Knick Jeremy Lin and the Trump building in White Plains

Despite real estate attorney Edward Mermelstein’s recent offer of a free one-bedroom apartment, New York Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin has opted to move into two-bedroom apartment, which he’s subletting from former fellow Knick, David Lee, at a Trump Tower in downtown White Plains.

The basketball player, who’s recently been on a winning streak, will pay approximately $3,800 a month for an apartment in a 35-story building right off Main Street that’s also home to several other Knicks and Rangers players, the Daily News reported, marking the end of a two-month period spent on his brother’s couch. [more]

Cambria Hotels International is planning a new hotel in White Plains, N.Y., according to a statement released by Cambria today. The project will be a joint venture with Meyer Jabara Hotels, who will manage the property. “We are excited to add the White Plains Cambria Suites to our portfolio of hotels,” said William Meyer, chairman of Meyer Jabara Hotels.

This is the third of the company’s New York area investments, after plans for a Cambria Suites hotel developed by Extell at 30 West 46th Street and another Cambria Suites hotel at 123-125 West 28th Street, were announced earlier this year. – Miranda Neubauer Comments

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With its number of 60-and-over residents increasing, Westchester County is finally moving forward on four assisted-living facilities and a continuing-care retirement community.
The several-year construction hiatus on the facilities came due to the tight lending market for developers and the difficulty of potential residents to sell their homes.
Atria Senior Living has recently renovated an assisted-living facility in Ossining that had been closed for three years, while Engel Burman is set to open two more, one in Armonk and one in White Plains. Soon, Fountain Square Senior Living will open the Kensington, which will be across from the White Plains hospital, offering both assisted-living and nursing care. [more]

In the New York-White Plains-Wayne area, 10.5 percent, or 119,196, of all residential properties with a mortgage were in negative equity for first quarter 2011, according to new negative equity data released by CoreLogic for the quarter. Nationally, 27 percent, or 10.9 million, of all residential properties with a mortgage were in negative equity at the end of the first quarter of 2011, down slightly from 11.1 million, or 23.1 percent, in the fourth quarter. An additional 2.4 million borrowers had less than five percent equity in the first quarter. Together, negative equity and near-negative equity mortgages accounted for 27.7 percent of all U.S. residential properties with a mortgage. In the previous quarter, these two categories stood at 27.9 percent. TRD [more]

Foreclosure rates in New York-White Plains-Wayne jumped to 5.08 percent in March, according to a report by CoreLogic, up 1.47 percent from March 2010 when the rate was 3.61 percent. Foreclosure activity in the area remains higher than the national average which was 3.57 percent in March this year.

The mortgage delinquency rate in New York-White Plains-Wayne has also increased. According to CoreLogic data, 8.48 percent of mortgage loans were 90 days or more delinquent compared to 8.25 percent for the same period last year. TRD [more]

From the February issue: The New York City real estate world has closely followed as brokerages here have downsized and shuttered offices. But just north of the city, in Westchester, the real estate industry has quietly seen a shift of its own. Indeed, some say the brokerage world there has been irrevocably altered during the downturn as some firms have announced closures, and others have set up shop or merged with larger corporate entities, poaching agents along the way. The biggest shake-up, of course, was Sotheby’s International Realty’s October decision to terminate its presence in the county altogether. Sotheby’s sold four of its offices — its three “golden triangle” offices in Scarsdale, Rye and Larchmont, as well as one in Chappaqua — to an affiliate, William Pitt Sotheby’s International Realty. In addition, it shut down a fifth office in Katonah, farther north in Westchester. That follows Better Homes and Gardens Rand Realty, which has seven offices in Westchester with roughly 340 agents, joining the Realogy umbrella at the end of April.  [more]

After closing a blockbuster deal to relocate Starwood Hotels & Resorts from its White Plains headquarters to Stamford, Conn., outgoing Stamford Mayor Dan Malloy said the deal may be the first of several announcements over the next few weeks.

“We have deals that could be announced literally any day,” Malloy told The Real Deal.

Connecticut Governor M. Jodi Rell said this week that Starwood signed to relocate its corporate headquarters to a 250,000-square-foot space at Stamford’s new Harbor Point development at 333 Ludlow Street by January 2012. Starwood will team up with its new landlord, Building and Land Technology, to renovate the new space at a price of $40 million.

Starwood will save 20 percent in rent at its new headquarters, but officials declined to comment on specific prices. Existing tenants at the site include Deloitte & Touche and Pitney Bowes. According to a second-quarter report by Cushman & Wakefield, the average asking rent for Class A office space was $48.36 per square foot in downtown Stamford and $38.71 per square foot in the rest of the city. [more]

Luxury units in Westchester, which multiplied during the housing boom,
are now slow to sell. At the Ritz-Carlton Westchester in White Plains,
for example, most of the 180-unit first tower sold within 10 months of
going on the market in fall 2006, at an average price of $870 per
square foot. But at the second tower, which came on the market nine
months ago, only 70 of 177 units have sold. Developer Cappelli
Enterprises has not reduced prices on the tower, where prices average
in the high $800s to low $900s per square foot. [more]