The Real Deal New York

In February, Oren Alexander, a 24-year-old vice president at Prudential Douglas Elliman, joined two other brokers to form the Alexander Group. While the name refers to Alexander himself, among the team members, he said it is also a quiet allusion to one of history’s best-known conquerors: Alexander the Great. “We’re all hungry,” Alexander said of his teammates, who are all under 31. “We don’t really have distractions in our lives. Our main focus is on… [more]

The truth about the Manhattan residential real estate market is that there isn’t just one Manhattan residential real estate market. Individual city neighborhoods can see drastic variations in price and sales volume, based on the availability of certain types of housing stock. That’s never been truer than during the recent economic downturn, when bidding wars erupted over family-size Upper West Side co-ops, while Harlem condos lingered on the market for years. This month, The Real… [more]

The Carlyle Group may be a quiet buyout firm, but it cannot be ignored. The Washington, D.C.–based company — which has $12 billion of real estate worldwide, including in New York — announced its sixth real estate fund in January with $2.34 billion at its disposal. The firm has said it plans to invest opportunistically in residential, hotel, senior living, retail and office properties in major U.S. cities, including the Big Apple. The fund, which… [more]

New York City’s newest investment sales shops — which have been launched by brokers splitting off from established firms — are handling an increasing portion of the city’s smaller building sales, an analysis from The Real Deal shows. The newbie firms, like Rosewood Realty Group (and, to a lesser extent, others like Pinnacle Realty of New York and ERG Property Advisors), have not displaced the old-guard firms, many of which were founded in the 1980s…. [more]

Much like the high-powered executives who race to get to the Hamptons in two hours on a summer Friday, commercial lenders disregarded regulators’ meek enforcement of lending speed limits during the boom. Today, though, federal bank examiners are acting like traffic cops posted at every exit on the Long Island Expressway, forcing lenders to slow down. While commercial real estate lending has increased in New York over the past year, banks still have federal regulators… [more]

With the spring selling season kicking into high gear, brokers are up against an unwelcome obstacle: uninformed buyers who insist on submitting lowball offers. Last month, brokers said they struggled to educate buyers accustomed to controlling the market — some of whom made bargain bids on reasonably priced properties — that the spring season is a different beast. New apartment hunters are in the mix, and inventory is still down in most parts of Manhattan…. [more]

How long should New Yorkers be forced to suffer a particularly loud (or uniquely odorous) neighbor? For co-op and condo dwellers, the answer increasingly seems to be “not very long.” Over the past several years, attorneys and building managers say they’ve seen a noticeable uptick in the number of disputes between neighbors in New York City buildings, especially when it comes to noise and smell. As a result, condo and co-op boards are turning to… [more]

“Getting pinned” has taken on a new meaning for the 11.7 million monthly visitors to the hottest new social media website: Pinterest. Not surprisingly, New York City real estate professionals have also gotten in on the action. And they’re finding that the photo-focused site is ideally suited to property sales, perhaps even more so than Twitter or Facebook. “Pinterest is more helpful than those [other sites] because real estate is a visual medium,” said Matthew… [more]

Christopher Jeffries, cofounder of real estate development firm Millennium Partners, last month listed his duplex penthouse at the Ritz-Carlton for $77.5 million. That price tag makes Jeffries’ apartment, at 50 Central Park South, the most expensive condo on the market. But even if it goes for the full asking price, it won’t be the priciest Manhattan home ever sold. That honor, of course, goes to the penthouse at 15 Central Park West, which former Citigroup… [more]