September 01, 2009 01:10PM
By C. J. Hughes
It may have Manhattan's highest natural point (265 feet, in Bennett Park), but Washington Heights did not see the steep peaks in activity and prices that so many Manhattan neighborhoods experienced in the past few years.
As a result, the neighborhood -- which stretches from the Hudson to the East rivers and from 155th to Dyckman streets -- has avoided the complete and utter cratering that many other Manhattan neighborhoods have seen in the last couple months.
This month, as part of a monthly feature looking at what kinds of deals are closing in different neighborhoods, The Real Deal found that Washington Heights saw a 76 percent drop in closings in the past year. While that may seem steep, pricing held up far better than other, more upscale areas.
More
September 01, 2009 01:16PM
By Gabby Warshawer
Managing buildings -- a job that often encompasses everything from fixing toilets to making sure a property is up-to-date on its permits -- is not exactly the most glamorous sector of the real estate market in New York.
But it does provide essential grease that helps keep the market moving smoothly. And in these strained economic times, good management can play a crucial role in retaining rental tenants and making co-ops or condos attractive to would-be buyers.
With that in mind, The Real Deal has compiled its first-ever list of the biggest building management companies in Manhattan, ranked by both building and unit volume.
More
September 01, 2009 11:25AM
By C. J. Hughes
When a broker switches firms, mailing out glossy announcement cards is the easy part. What's not so simple is wresting listings away from the old firm to bring them to the new one. The armor-plated contracts that govern exclusive listings threaten sellers with punitive fees or lawsuits if they try to pick up and follow a relocating broker.
But the recent shuttering of several New York firms has shaken loose hundreds of listings, in a whirlwind that few have seen in years, brokers say.
"There have definitely been a lot of listings in play that otherwise wouldn't be. It's very unusual," said Michael De Rosa, a senior vice president at Halstead Property who joined the firm in June after Coldwell Banker Hunt Kennedy closed.
More
September 01, 2009 02:01PM
By Barbara Thau
There are bargains to be had in the Garment District -- and not just for $9.99 sweaters. Seventh and Eighth avenues in the 20s and 30s are a retail renters' market, with rents among the lowest in Manhattan today, sources said. In some cases, they're a steep discount compared to prices in adjacent neighborhoods such as Chelsea, where rents are about 30 percent higher.
While the area has long been one of the most affordable commercial neighborhoods in Manhattan, the deals there have sweetened even more lately, as rents across the city have nosedived.
At the same time, more than a dozen retail locations in the area, particularly along Seventh Avenue in the 20s, are either in the process of changing hands or have recently come on the market.
More
August 31, 2009 09:40PM
By Candace Taylor
Experts expect September 2009 to be an improvement from the same month last year. Unfortunately, that's not saying much.
Last September, of course, was the month Lehman Brothers filed for
bankruptcy and Merrill Lynch agreed to sell itself to Bank of America
for roughly $50 billion. These events, along with the credit crisis and
recession unfolding around them, unleashed a year of pain in New York
City's residential real estate market.
More
September 01, 2009 01:34PM
By James Gardner
The architects at Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF), the firm
responsible for the nearly completed One Jackson Square at 122
Greenwich Avenue, are all grown-ups -- an odd, but important point to
bring up here in New York, where the maturity of our architects is
hardly something that can be taken for granted.
More
September 01, 2009 11:40AM
By Katherine Dykstra
Two years ago, demand for air rights was, well, through the roof. "For residential use at the peak of the market, [air rights] were between $400 and $500 a square foot," said Stuart Siegel, executive managing director at commercial real estate firm Grubb & Ellis.
The rights, often called development rights by those in the industry, were being traded by everyone from real estate giants like the Related Companies to small-time developers. The goal: to erect ever-taller buildings, with which to pull in more income.
Stephen Lefkowitz, a partner at Fried Frank, which handled the transfer of several hundred thousand square feet of air rights from the St. Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue to the MoMa Tower to be built at 53 West 53rd Street, noted that at the time sales for air rights were "very active."
More
September 01, 2009 12:45PM
By Candace Taylor
In the summer of 2008, no one could have foreseen how much the real estate industry would change in only a year. Prices that once accelerated at a dizzying pace are now declining. Sales volume and rental transactions have been cut in half. Commissions are smaller and brokers' fees paid by renters are largely a thing of the past. New developments, once the city's most sought-after properties, are now nearly impossible to sell amid a credit crisis of epic proportions.
The industry's remaining agents have been left to pick up the pieces and adapt to a radically different world. Surprisingly, many have done so with gusto, adjusting their business models to fit the new environment.
More
September 01, 2009 12:00PM
By Gabby Warshawer
In the West 20s, the name "F.M. Ring Associates" is emblazoned on the sides of numerous buildings. The large, fading mural-like advertisements look like mysterious relics from a previous incarnation of the city.
And to many in the real estate industry, F.M. Ring Associates, a firm that owns or has an ownership stake in 15 office buildings, most of them in Chelsea and Gramercy, is itself a mysterious relic of a bygone era.
