July 31, 2009 05:46PM
By Adam Pincus
Over the last two years, the dollar volume of distressed commercial
real estate loans at a sampling of New York-based community banks has
risen eightfold. That's only the beginning of a wave of delinquencies
expected to hit portfolio lenders, analysts said.
Experts predict more red ink in the mid-year earnings reports
released this month from lenders such as New York Community Bank,
Flushing Savings Bank and Astoria Federal Savings. These institutions
are considered stable lenders, but have still seen a steady increase in
failing loans.
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July 31, 2009 04:34PM
By Candace Taylor
Not too long ago, New York City real estate brokers were fixtures at
upscale restaurants and, frequently, the buyers of the flashy homes
they marketed. Nowadays, many are trading Hermès for H & M and
scaling back their lavish lifestyles. And while most brokers are euphoric that a tough winter has yielded
to a recent flurry of sales and rental transactions, industry insiders
say the current uptick is raising false hope that business might return
to levels seen in recent years. In reality, those days — along with the
easy cash and flexible schedules that went with them — are long gone,
and unlikely to return anytime soon.
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July 31, 2009 02:35PM
By Alison Gregor
Manhattan's residential real estate market might be feeling serious
pain, but many real estate insiders believe the city's commercial
market will spend a much longer period in the doldrums.
While residential real estate is suffering from an oversupply of
inventory and a bursting price bubble largely spurred by a drop in
lending standards, commercial real estate is confronting obstacles on
the debt side that appear to be more entrenched. What's more, experts
say the problems on the commercial side are in many ways just getting
started and will require far longer to sort themselves out.
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July 31, 2009 01:46PM
By Melissa Dehncke McGill
Long Island City developers may be dealing with the consequences of
unleashing a wave of new condos into an untested market, but the damage
there is not as bad as it is in its Brooklyn counterpart neighborhood
of Williamsburg. In this month's Q & A, brokers working in Long Island City told The Real Deal that the Queens neighborhood has hundreds of new, unsold units compared to the thousands that exist in Williamsburg.
But, unlike Williamsburg, Long Island City has yet to really come into its own in terms of amenities — beyond the basics.
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July 31, 2009 02:23PM
By Sara Polsky
In a bad economy, the plight of the unemployed gets most of the
attention. But as the ranks of New York City's jobless increase, and
more people downsize apartments or take on roommates to deal with the
economic downturn, they also send their landlords' utility and
maintenance costs skyrocketing in rental buildings.
"Where you get lots of move-ins and move-outs, you worry about
damage at the building," said David Picket, president of the Gotham
Organization, which operates more than 1.7 million square feet of
residential and retail real estate in New York and other parts of the
Northeast.
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July 31, 2009 04:42PM
By James Gardner
Satire, George S. Kaufman famously quipped, is what closes on Saturday
night. In a similar vein, we can define deconstructivist architecture,
the regnant building fad of the moment, as what is always being
proposed and never actually built in the city of New York. In the past few years, starting with those fanciful projects for
ground zero and now culminating with Cooper Union's new academic
building, architects both local and international have proposed all
manner of deconstructed blobs and fractured facets, only to see the
finished product reduced to something far tamer.
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July 31, 2009 04:27PM
By C. J. Hughes
For more than a century, Tribeca was a de facto pantry, as its
industrial blocks warehoused fruit, spices, vegetables, and most
notably, butter and eggs.
But starting in the 1960s, the Downtown neighborhood — which is
bounded by Canal Street, Broadway, the former World Trade Center site
and the Hudson River — began to give up its perishable goods for
people, in a profound way. Brick and Beaux Arts lofts located along
wide cobblestone streets began to be converted into apartments.
In fact, those historic buildings, which sit in the 10007 and 10013
zip codes, became some of the priciest homes in New York City.
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July 31, 2009 05:07PM
By Sarah Ryley
Next month will mark the one-year anniversary of the fall of Lehman
Brothers — a date often referred to in "pre-" and "post-" terms in the
New York City real estate market. With that in mind, The Real Deal zeroed in on the 15 best and worst deals since Wall Street's collapse and the earlier onset of the credit crunch.
