The Real Deal New York

Another big year on Wall Street could send money rushing toward housing market Brokers get creative to lure bonus money” class=”read-more-link”>[more]

While the luxury market slipped at the end of the year, the number of eight-figure deals was still u Top 25 residential sales of 2005 reflect record market” class=”read-more-link”>[more]

As market tune changes, rental development starts looking more attractive Built to rent as market cools” class=”read-more-link”>[more]

Less video renting, rising retail rents driving chains like Blockbuster out of the city [more]

In prime Midtown office space, $100 a square foot no longer raises as many eyebrows [more]

Increase in office rents could justify high prices paid in 2005; NYC still tops European cities [more]

Balance shifts for ’06: space dwindles, rents rise Manhattan office vacancy: How low can it go?” class=”read-more-link”>[more]

Market for ground-floor medical space in residential buildings now more valuable than city apartment The doctor’s office is in – for a steep price” class=”read-more-link”>[more]

But questions remain over projects’ impact on an already struggling region [more]

After years of declines, UBS expansion and RBC Capital arrival herald an uptick Stamford hopes for commercial market surge” class=”read-more-link”>[more]

370 Lexington Avenue selling for $300M
The nearly 300,000-square-foot office building at 370 Lexington Avenue went on the market last month. It’s expected to bring in around $300 million for its owners, a fund operated by Jones Lang LaSalle that bought it in 2002 for $61 million. A CB Richard Ellis team headed by Darcy Stacom and Bill Shanahan is marketing the property, the New York Post reported.

Lower Manhattan luxury rental going for $50M
One of the older luxury rentals in Lower Manhattan is expected to command more than $50 million now that it’s on the selling block. The 15-story 17 John Street has 111 apartments that range from studios to two-bedrooms, and all are at market rents. The sale of the building would include four retail stores as well, covering about 15,950 square feet. Nathan Berman’s Metro Loft Management hired Charles Kingsley, Yoav Oelsner, Richard Baxter, and Scott Latham at Cushman & Wakefield to market the property.

Union Square office building for sale
The Amalgamated Bank Building at 15 Union Square West is on the market as a possible hotel/condo conversion candidate and is expected to go for more than $50 million. The bank has outgrown the structure and is relocating out of the 80,000-square-foot property, which can be demolished or expanded by a 20,000-square-foot penthouse, the Post reported. Darcy Stacom and Bill Shanahan of CB Richard Ellis are handling marketing.

Midtown Art Deco building on the block
The gold-leafed 14-story building at 29 West 57th Street was expected to go on the market by the end of last month and fetch around $50 million, the Post reported. Owned by a company called European Investors, the early Art Deco property was developed in 1924 by American Piano. A Cushman & Wakefield team of Scott Latham, Richard Baxter, Ron Cohen, and Jon Caplan will handle the deal.

Retail leasehold for sale on West 57th
The 63-year leasehold interest in an entire block of seven street-level shops – extending from Duane Reade on the southwest corner of West 57th Street and Sixth Avenue to Jamba Juice at the northwest corner of Sixth – is for sale at an asking price of $35 million. Eastern Consolidated’s Ronald Solarz, Eric Anton, and Zachary Bennett are marketing the 28,142-square-foot retail leasehold on behalf of seller Carnegie Retail LLC.

Bids due on Chelsea office building
Investors had until Jan. 17 to bid for the 11-story, 112,000-square-foot office building at 119 West 25th Street, the New York Sun reported. The property was expected to fetch approximately $33 million.

Meatpacking leasehold on the market
Developer Charles Blaichman is selling a 49-year leasehold in 40 Gansevoort Street, the site of fashion retailer Theory’s new flagship store andécorporate offices, the Post reported. The 64,000-square-foot building is now under construction and is due to be completed in April. It is net-leased to Theory for a 15-year term and expected to fetch more than $30 million. Ronald Solarz, Eric Anton, and Zachary Bennett of Eastern Consolidated, together with Christopher Owles of Sinvin Realty, are marketing the property.

Harlem conversion opportunities on the block
Two fully renovated buildings at 220 West 111th and 118 West 112th Street are for sale, priced at $10.5 million and $13.9 million, respectively. The six-story elevator apartment buildings have 24 units each. These properties may be purchased individually or as a package. Eastern Consolidated’s Ronald Solarz, Eric Anton, and Paul Nigido are co-marketing the properties with GFI Realty’s Matthew Sparks.