Brokers say Ring's buildings sit mostly empty, and many note that the company is extremely difficult to negotiate with. In a throwback to pre-digital times, a reporter from The Real Deal was told by a receptionist that the best way to reach Frank Ring, the firm's principal, was by sending a fax, as the company does not use e-mail.
More
September 01, 2009 11:47AM
By Adam Pincus
Strong leasing velocity is beginning to remove the fear that the Manhattan leasing market will go into freefall, as landlords continue to provide aggressive incentives -- such as rent reduction clauses and offers to buy out expiring leases -- to get contracts signed, brokers said.
Incentives that were completely unheard of a year ago, or at least difficult to get put in a deal, are now being offered regularly, said Robert Stella, executive vice president at real estate advisory firm Cresa Partners.
"If you want favorable terms for expanding, or contracting, or lease cancellations, those are all on the table now," he said.
More
August 31, 2009 10:05PM
By Candace Taylor
Norman Sturner is the co-founder and CEO of Murray Hill Properties,
which he started in 1971 along with partner Neil Siderow. Since then,
the company has bought and sold $10 billion worth of commercial real
estate and manages over 5 million square feet of office space. The
company's holdings include Herald Square's 1250 Broadway, which it
purchased for $310 million with investment lender Jamestown in 2008,
and 1414 Avenue of the Americas at 58th Street, which Ian Schrager is
turning into a luxury hotel.
More
September 01, 2009 01:02PM
By David Jones
Peter Duncan, the president of George Comfort & Sons, would
probably not be faulted by many in the real estate community for
whooping it up with a big "I told you so" to all those who predicted he
would never seal the deal on the purchase of Worldwide Plaza. But unlike many of his contemporaries, Duncan refuses to take a victory
lap to celebrate the deal, or boast about his prowess in timing the
market. "It's like any acquisition. Buyer's remorse kicked in immediately," Duncan told The Real Deal, in a half-joking sort of way. His Madison Avenue-based firm, which previously owned more than 7
million square feet of office space, had until recently been a rather
low-profile operation in New York.
More
September 01, 2009 12:42PM
By Steve Cutler
The developers of 184 Kent, the high-end rental building about to open in Williamsburg, will be hitting the streets of the Lower East Side in a van, looking to take well-to-do hipsters to the Brooklyn waterfront.
They won't actually be driving them there. But the idea is to troll for arty, young Lower East Side-type professionals where they live and hang out, parking the van -- plastered in ads based on the quirky "WilliamsburgLove" mock dating site -- in front of popular clubs.
"We're looking at the Avalon Bowery project on Chrystie Street in the Lower East Side as comparables," says Jason Halpern, managing partner of the building's owner, JMH Development.
More
September 01, 2009 01:40PM
By Melissa Dehncke McGill
For a year now, real estate brokers and developers in New York have
been grappling with the ripple effect of the Lehman Brothers collapse
and the Wall Street fallout. But now, on this somewhat somber
anniversary, it's time to start looking ahead and anticipating where
the market will be a year from now.
In this month's Q & A, The Real Deal talked to
economists, brokers and firm principals who described what the
landscape will look like for sales activity, pricing, foreclosures and
employment in the next 12 months in the city. The predictions were not
all pretty.
Indeed, one economist said that prices will have dropped another 13 percent by next September.
More
September 01, 2009 11:21AM
By Michael Rudnick
In this weak real estate market, new condo developers possess
relatively little in their arsenals to arm themselves against the
onslaught of purchasers seeking to back out of contracts. But there are
a few measures developers can take to protect themselves without
scaring off potentially legitimate buyers.
Some developers, for instance, are using new clauses designed to prohibit buyers from litigating their way out of deals.
Real estate attorney Adam Leitman Bailey pointed to clauses in
which the buyer agrees to refrain from citing ILSA, the United States
Department of Housing and Urban Development's Interstate Land Sales
Full Disclosure Act, as an excuse to break a contract. Bailey claimed
that such a clause is not enforceable.
More
September 01, 2009 11:52AM
By Catherine Curan
New York City has long been a town where a shopper can turn the corner from a bustling retail district, walk a block or two, and enter a retail ghost town.
Now, as the Great Recession sends vacancy rates in Brooklyn and Queens skyrocketing -- toward 15 percent by year's end, according to Marcus & Millichap estimates -- this contrast between blocks chock-full of retail and blocks down on their luck is growing ever more marked.
Even within the overall depressed market, certain blocks and types of retailers are taking it on the chin.
More
September 01, 2009 01:27PM
By Candace Taylor
No one knows exactly why Jeff Blau, the 41-year-old president of the Related Companies, was denied a co-op board interview this spring at exclusive 820 Fifth Avenue. In what would have been one of the biggest deals of the year, Blau reportedly planned to pay $31 million for a fourth-floor spread at the limestone building between 63rd and 64th streets, where each apartment takes up a floor.
Many possible explanations for the high-profile turndown have been bandied about by real estate observers.
Was it the fact that Blau is in real estate, at a time when the city's housing market has slumped? Was it the fact that he's Jewish, in a city where many of the most exclusive buildings were forged in a crucible of anti-Semitism? Was there bad blood between Blau and a building resident?
More
