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 left: the exterior of 41 Bond Street, a model apartment and Fred Gehring, CEO of Tommy Hilfiger

By Lauren Elkies and Adam Fusfeld
Fred Gehring, CEO at Tommy Hilfiger, has closed on the purchase of a 2,592-square-foot condominium unit at 41 Bond Street.
Gehring bought unit 7 from the developer, DDG Partners, for $7.07 million, in a deal that closed Dec. 13, according to public records filed with the city yesterday.
The floor-through three-bedroom, 3.5-bath home with private outdoor space and custom-designed fireplace is one of seven in the nine-story Noho building. [more]

From left: Shelley O’Keefe of the Corcoran Group, Soho Mews at 311 West Broadway, Corcoran Sunshine’s Joanie Achumacher and Kirk Henckels of Stribling & Associates

Two years ago the holiday season was a dark time for New York City’s residential real estate brokers. This holiday season is quite a departure. Appointments are up, housing supply is down and brokers are planning to work through the holidays, making sure to be available for international buyers who will be in town and may just want to pick up a multi-million dollar Manhattan apartment as part of a holiday shopping spree.

The bleak days of 2009 have not yet fully faded from memory. “Nothing compares to that,” said Shelley O’Keefe, a senior vice president at the Corcoran Group and head of on-site sales for Soho Mews condominium, at 311 West Broadway, of the 2009 holiday season, shortly after Soho Mews premiered. But things are more than looking up this year.
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From left, two pictures from Town Residential, the Spire Group and the Level Group’s holiday parties (see jump for specific captions)

[Updated at 3 p.m. on Dec. 19 with picture from Platinum Properties' party] It’s been three years since the city’s two largest residential brokerages, Prudential Douglas Elliman and the Corcoran Group, cancelled their once notorious holiday bashes, citing the plunging economy and the corresponding embrace of austerity.

While the residential sales market has largely recovered from 2008 (even if it hasn’t reached pre-crash levels), and the rental market is on fire, the specter of financial strife continues to hover over the holiday season like Scrooge’s Ghost of Christmas Past, wreaking havoc with the party calendar.

“This year they’re more sparse,” Iman Bacodari, vice president and associate broker for the Jacky Teplitzky team at Elliman, said of the industry’s holiday parties. “I’m not seeing them one after another, I’m not seeing big splurges.
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Andrew Heiberger has recruited 265 agents
and staff since launching Town a year ago.From the December issue: When Andrew Heiberger launched the residential brokerage Town, he prophesied that it would become the city’s biggest firm, vowing to hire the industry’s “best and the brightest.”

A year later, at least part of that prediction is on its way to coming true. With five offices and some 265 agents and staff, Town is undoubtedly the fastest-growing brokerage in Manhattan. By way of comparison, Rutenberg Realty — until now the city’s most rapidly expanding firm — didn’t top 200 agents until three years after its 2006 launch. (Rutenberg, in contrast to Town, has a low-overhead business model with just one small office.)

It’s still too soon to tell, however, whether Town’s agents will become the city’s best. At press time, Town said it had 152 exclusive listings worth approximately $405 million, with an average asking price of $2.67 million for sales and $7,500 per month for rentals.

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By Katherine Clarke and Lauren Elkies

From left: Tamir Shemesh of the Corcoran Group, model Anne Flore Trichilo, 164 Bank Street and Maria Daou

International fashion model Anne Flore Trichilo has sold her 164 Bank Street apartment, according to public records filed with the city today. The Corcoran Group’s Tamir Shemesh, who represented Trichilo in the sale, said the unit closed Nov. 22 for $1.13 million.

Trichilo, who has worked with designers like Karl Lagerfeld and photographers such as Patrick Demarchelier, purchased the unit in 2001, according to public records, which did not reveal the price she paid. The 700-square-foot, one-bedroom, one-bathroom unit has Hudson Street views. The condo building, between Washington and West streets, features 24 loft-like apartments on 13 floors. [more]

From the November issue: Last month, Fredrik Eklund, a Prudential Douglas Elliman managing director who also runs an eponymous Stockholm-based brokerage, was arranging the sale of a $6.5 million Upper East Side triplex to an overseas buyer from Greece.
Given the economic chaos plaguing the Hellenic republic, it may seem unlikely for a Greek buyer to invest millions in New York City real estate right now. But the reasoning behind the purchase was simple: “They have to get their money out of Greece,” Eklund said.
As the European debt crisis continues, wealthy individuals from tottering European economies may be looking to New York City homes as the proverbial “safe haven” for their assets — a good bet compared to erratic global stock markets and residential markets across the pond. And, last month, Senator Charles Schumer, the Democrat from New York, and Senator Mike Lee, a Republican from Utah, joined forced to introduce legislation to encourage more of them to park their money in real estate here. The legislation would grant limited visas to foreigners who invest at least $500,000 in cash in residential real estate in the U.S. 
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Brown Harris Stevens’ Carol Cohen and 737 Park Avenue

The lawsuit filed against former Corcoran Group star broker and now Brown Harris Stevens senior vice president Carol Cohen, which led to her reported dismissal from Corcoran at the close of 2010, has been thrown out, according to documents filed by the New York state Supreme court earlier this month.

The lawsuit, filed by Katz 737 Corp., the landlord at Cohen and her husband Lester Cohen’s apartment building, in 2010, alleges that the couple had repeatedly lied about their income on state forms in order to prevent a rent increase at their $3,060 per month apartment at 737 Park Avenue, between 71st and 72nd streets. The landlord claimed that they had reported their combined income as being less than $175,000 per year to avoid a rent hike at the unit, which they had lived in since 1989.

The dismissal rendered those claims insufficient to prosecute. [more]

From left: Gary Barnett, president of Extell Development, a rendering of One57, Michael Chen, director of Asian market development at Bond New York and Patricia Cliff, the Corcoran Group’s director of international sales

Sales have unofficially kicked off at One57, Extell Development’s 90-story condominium tower in Midtown, with some prices hitting $6,000 per square foot, according to a source with inside information about the asking prices. The 1,000-foot tall property, at 157 West 57th Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues, is slated to replace New York by Gehry at 8 Spruce Street as the city’s tallest residential building when construction is completed within two years. Extell plans to officially open a sales office at the end of this month, but foreign buyers — primarily from China — have already snapped up some of the units since the developer began shopping them privately last month, according to the source, who asked for anonymity because the information is confidential. [more]

It was an unusual occasion — a world-famous architect presenting his own works of sculpture and collage in a building he personally designed — but it drew quite a crowd.

“Art in Architecture: Selected works by Richard Meier,” an exhibition presented inside a ground-floor space in Meier’s own glass and steel tower, On Prospect Park, at 1 Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn last night, featured a selection of 56 collages and four stainless steel sculptures created by Meier between 1992 and 2009.

“I really do the collages and the sculpture for myself,” Meier told his audience at a reception to mark the opening of the exhibit (see photos above), “as a hobby, a pastime — instead of going to the movies. I wasn’t so sure [the exhibition] was a good idea, but seeing how it’s all been put together… It’s like I’ve come out of the closet. And to be in this building of course, is extra-special.” [more]