Clockwise from top left: Elizabeth Sample of Sotheby’s International Realty, One57 and Wendy Maitland, managing director of Town ResidentialExtell Development has raised the price of one of its penthouses by 12 percent to a whopping $110 million, according to documents filed with the New York state attorney general cited by the Wall Street Journal.

In what will be Manhattan’s tallest residential tower, the listing for the 10,923-square-foot, six-bedroom condominium on the top two floors of the 90-story building might be the borough’s priciest ever. The asking price of a 13,554-square-foot unit on the 75th and 76th floors was also raised to $105 million. Building wide, prices are about about 3.9 percent since the condo plan was first submitted. [more]

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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Even as luxury condominiums flood southern Tribeca, the portion of the
once-gritty neighborhood north of Moore Street is outpacing the
neighborhood’s southern portion in terms of real estate prices, reported
the Wall Street Journal. The median price of a condo in northern Tribeca is $3.3 million, or
$1,472 per square foot, according to data from Streeteasy.com. In
southern Tribeca the median price is only $2.8 million. The Tribeca
allure lies in the lack of tourist foot traffic and a quiet,
undiscovered feeling that suits young families, the Journal said. [more]

Greg Agran, head of commodities trading at Goldman Sachs, has purchased a condominium unit at Tribeca’s trendiest new development, Tribeca flair V33 at 33 Vestry Street, for $6.16 million, the New York Observer reported.

Agran, who also owns a $13 million apartment six blocks north at 13 Harrison Street with his wife, purchased the four-bedroom, three-bathroom unit through an LLC by the name of Morning Dew but the deed was signed in his own name, according to the Observer.

The building on Vestry Street is one of a kind, said Wendy Maitland, a broker for Town Residential who has had the listing. “It’s a 52-foot-wide lot,” she explained. [more]

From left: Wendy Maitland, a managing director at Town, 45 Horatio Street (credit: PropertyShark) and Eric McCarthy, another Town managing director

Less than a year into its existence Town Residential is opening its fifth office this weekend in the West Village, the brokerage told The Real Deal. The firm signed a lease for a 16-foot wide, three-story townhouse at 45 Horatio Street between Hudson and Greenwich streets. It will be managed by Wendy Maitland, who also serves as the managing director of Town’s Flatiron office at 110 Fifth Avenue, and Eric McCarthy, who previously served as a downtown managing director at Citi Habitats. Maitland will have a presence in both offices.

The opening comes just as Town’s Flatiron office and its Financial District office, at the corner of Greenwich and Rector streets, have reached capacity at 110 and 32 agents, respectively. – Adam Fusfeld [more]

From left: 33 Vestry Street, 471 Washington Street and One North Moore Street

For those still doubting the luxury sales market’s recovery in New York City, and particularly downtown, three boutique Tribeca condos that stalled during the downturn offer some additional evidence. According to the Wall Street Journal, all three buildings — 33 Vestry Street, 471 Washington Street and One North Moore Street — have now nearly sold out, with many of those sales taking place within the last few months. At 33 Vestry, also known as V33, the seventh and last remaining apartment, a $14.95 million penthouse, went into contract late last month. The building initially hit the market in 2007, but in its reincarnation, was strikingly more popular, drawing multiple bidders for each of its last three sales. [more]

Paula Busch, a veteran senior-level manager in the Corcoran Group’s flagship 660 Madison Avenue office, has left the firm for Town Residential, the latest in a string of recruits to Andrew Heiberger’s new brokerage. According to Town, Busch will take over as managing director of sales. Busch, who had overseen 350 agents in her role at Corcoran, said in a statement that she is “thrilled to be joining a company as innovative and entrepreneurial as Town,” while Heiberger praised her as a “pillar of the industry.” TRD [more]

From left: Robert Dvorin, Dottie Herman, Andrew Heiberger and Phillip Acha

A Prudential Douglas Elliman veteran and his team have left the firm in the wake of several high-profile departures over the last few months. Robert Dvorin, who was with the company for eight years and ranked among the top 25 agents at the company in 2008, 2009 and 2010, left to join Town, a relatively new residential brokerage and brainchild of Citi Habitats founder Andrew Heiberger.

Dvorin’s five-person sales team, including his wife, Young Lee, made the move with him. The broker was previously the director of sales at SoLofts and is currently marketing a 33,000-square-foot apartment building at 55 Warren Street in Tribeca for $29.9 million, which he took with him from Elliman.
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From left: former Corcoran agents Bill Kowalczuk and Susan Singer; Town Residential founder Andrew Heiberger

Four agents from the Corcoran Group have jumped ship to Town Residential, the latest venture from Citi Habitats founder Andrew Heiberger.

Bill Kowalczuk, a senior vice president at Corcoran, brought his two-person team with him to Town, while Susan Singer, also a senior vice president who works independently, came on her own.

In July 2006, Kowalczuk brokered a deal for a 5,000-square-foot rental loft in the Meatpacking District for $33,000 a month, the highest residential rent ever paid in the neighborhood at that time. [more]

Andrew HeibergerFrom the January issue: Andrew Heiberger has decided that Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village is a neighborhood. Most New Yorkers think of the massive rental housing complex as part of the East Village. But it’s large enough to warrant its own neighborhood, at least according to the 42-year-old founder of Citi Habitats, who largely credits himself with creating the current layout of neighborhoods in Manhattan.

“When I first had Citi Habitats, Manhattan used to be divided into four neighborhoods — Upper East, Upper West, Midtown and Downtown,” said Heiberger. “I came into the business, and I said, ‘This is not how the city works.’ I put out a real estate map that most of the firms are still using today, which broke [Manhattan] into 13 neighborhoods.”

With Heiberger’s new brokerage, Town Residential, he’s at it again. [more]