The Sagamore at 189 West 89th Street (credit: CityRealty) and Bruce Beal Jr.

Related Companies has sold the luxury Sagamore apartment building on the Upper West Side as investor demand for multi-family properties rises. The 265-unit rental building, at 189 West 89th Street, went under contract this month for $140 million, sources told Bloomberg News. The buyer is a unit of Chicago-based private equity firm LaSalle Investment Management. “With the sale of the Sagamore, we recognized an opportunity to both extract value for Related and our partners and to reinvest the capital into our acquisition and development initiatives,” Bruce Beal Jr., executive vice president of Related, said in a statement. The deal is the largest by price for a Manhattan multi-family property since March, according to data from Real Capital Analytics. Demand for apartments is climbing as the city’s rental market tightens. Leases almost tripled in the fourth quarter and median rents rose 1.7 percent from a year earlier to $2,950, appraiser Miller Samuel and brokerage Prudential Douglas Elliman said last month. [more]

From the March issue: Real estate scams are the crime du jour, it seems. In the 2000s, the era of easy credit and lax lending standards created a compelling motive for fraud that legal experts say is still being uncovered. Even now, with prices down from the peak, New York City real estate is pricey enough to tempt would-be criminals. Adam Hochfelder, for example, lost his status as a charismatic wunderkind of Manhattan real estate in 2008, when he was arrested and accused of stealing more than $17 million from banks, friends and family through fraudulent loans and a fictitious real estate venture. Then, last month, he was indicted again, this time on charges that he stole some $2.5 million from business associates and friends by leading them to believe they were investing in deals to acquire the Sagamore Hotel on Lake George in upstate New York and the Peaks Resort and Spa in Telluride, Colo. Now, The Real Deal dissects his crime. [more]