Sales activity plunged at the end of 2005, leaving brokers pining for a brisker spring [more]

Hotel rates of return eclipsing condos [more]

Developers, architects find the light and dark sides of using glass in fresh New York development [more]

Broker turnover and old-fashioned backslapping may be the keys for rental listings in a cooling sale [more]

Brooklyn townhouse prices up dramatically, Queens prices slow, Staten Island heads for drop-off in sales. Boroughs move into the new year at differing paces” class=”read-more-link”>[more]

Despite an autumn slowdown, signs point to a healthy Hamptons sales market for 2006 [more]

Online listing search sites battle it out for a share of New York market Spiders fight in tangled listings web” class=”read-more-link”>[more]

Long sought, Second Avenue subway line will cause short-term pain and long-term gain for real estate Aboveground rumblings as subway project starts rolling” class=”read-more-link”>[more]

Want to get rich quick? Try something other than brokering in the New York residential market. Frede The Real Deal Podcast: Frederick Peters” class=”read-more-link”>[more]

Battery Park City
200 Little West Street
A new condominium tower designed by Cesar and Rafael Pelli will hew to “green” development rules for Battery Park City, the New York Post reported. The Albanese Organization said that sales for the 35-story, 250-unit building will start in late spring, and the building would open toward the end of 2007.

Fort Greene
Fulton Street and Ashland Place
The Clarett Group is preparing to erect its first Brooklyn building, Crain’s reported. FXFowle is designing the luxury condominium. Construction was scheduled to begin in late 2005, according to Clarett’s Web site.

Greenwich Village
159 Bleecker Street
Sales began in December for the condo conversion above Kenny’s Castaways bar. The cheapest available apartment in the non-doorman building is a 634-square-foot one-bedroom, with a 108-squarefoot balcony, for $910,000, the Post reported. Two- and three-bedrooms are also available, with units likely to top out at $2.5 million. Coldwell Banker Hunt Kennedy is marketing the property. Contact: www.159bleecker.com.

Harlem
Strivers Row Tower
2605 Frederick Douglass Boulevard
Almat Group is building a 14-unit luxury condominium project. The project involves the renovation of an existing five-story townhouse from the 1890s and the incorporation of a modern addition. The building will include a doctor’s office and a cafeacute;/restaurant in its two commercial spaces. It is scheduled to open in spring 2006.

Lower Manhattan
15 William Street
Construction is expected to start next year on the first new condo building in the heart of the Financial District – a 45-story luxury tower rising on what was a 23,000-square-foot parking lot, the New York Times reported. SDS Investments, a company formed by the Sapir Organization and S. Lawrence Davis, an investor, bought the William Street lot in September for $90 million and brought in Andr Balazs as a partner. The Albanese Organization has been hired as the developer, according to the Post.

Lower Manhattan
100 Maiden Lane
The residential rental office recently opened at the former headquarters of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, according to the New York Sun. The law firm sold the building in 2004 to Lalezarian Developers. Liberty Bond financing allowed the developers to convert the Art Deco tower at the corner of Pearl Street.

Mott Haven
Developer Isaac Jacobs will tear down warehouses and construct a five-story building with 185 apartments, the New York Daily News reported. Designed by Manhattan architect Bruce Cutler, the new building – just off Lincoln Avenue, with frontage on East 134th Street and Bruckner Boulevard – will be next-door to the Clock Tower at 112 Lincoln Avenue, another Jacobs project.

Noho
40 Bond Street
A sales office opened in December for the 10-story condominium east of Lafayette Street on the former site of a parking lot. The mid-block site is being developed by Ian Schrager and Aby Rosen, and will have 31 loft apartments, five townhouses, and a three-room hotel, according to the Sun.

Tribeca
180 West Broadway
On the site of sports bar Buster’s Garage, R Squared LLP, whose principals include Michael and Gregg Rechler, plan to build a residential building, the Sun reported. The city’s Board of Standards and Appeals was expected in January to issue a decision on the number of residential units that can be built on the site. The developers applied for 30 units in a 12-story project in December.

Construction Update

Greenwich Village
Bethune and West Streets
The city’s Board of Standards and Appeals last month approved a variance necessary for the Related Cos. to move ahead with a proposed 160,000-square-foot residential tower on the site of the Superior Ink factory. The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation has asked the city to landmark the building, which Related plans to demolish. The group is also pushing Related to eliminate the 10-story glass curtain walls proposed for their new project.