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July 31, 2009 05:49PM
By Adam Pincus
Even as the Manhattan office leasing market starts to show some signs
of stability, velocity remains far below normal. To deal with the
pressure of the weak market, some landlords are offering double
commissions to brokers who sign deals in their buildings or are giving
crisp $50 bills to agents to simply show a space.
At the same time, brokers said there are landlords who are having a
hard time paying even a single commission, and who are trying to drag
out payments or reduce broker fees.
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July 31, 2009 05:32PM
By C. J. Hughes
In the Hamptons, as high-end builder Joe Farrell can attest, $5 million
is the new $10 million. Farrell, who founded his Bridgehampton-based
Farrell Construction in 1996, has built homes for talk show host Kelly
Ripa, actor Kelsey Grammer and former New York City mayor and
presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani. Indeed, he has recently made headlines for "Sandcastle," the
30,000-square-foot home he built on Halsey Lane in Bridgehampton, which
is on the market for $59.5 million.
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July 31, 2009 01:53PM
By Candace Taylor
Miki Naftali is CEO and president of the Elad Group — a real estate
and hotel development conglomerate based in Israel — and its New
York-based subsidiary, Elad Properties. Naftali's signature project is
the Plaza Hotel, which Elad purchased in 2004 for $675 million and
spent $500 million to renovate. Elad is also planning to erect a
3,000-room Plaza Hotel in Las Vegas. And along with its partners, the
firm is in the midst of building a $1.1 billion hotel, residential and
retail development in Singapore called Beach Road.
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July 31, 2009 04:31PM
By Candace Taylor
The summer of 2009 has turned out to be a confusing time for New York
City real estate. While Goldman Sachs reported record earnings and Fed
Chairman Ben Bernanke talked optimistically about green shoots, the
bleakest, leanest winter in recent memory gave way to an uptick in
contract signings, filling brokers with hope that the worst days of the
downturn have passed.
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July 31, 2009 03:31PM
By Candace Taylor
Edward Milton Cisneros, a real estate agent at New York Living
Solutions, was surprised recently to receive a panicked phone call from
a family he is representing in the purchase of a Long Island City new
construction condo. The buyers said the appraisal for their new home —
a two-bedroom and studio they planned to combine into one unit — had
come in far below the agreed-upon purchase price.
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July 31, 2009 01:38PM
By David Jones
While it seemed to start well, 2009 has been a rough year thus far for
the Sapir Organization, the family-owned real estate empire led by Alex
Sapir and his enigmatic father Tamir. After months of legal wrangling with the city, the company
announced plans to open their trophy hotel project Trump Soho by the
fall of 2009.
In addition, in February, the Sapir Organization signed Claremont
Preparatory High School to a multi-year agreement to lease 255,000
square feet of space at 100 Church Street, marking one of the year's
biggest commercial lease agreements in the city.
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July 31, 2009 03:29PM
By Alex Ulam
For most homeowners, foreclosure is like a fatal illness that starts
with losing control of their finances and ends with a sickening feeling
when the bank finally seizes the property. Post-foreclosure, a
homeowner's credit rating gets trashed and he can be in financial
purgatory for years, making it nearly impossible to buy or rent
property. But while foreclosure typically spells disaster for homeowners, for
some New York City investors, it may actually be a good business
decision.
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July 31, 2009 03:46PM
By Catherine Curan
Despite the wretched outlook for New York City's lodging sector,
construction workers in hardhats and neon orange vests gathered with
real estate executives on gritty West 39th Street last month for a
small moment of hotel-related celebration.
They stood gazing upwards in respectful silence as an American flag
zoomed through the blue sky on a pulley, headed for the top of the
hotel, developed by Sam Chang, under construction between Eighth and
Ninth avenues in the shadow of the Port Authority, which had hit a
construction milestone.
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July 31, 2009 03:52PM
By David Jones
In both real estate and art circles Aby Rosen's reputation precedes
him. The 48-year-old, silver-haired Rosen is a legendary art collector
and boldfaced name who has successfully parlayed his flashy style and
social status into a hefty real estate portfolio anchored by the iconic
Lever House and Seagram Building — both on Park Avenue.
Until recently, Rosen has methodically placed smart bets, buying
low and then upgrading his buildings and turning them into some of the
most exclusive properties in New York.
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