Cerberus’ Stephen Feinberg

The New York State Teachers Retirement System is set to make new investments in real estate worth $157.5 million, Investments & Pensions Europe reported.

The investment includes a $50 million commitment to Cerberus Institutional Real Estate Partners III, an opportunity fund which is aiming to raise $1 billion in capital to target investments in distressed mortgage-backed securities in both the U.S. and Europe, IPE said. The pension fund has also committed to investing $75 million into preferred REITs via Park Avenue-based Cohen & Steers Capital Management. [more]

A look at the relief efforts ongoing at Halstead’s Brooklyn offices

While the New York City real estate world is known for its fierce competitiveness, last week’s hurricane brought out the industry’s more compassionate side. Agents and staff at many of the city’s large firms and real estate organizations have banded together to help those in need in Hurricane Sandy’s wake. Read on for a closer look at the relief efforts. [more]

Jonathan Gray

Private equity giant the Blackstone Group has closed the largest real estate opportunity fund ever, GlobeSt.com reported. The Blackstone Real Estate Partners VII fund closed at $13.3 billion; The company launched the fund in 2010 with a plan to raise just $10 billion. Blackstone’s Jonathan Gray, global head of the private equity giant’s real estate business, will now set his team to work deploying the funds.

“We believe the current environment provides a highly attractive opportunity to generate favorable returns for [our investors,]” Gray said. [more]

Which residential brokerages offer the best perks? Whose managers reign supreme? And where can a broker go to get the best commission splits?

This September, The Real Deal will attempt to answer these questions, with our first-ever look at New York City’s best residential brokerages to work for. We’ll be evaluating companies in about a dozen different categories, from splits to training programs to office facilities.

This week, TRD will start sending out detailed questionnaires to a slew of brokerages. We’ll also be conducting additional research, including surveying randomly selected brokers at each firm. Decisions will be made by TRD’s editorial staff.

The deadline for survey responses is August 1, 2012. For more information, or if you do not receive a questionnaire by Friday, please contact Leigh Kamping-Carder at lkc@therealdeal.com or 212-991-5026.

From left: Town Residential’s David Salvatore, Prudential Douglas Elliman’s Sonia Stock and Fredrik Eklund, UrbanDigs’ Noah Rosenblatt and Gary Malin, president of Citi Habitats

With the stock market posting its best first quarter in 14 years, real estate agents and brokers are beaming about the effect it’s having on interest, sales volume and open house attendance in their day-to-day business, despite little data to definitively confirm a causal relationship between the performance of stocks and the real estate market (see charts prepared for The Real Deal by Miller Samuel after the jump)…. [more]

Long Island City

Apartments for families are all the rage in Long Island City, the New York Times reported, and new developments slated for the area are prioritizing amenities such as playrooms, capitalizing on the relative affordability, commuting possibilities and the suburban feeling of the city.

In the first quarter of 2011, the average size of a unit sold was 822 square feet, while in the fourth quarter it had jumped to 1,364 square feet, according to data provided by Jonathan Miller of appraisal firm Miller Samuel. [more]

From left: prospective mayoral candidates Christine Quinn, Bill de Blasio, Scott Stringer and John Liu

From the February issue: With all the coverage surrounding the upcoming presidential election, New York City’s 2013 mayoral race feels a long way off. But that’s not the case for the politicos running for mayor — or even those rumored to be considering it.

Most have already been collecting campaign contributions for months or years, in many cases from prominent figures in the city’s real estate industry. [more]

Russell Simmons and 14 Buckingham Drive in Alpine, N.J.

From the February issue: It’s a question many New Yorkers, especially those with children, ask themselves at some point: Buy an apartment in the city, or spend the same amount on a spacious house in the suburbs? When choosing the latter, New Yorkers often flock to the stately homes, McMansions and well-tended lawns of a few affluent counties just outside the city’s borders: Westchester and Nassau counties in New York, Fairfield County in Connecticut and Bergen County in New Jersey (see charts of the top five sales in each county after the jump). [more]

From left: Seann Birkelund, vice president of business development for Education.com, the interactive map tool and Ammanda Espinal of Elliman

While marketing a building on the strength of the school district it lies within is forbidden by the Fair Housing Act, a new interactive map designed by Education.com provides homebuyers with the tools to do their own research, without the help of a broker.

California-based Education.com, a website that offers advice and information to parents of school-age children who are in the market for a home, launched the new interactive map called “School Boundaries” with school district assignment information yesterday. The map, the company said, is a valuable tool for apartment hunters and brokers, who often have a hard time accessing these kinds of information cheaply or without significant offline research. Also, it’s not information that brokers can legally share. [more]

From left: Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, Joshua Muss of Muss Development, Bob Sanna of Forest City Ratner and Lynne Brown of NYU (credit: Jonathan Fickies)

Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz is pushing hard for New York University to further expand in the borough, he said at the Brooklyn Real Estate Roundtable luncheon today.

“NYU and their future belong in Brooklyn,” Markowitz told a crowd of real estate pros at the event, held at the Brooklyn Historical Society in Brooklyn Heights. [more]