Tribeca
Tribeca Summit
415 Greenwich Street
Buyers might get a rare tax deduction if they preserve the building’s exterior, the Post reported. The deduction, known as conservation easement, will save buyers in the 65-unit condo conversion $55,000 to $300,000, according to Ethan Eldon, one of the co-developers. The property needs to be considered historically significant by the Department of Interior to qualify. Contact: www.tribecasummit.com.

Financing

Lower Manhattan
Warren Street Condominium
270 Greenwich Street
Edward J. Minskoff Equities’ 1.1-million-square-foot multi-building effort in December secured a package totaling $452 million, GlobeSt.com reported. The financing includes a $320 million construction loan facility for creation of the 228-unit condominium tower. Also part of the package is a $50 million letter of credit enhanced bond financing supporting the construction of a 163-unit mixed-income rental building. Bank of America was administrative agent and sole lead arranger.

Sales Update

Lower Manhattan
Downtown by Philippe Starck
15 Broad Street
All but 53 of the 382 units had been sold by December, according to the Times.

Times Square
1600 Broadway
The luxury tower has sold 80 percent of its units in fewer than 90 days, the Times reported. The 27-story tower between 48th and 49th streets has condos ranging from studios to penthouses, with prices from $1.055 to $2.95 million.

Development in Brief

Manhattan (from north to south)

206 East 95th Street
American Development Group plans to convert the building to luxury condos.

25 East 77th Street
Developers Izak Senbahar and Simon Elias will convert the 176-room Mark Hotel into a residential condo and condo-hotel, the Sun reported.

East 53rd Street and Second Avenue
The Related Cos. completed the demolition of a series of walk-up buildings on this corner, where they plan to construct residential condominiums, the Sun reported.

132 West 26th Street
A hearing was to be held on Jan. 24 by the city’s Board of Standards and Appeals for a zoning variance to allow Jack Ancona to build a narrow 12-story residential building with 10 condominium units, the Sun reported.

One Madison Avenue
Developer Ian Schrager and investment partner Aby Rosen have reportedly bought the tower from SL Green Realty, according to a story in the Post. The new owners plan to turn the tower into luxury condos.

333 West 14th Street
Plans were slated to be filed in January for a nine-unit, 10-story luxury condominium,
according to the Times.

421 East 13th Street
A conversion into 90 residential condos is planned, according to the Sun.

Broome and Thompson streets
A developer wants to replace the Tunnel Garage with a 10-story residential building, the Villager reported. But some neighborhood residents and preservationists want the city to landmark the 1922 building, thereby protecting it from demolition.

335 Bowery
East Village developer Jerry Rosengarten scrapped his original residential plans for the site, passing on the project to hotel developers Richard Born and Ira Drukier, and Eric Goode and Sean MacPherson. The 16-story hotel will open this summer, the Post reported.

25 Broad Street
Residents received a letter in January stating their leases will not be renewed, Curbed.com reported. Swig Equities bought the Exchange building at 25 Broad Street in September and is expected to convert it into condos.

67 Wall Street
Metro Loft Management plans to begin conversion early next year of the 25-story building into a residential tower, according to the Sun.

Brooklyn

Dyker Heights
Developer Andrew Kohen hopes to build a Home Depot and 400,000 square feet of residential and office space on a former Long Island Rail Road railyard on 64th Street, the Daily News reported. The plan would need a zoning variance from the city.

Fort Greene
Supermarket mogul John Catsimatidis is negotiating with BFC Construction Corp. to form a joint venture for developing mixed-income apartment towers with ground-floor commercial space along Myrtle Avenue between Flatbush Avenue and Ashland Place, Crain’s reported.

New Developments from Previous Month

A long, bitter fight ends in Williamsburg as developers ready renovation of former cutting-edge indu Battle over 184 Kent” class=”read-more-link”>[more]

Storied pasts fuel marketing for Stanhope, Plaza, and Sutton condo conversions Historic hotels, historic prices” class=”read-more-link”>[more]

Long vacant, 350 West Broadway set to bring luxury condos and high-end retail Soho’s eyesore readies for makeover” class=”read-more-link”>[more]

Rising commodity prices, Katrina drive materials costs in NYC to double 2001 levels [more]

