Elliman’s Karen Mansour and 400 Fifth Avenue

Prudential Douglas Elliman will officially be named the new broker for the Setai Fifth Avenue, the luxury hotel and condominium from developer Bizzi & Partners, which now faces an amended lawsuit from the Setai Group for another $50 million, The Real Deal has learned. Karen Mansour, the director of development marketing at Elliman, will lead the new sales team, hoping to raise flagging sales at the 400 Fifth Avenue tower, which includes a 214-room hotel and a 184-unit condo. Sales previously had been managed internally by Elida Jacobsen Justo, director of sales at the Setai, who previously told The Real Deal that nearly 50 percent of the units had been sold. [more]

Ziel Feldman and the Setai

HFZ, led by Ziel Feldman, and Israel’s Acro Group, have closed on an
$80 million deal with Anglo Irish Bank to buy the note at the Setai
condominium at 40 Broad Street.
Anglo Irish, the struggling Irish lender, put its $147 million
construction loan up for sale in 2010 after the sponsor, Zamir
Equities, defaulted on the debt.
Zamir completed the conversion of the 34-story office building into a
condo and sold around 50 percent of the units, but former Attorney
General Andrew Cuomo allowed buyers to back out of their contracts and
halted future sales. Comments

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The Royal Palm Hotel has had reported cases of bedbugs

South Florida’s hotels are seeing increased occupancy, but there are a number of un [more]

From the South Florida Web site: South Beach residential real estate prices are staying strong at the high end as buyers fork over cash to buy ultra-luxury condominium units. Upper-echelon properties, especially those in the South of Fifth neighborhood, are holding their own and, in some cases, fetching more than expected. “In South Beach, I would say prices are holding, prices are coming back,” de Solminihac said. “I saw a few transactions where the buyers expected to get lower prices, and the sellers got even higher prices than the first bids.” He cited one example at the Portofino tower, where the first offer for a $2.2 million unit came in at $1.5 million, and that was out-bid by a $1.55 million offer. Finally, a buyer came and offered $1.725 million and the deal closed in 15 days. [more]

From left: The Real Deal’s top stories include best and worst deals, the profile of one-time real estate big wig Michael Shvo, and news on the Setai

The most popular stories on The Real Deal Web site from 2009, based on the number of page views, run the gamut from a collection of the best and worst deals since the crunch, to a profile of the boom-time marketing wunderkind Michael Shvo, to the breaking news that the Setai joined the number of city projects releasing buyers from their contracts.

Here are the top 10 stories of the year:

1. Finding a bottom in Brooklyn
2. The best and worst deals
3. Where in the world did Shvo go?
4. Setai condo buyers granted right to cancel contracts, get deposits back
5. New York could see a double dip in residential market
6. ‘Vornado Tornado’ gets ready to land
7. Where are buyers backing out?
8. Fortress buys Sheffield57 at auction for $20M
9.The tallest green condo shoots
10. SL Green battles Levy, Chetrit in Chelsea [more]

From the May issue: While the New York City real estate market is in
something of a deep freeze, one building is rolling out a truly chill
new amenity: an ice cave. The cave, planned for the Setai at 400 Fifth
Avenue, between 36th and 37th streets, is modeled on a European spa-type treatment. Inside the
enclosed space, the temperature will be set to 45 degrees. Big in
Europe, ice caves — where patrons can rub ice chips on their skin –
are the cooling counterpart to a sauna or other type of steam room.
While officials at the Setai declined to comment, Steven Kass,
president of American Leisure, which designs and operates spas and
fitness centers and helped create the ice cave at the Midtown Setai,
said the cold temperatures are good for the body and the skin. “The ice
cave is part of a series of thermal and water treatments that vary body
temperatures at different levels of exertion, which is good for the
skin, circulation and internal organs,” he said. [more]