For New York City real estate, 2010 in many ways marked a return to normalcy after the tumultuous aftermath of the financial crisis. As the ubiquitous real estate appraiser and Miller Samuel CEO Jonathan Miller put it: “it was a year of a sense of relief.” City home prices stopped their freefall and sales activity improved considerably from the post-Lehman doldrums. Stalled condominium projects like the Sheffield and 1 Rector Park re-started sales. Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim bought Tamir Sapir’s Fifth Avenue townhouse, the Duke Semans mansion, for $44 million. As the unspoken taboo on ostentatious spending faded, a number of high-end residential properties changed hands at the end of the year, including Brooke Astor’s 14-room duplex at 778 Park Avenue, which finally sold after two years on the market (albeit for a significant discount from its original asking price). Japanese retailer Uniqlo snagged 89,000 square feet at 666 Fifth Avenue’s former Brooks Brothers space for a record $300 million, demonstrating that retail is still thriving along the posh shopping corridor.
But the economic downturn continued to make its presence felt. The office market remained uneven and troubled lender iStar Financial fought to stave off bankruptcy amid lingering fears of a double-dip recession.
Here are The Real Deal staff’s picks for the stories that most altered the New York City real estate landscape in 2010, in alphabetical order. [more]

From left: Wendy Maitland, Reid Price, Jeffrey Appel and Itzaskun “Itzy” Garay

In addition to Brown Harris Stevens power brokers Wendy Maitland and Reid Price, new recruits to Town Residential — the new brokerage launched today by Citi Habitats founder Andrew Heiberger — include Citi Habitats managers Itzaskun “Itzy” Garay and Matthew Van Damm, and Bank of America’s Jeffrey Appel.

Town Residential has opened two branches with space for around 140 agents. The 16,000-square-foot flagship office is located at 110 Fifth Avenue, between 16th and 17th streets, and will house 115 agents. A 30-agent office at 88 Greenwich Street is located in the former sales office of Greenwich Club Residences, a new 452-unit condominium developed by Heiberger’s Manhattan-based development company, Buttonwood Real Estate. The building is now nearly sold out, the firm said, and Heiberger will continue to be active in development under the auspices of Buttonwood, which is a separate company from Town. [more]

Cathy Hobbs, a judge

Cracked floors, bad lighting, out-of-date decor — there are myriad aesthetic pitfalls that afflict New York City lobbies. But with $25,000 and a little bit of elbow grease, interior design firm BC Exchange, which does lobby and corridor renovations on a regular basis, says it will transform one co-op or condo’s lobby into a work of art for its “Ugly Lobby” contest. [more]

Developers Ira Shapiro and Marc Jacobs have defaulted on their mortgage interest payments at once-condo-hot-spot One Madison Park, the unfinished 60-story tower on East 23rd Street, according to lender iStar Tara. The lender has filed foreclosure papers in Manhattan Supreme Court, saying that the developers and their Slazer Enterprises owe the company more than $200 million and have committed “numerous breaches of [their] obligations under the mortgages.” The property, with its rocky sales record, has been hit with a number of lawsuits from other lenders and buyers over the past several months. According to the latest iStar suit, judgments, liens and lawsuits pending against One Madison Park total one dozen. The company wants to foreclose on the property, where sources told the Post that the and marketing office has been closed for the past week, and sell it. The foreclosure suit will not affect the condos already sold with the approval of iStar, according to the filing. [Post]

From the February issue: During the real estate boom, it was common and even encouraged for brokers to buy units in the new development buildings they were marketing. After all, what endorsement could be better than a six-figure down payment? But now that buyers are scarce, a number of problems with brokers purchasing units have surfaced, from unethical dilemmas with flipping to price inflation to whether brokers can be considered “bona fide” purchasers. These issues often went unnoticed when prices were roaring upward, but can threaten a condo development’s very existence in today’s litigious environment. “In the past, there was absolutely no issue because these buildings were sold out, and who cares what the broker did?” said Anne Salisbury, an attorney in the real estate litigation group at Guzov Ofsink. “Now that you’ve got empty units, it can become an issue.” For years, marketing firms urged their brokers to buy units in the new development buildings they were tasked with selling. “It’s a sort of stamp of approval for the building,” said Jennifer Lee, the director of new business development at aptsandlofts?.com, who noted that the brokerage encourages its agents to purchase property. [more]