South Florida housing sales flatten as prices strengthen

The South Florida housing market famously and expensively boomed in 2004 and 2005. At the end of last year, however, it was only expensive and no longer booming. By December, home sales in the region had dropped by double-digits in many areas, including Miami. The West Palm Beach-Boca Raton area was the only one that saw an increase in sales from November 2004 to November 2005, according to the South Florida Business Journal; sales there increased 8 percent over the 12-month period. But, in Miami and Ft. Lauderdale, sales dropped by 21 percent and 25 percent, respectively, over the same period. Home sales prices, however, swung upward as 2005 ended, recovering from hurricane-induced slumps in October. In Broward County, the median price for an existing single-family home jumped 6 percent from October to November to $391,100, the Miami Herald reported. That jump came after a two-month decline in median prices in Broward. In Miami-Dade, the median single-family price in December increased 4 percent to $381,600 compared to the month before.

–
Atlanta

Residential
Condos sprouting inside Atlanta proper, rather than on its fringes or in its suburbs, should add thousands of new residents to the more urban areas of the city. These condos include the 88-unit Central City, where one- and two-bedrooms are selling from $179,000 to the $290,000s, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported, and the 418-unit Plaza Midtown, where top-priced units go for $505,000.

Commercial
The 10-year-old Centennial Olympic Park has become the nexus of a real estate revival for downtown Atlanta. The immediate area around the 21-acre park, built for the 1996 summer Games, has recently seen a raft of office, retail, and residential development, including the new $290 million Georgia Aquarium and the World of Coca-Cola museum, the Atlanta Business Journal reported. If Atlanta lands the NASCAR Hall of Fame, that, too, would skirt the park’s edges.

Boston

Residential
Even as the overall Boston housing market cools, demand remains strong for condos priced under $500,000, according to the Boston Globe. But there’s a catch: These condos are difficult to build. Developers in the city must increasingly offset growing land and construction costs by selling new condos at luxury prices – $650 or more a square foot – that often boot the condos out of the under-$500,000 range. So, developers look for buildings to convert in the more urban areas of Boston, rather than build from scratch.

Chicago

Commercial
A skyscraper at 111 South Wacker Drive set a new downtown Chicago office building sales record in late December when it was sold by developer John Buck Company to DIFA Deutsche Immobilien Fonds, a German investment fund. The skyscraper sold for $410 million, or more than $400 a square foot, the Chicago Tribune reported. The sale surpasses the previous per-square-foot downtown sales record of $385, paid in 1990 for 181 West Madison Street.

Commercial
The price for top downtown Chicago office space increased in 2005, while the sales volume for the city’s commercial market overall decreased. Last year, the total volume of transactions in the city’s commercial market dropped to $1.9 billion from $2.4 billion in 2004, the Chicago Tribune reported. But the price per square foot for top quality downtown office space increased in 2005 over the year before by almost 25 percent to $226, the Tribune reported.

Houston

Residential
The housing market in America’s fourth-largest city finished 2005 stronger than the national market. When federal data, for instance, showed that new single-family home sales nationwide dropped in November by more than 11 percent, data from the Houston Association of Realtors showed that single-family home sales in the city increased by 8.7 percent during that same month. Also, by late December, year-to-date residential property sales in Houston had increased 9.1 percent over the same time period in 2004, the Houston Business Journal reported, and the average price for a single-family home hit a record of $193,810 by December.

Las Vegas

Residential
Could the hot Las Vegas housing market trend downward in 2006? Yes, according to one national publication. Fortune magazine in December ranked the 100 largest housing markets by their prospects for this year – Las Vegas ranked last, with the magazine predicting the city’s housing prices would decrease by 13 percent in 2006.

Residential
What was touted as the tallest luxury residential high-rise in the West became by the end of 2005 a metaphor for Sin City’s cooling housing market. The 82-story Ivana Las Vegas – named after backer and ex-Mrs. The Donald, Ivana Trump – was put up for sale in early December for $49 million, only three months after a spokesperson told The Real Deal the tower would generate more than $1 billion in sales, making it the most expensive residential building ever sold. The tower’s ground-breaking was six months away when the sale was announced, according to media reports, and the slow sales and rising construction costs were among the catalysts behind it.

Los Angeles

Commercial
An overall strong economy will give Los Angeles County a robust commercial real estate market in 2006, according to a December report from the University of Southern California. Vacancy rates dropped substantially in the county throughout 2005; downtown L.A.’s vacancy rate reached 15 percent, something not seen since the 1980s. Also, commercial rents are rising throughout L.A., and the county’s industrial market continues to have the lowest vacancy rate in the country at 0.8 percent, the report stated.

