebman, CEO of the Corcoran Group, told CNBC that the firm saw sales of luxury co-ops double in the first quarter of 2011. [more]

From left: Elliman’s Dottie Herman, Corcoran’s Pamela Liebman, Halstead’s Diane Ramirez and Brown Harris Stevens’ Hall Wilkie

Tight credit, a harsh winter and a return to seasonality led to a relatively quiet first quarter in Manhattan, according to several residential sales market reports released today by some of New York City’s top firms. While reports from Prudential Douglas Elliman and the Corcoran Group show a rosier picture than those from sister companies Brown Harris Stevens and Halstead (which release the same data), experts across the board agreed that the market is stable.

The median home sales price dropped to $782,071 in the first quarter of the year, down 9.9 percent from the same time a year earlier and 7.4 percent from fourth-quarter 2010, according to the Elliman report. [more]

From the March issue: The New York State Department of State quietly fined the Corcoran Group $70,000 this past June as a result of a 2006 complaint filed by an unhappy co-op buyer who discovered that dozens of the firm’s agents were working without licenses, The Real Deal has learned.

A state investigation prompted by the complaint found that 79 brokers and agents — including several top producers at the firm — had licensing irregularities.

Corcoran admitted it violated state law through an agreement known as a consent order, signed in June, that said from the start of 2006 to the end of 2007, 44 of its approximately 900 agents were unlicensed. An additional 17 were licensed but not through Corcoran, and 18 were working as agents under names that were not licensed. [more]

From left: Lauren Muss, Carrie Chiang, Janet Wilkinson and Pam Liebman

Residential brokerage the Corcoran Group held its annual company awards ceremony this week, honoring some of its top-producing teams and agents. Lauren Muss was named the Individual Salesperson of the Year, while the Carrie Chiang Team was honored as the Top Team of the Year. Janet Wilkinson took home the Rookie of the Year prize. At Corcoran Sunshine, the top-selling onsite sales team was comprised of Graham Spearman, Aidan Sullivan, Melissa Ziweslin, Lynne Brown and Lena Nusimow, who work at Extell Development’s the Rushmore, at 80 Riverside Boulevard between 64th and 65th streets. TRD

Top row, from left: Howard and Steve Rubenstein, Donald Trump, Mort Zuckerman; bottom row, from left: Jerry Speyer, Dottie Herman and Pamela Liebman

Mayor Michael Bloomberg is the most powerful man in New York City — so says the New York Observer, which released its annual list of the top 150 most powerful New Yorkers. This year’s ranking included 24 influential real estate players, including real estate PR bigwigs Howard and Steve Rubenstein of Rubenstein Communications (ranked 17th and 78th, respectively), Donald Trump (19th), Boston Properties honcho Mort Zuckerman (20th), Tishman Speyer co-founder Jerry Speyer, Prudential Douglas Elliman CEO Dottie Herman (53rd) and Pamela Liebman, president and CEO of the Corcoran Group (89th). The list included a handful of surprises, as well. TRD [more]