Ismael Leyva and 353 Central Park West

Ismael Leyva, the architect behind notable Manhattan buildings such as the Yves Chelsea and Place 57, has listed his own apartment at 353 Central Park West for $7.75 million, StreetEasy shows. [more]

From left: Observer publisher Jared Kushner, Observer CEO Joseph Meyer, CORE co-founder Jack Cayre and CORE CEO Shaun Osher (credit: Patrick McMullan)

Residential real estate brokerage CORE unveiled its second Manhattan retail office today and had a party last night to celebrate. The rather tasteful, subdued gathering took place in a sleek basement lounge at the Rouge Tomate, an upscale Upper East Side restaurant known for its nutritional offerings, and was hosted by the firm in partnership with the New York Observer, which just launched a new lifestyle supplement to its weekly newspaper…. [more]

CORE CEO Shaun Osher and One Museum Mile

Harlem’s 113-unit condominium tower, dubbed One Museum Mile, has reached the half way mark, with 50 percent of its units closed or in contract, according to Core, the brokerage handling sales. Located at 1280 Fifth Avenue, the Robert A.M. Stern-designed building has seen sale prices ranging from $650,000 for a studio to nearly $4.4 million for a four-bedroom unit, according to Streeteasy.com data. [more]

Walker Tower penthouse interior

Developers of condos in Manhattan are responding to steeply escalating demand by raising prices on unbuilt units as often as twice a month, Bloomberg News reported. At the same time that home sales hit a decade high in the fourth quarter, Manhattan’s inventory of homes for sale dropped to its lowest levels in at least 12 years, according to appraisal firm Miller Samuel…. [more]

Shaun Osher

From the January issue:  6:30 a.m. I usually wake up at 6:30. Half the week I stay in Port Washington, on Long Island. That’s where my two beautiful daughters live. The days when I don’t have my girls, I’m on West 9th Street, where I share a townhouse with my girlfriend, Brittley Jarrell, who is the chief operating officer of Core. I’ve always been very active — I work out about four or five times a week. It’s usually a bike ride, between 20 to 75 miles [before work], and it’s usually loops in Central Park. Today, I ran seven miles along the Hudson. I also try to meet with my trainer once a week, to do push-ups, pull-ups, the rowing machine and rope-climbing, like back in my army days in South Africa. I was in the army for two years. There was six months of basic training, which was brutal. I was living in the bush, crazy stuff. [more] 

Shaun Osher and Core’s new location on Madison Avenue

Boutique brokerage Core is set to open its second Manhattan retail location, this one on the Upper East Side, a company spokesperson told The Real Deal today.

The firm, which was recently ranked by TRD as the city’s top boutique brokerage based on the value of listings, has inked a 10-year lease for a 3,500-square-foot office at 673 Madison Avenue that will open next spring, the spokesperson said. A gut renovation of the place will begin this fall. [more]

From left: Elliman Chairman Howard Lorber, Core CEO Shaun Osher and 15 CPW

It’s been more than seven months since reports of the $88 million sale of Sanford Weill’s 15 Central Park West penthouse emerged, yet, in light of the recent $90 million-plus contract on a One57 penthouse and Steve Wynn’s $70 million purchase at the Ritz-Carlton, it continues to reverberate through the city’s real estate market. Brokers told the New York Times that they expect a slew of high-priced homes, including a handful asking more than $90 million, to hit the market in the near future. [more]

From left: Ryan Serhant of Nestseekers and Oren Alexander of Prudential Douglas Elliman, a photo of the penthouse’s living room and the north view from the penthouse

Real estate power players turned out last night for the launch of Chelsea’s newest condo development.

Indeed, the opening of sales at Walker Tower — the long-awaited residential conversion by JDS Development of an Art Deco building designed in 1929 by Ralph Walker — drew much attention from the residential real estate community. Town Residential’s Wendy Maitland and Reid Price, NestSeekers’ Ryan Serhant, Prudential Douglas Elliman’s Oren Alexander, Fredrik Eklund and John Gomes, and the Corcoran Group’s Robby Browne stopped by to take a peek at the building’s model unit on the tenth floor. The tower, at 212 West 18th Street, will not be completed until next year…. [more]

Core CEO Shaun Osher

From the June issue: In the world of Manhattan boutique firms, a new company is king. For the first time since The Real Deal started ranking boutique firms in 2009, the seven-year-old brokerage Core knocked the venerable Upper East Side brokerage Leslie J. Garfield & Co. from its continuous perch atop the firms with the highest dollar volume of listings. [more]

Town Residential founder Andrew Heiberger (left) and Core founder Shaun Osher (right)

From the June issue: Manhattan’s residential brokerage heavyweights are seeing the benefits of a recovering market, it seems.

Almost across the board, Manhattan’s largest residential firms have retained agents or added to their ranks since last year, according to The Real Deal’s annual ranking of Manhattan’s largest firms. And while the overall number of listings has dipped by 1.5 percent, the dollar value of those listings has shot up nearly 12 percent, to almost $13.4 billion. [more]