Developer Adam Gordon’s limestone townhouse at 26 West 76th Street has seen no shortage of celebrity interest, but it may ultimately end up in the hands of one of two high-finance New York families with children who have made offers on the $19.5 million listing, according to the Post. Also on the table is a bid to turn the 10,000-square-foot mansion into a new Kips Bay Decorator Show House. The 19th century home, with six bedrooms, seven bathrooms, two kitchens, a garden and a glass-enclosed penthouse studio, has been ogled by the likes of Matt Damon and Alex Rodriguez, and Gordon has already rejected a bid from reality show producers to have Victoria’s Secret models live in the space for a month during filming. Wendy Maitland and Reid Price of Brown Harris Stevens have the listing. [Post, 2nd item]

One Madison Park

Despite recent rumors that One Madison Park was cleaning up with a $10 million single-unit payday for apartment 42A — a sale that would have come out to more than $3,000 per square foot — a city filing has come to burst that bubble. The scandal-plagued development at 23 East 22nd Street saw 42A go for just $6.31 million, Curbed said, citing city records, showing a less impressive $1,900 per square foot sales figure. The development, no stranger to controversy, has had a rocky sales record, with Brown Harris Stevens agents Wendy Maitland and Wilbur Gonzalez being replaced late last year by Prudential Douglas Elliman agent Tamir Shemesh. Later, the developers at One Madison Park became the target of lawsuits from several high-profile investors, including former Yankees chairman Harvey Schiller and Maitland, alleging that they had failed to pay back numerous loans and deposits. [more]

Brown Harris Stevens agent Wendy Maitland and One Madison Park

The developers of Flatiron District condominium One Madison Park are facing a flurry of lawsuits alleging they failed to pay back millions of dollars in loans and deposits to a number of high-profile investors, including Brown Harris Stevens’ Wendy Maitland, the building’s original listing broker, and Charles Milite, president of the Gotham City Restaurant Group. Maitland, a senior vice president at BHS, filed suit against Park Madison Associates in New York State Supreme Court Dec. 22, alleging that Ira Shapiro, who co-developed the building with investor Marc Jacobs (not the designer) under the name Slazer Enterprises, asked to borrow from her $300,000 in August 2009 to help pay for unpaid mechanics liens on the property. Shapiro told Maitland that he would receive money from another source, so Maitland agreed to lend the funds if the money was repaid within 24 hours, according to the complaint. Maitland made two $100,000 wire transfers into Shapiro’s account between Aug. 19 and Aug. 20, the complaint says, and then made a third wire transfer of $100,000 to Five Star Electric, an Ozone Park-based contractor. An official from Five Star confirmed that it was a contractor at the building, but did not have any further comment on the mechanic’s liens or the case. [more]

Top to bottom: Tamir Shemesh of Prudential Douglas Elliman, Wilbur Gonzalez and Wendy Maitland of Brown Harris Stevens. At right: One Madison Park

It looks like there may be some disagreement about who fired whom at One Madison Park.

Brown Harris Stevens said in a statement released to The Real Deal today that it terminated the contract at the luxury condominium building, not the developers, Ira Shapiro and Marc Jacobs.

“Brown Harris Stevens On Site Marketing and Sales has terminated its exclusive sales agency agreement for One Madison as of Nov. 20, 2009,” the statement said.

By contrast, the developers claimed through a spokesperson that their exclusive marketing contract with Brown Harris Stevens had expired, enabling them to bring on a new marketing firm, Prudential Douglas Elliman. Tamir Shemesh, a managing director
at Elliman, is handling sales at the project and is acting as a spokesperson for the developer.
[more]

Clockwise from top left: Cortney and Robert Novogratz, a living space at 400 West Street, a dining area in the same property, Raphael De Niro of Prudential Douglas Elliman, the kitchen at 400 West Street

Cortney and Robert Novogratz, the stars of the upcoming Bravo reality TV show “Design Sixx,” have switched real estate brokers in their attempt to sell the townhouse where they live and the show was filmed. The family’s current home, located at 400 West Street, originally went on the market for $25 million in June with Brown Harris Stevens’ Wendy Maitland and Susan Green. This weekend, it was re-listed at the same price with Raphael De Niro, a managing director at Prudential Douglas Elliman. Under the auspices of their Manhattan development and design firm, Sixx Design, the Novogratzes specialize in renovating and flipping abandoned Manhattan spaces, and have moved 11 or 12 times in the past decade, living in houses they flipped. And the couple has seven children — the last one was born in January — which is what prompted Bravo to announce a reality series based on their lives. The show is slated to air this coming January. Reality show or not, brokers have speculated that the house — which comes with a private basketball court — is priced too high, the New York Post reported. [more]