Residential
The strong L.A. commercial market should be complemented in 2006 by a strong residential market, especially in the long desolate downtown. Plans are under way, in fact, to more than triple the number of residential units in downtown from 8,000 to 27,000 in the next four years, the Washington Post reported. Demand for the units remains high, despite concern over downtown’s desirability as a place to live. In October, for instance, the Post reported that a new building with 191 condos downtown sold out in seven hours.

Philadelphia

Commercial
Philadelphia’s Center City is undergoing a retail renaissance. In 1999, following years of tough economic times, the neighborhood hit a peak of 405 retail vacancies, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. But, in the last few years, dozens of retailers have set up shop in Center City, including H & M and Cole Haan, capitalizing on a population boom fueled by the young and the affluent. By July 2005, the Inquirer reported, there were 2,146 retailers in Center City, up from 1,988 in mid-1999.

San Francisco

Commercial
Its expensive housing market may have snagged headlines, but San Francisco’s office market also saw a lot of activity in 2005. More than $4 billion worth of office buildings in the city changed hands last year, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, including the iconic Bank of America building and 550 Terry Francois Boulevard, which sold at a reported $600 a square foot, an all-time record for San Francisco.

Washington, D.C.

Residential
The Washington, D.C. metro area, particularly Fairfax and Montgomery counties, will be short about 92,000 homes by 2030, according to a December forecast from the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. The council projects that the area will grow by about two million over the next 25 years, and will add about 1.6 million new jobs, the Washington Post reported. Those people and those jobs will translate into housing needs that the area, the council concluded, isn’t currently on track to fully meet.

The south Brooklyn neighborhood sees condos sprout on par with fastest-growing city areas Wave of building sweeping Sheepshead Bay” class=”read-more-link”>[more]

Luxury development coming to the center reaches of the city’s biggest borough [more]

Some developers finding silver linings on building curbs in New York neighborhoods Looking for an upside to downzoning” class=”read-more-link”>[more]

Washington Square Park redesign approved
The city Art Commission approved plans last month for a $16 million redesign of Washington Square Park, the New York Times reported. The approval was the final legislative step needed, and construction could start as early as the spring. The plan includes moving the fountain and erecting a 4-foot fence around the park.

New business district centers on 23rd Street
Mayor Bloomberg signed off last month on the Flatiron 23rd Street Partnership, the city’s newest business improvement district, the Villager reported. The retail-heavy district encompasses 1,376 buildings housing 4,927 businesses, and stretches roughly from Sixth to Third avenues and from 21st to 29th streets.

Details of World Trade Center memorial revealed
New details of the World Trade Center Memorial design – including a contemplation room and a chamber for the unidentified remains of those lost – were revealed last month, the New York Daily News reported. The Lower Manhattan Development Corp. was scheduled to present the plans to builders who will bid on a contract to lay the cement footings for the memorial and memorial museum. Members of Downtown Community Board 1 were told that construction of the footings will begin on Mar. 13.

Chinatown named Empire Zone
After four years of waiting, Chinatown was named an Empire Zone last month, Crain’s reported. Under the program, qualifying businesses receive tax breaks and low-cost loans for increasing their investments and adding to their workforces. Fieldston Historic District created in the Bronx The Landmarks Preservation Commission last month designated a 257-building area in the western Bronx as the Fieldston Historic District, according to the New York Observer. The area’s development as a residential area dates back to at least the 1820s, and English Tudor, Mediterranean, and Georgian Colonial are among the styles of homes there.

Paving over may soon be over in Queens
Although it’s becoming a much more common practice in northern Queens, some residents and area leaders want to curb the paving over of front yards. Property owners contend the paving gives them parking spaces for tenants they rent their property to – plus, pavement’s cheaper to maintain than grass. Proponents of a curb, however, say the paved yards are eyesores that may also lead to illegal subdividing of apartments, the Queens Courier reported.

State money set aside for Governors Island
Gov. Pataki announced last month that $30 million will be set aside in the next state budget for improvements and preservation work on Governors Island. The Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation, a city-state agency, plans to seek development proposals this month for the 172-acre island between Brooklyn and Manhattan, the Daily News reported.

Concerns over NYU dorm spawn subcommittee
Manhattan’s Community Board 3 recently created a subcommittee to examine residents’ concerns about a proposed New York University dorm. The university and developer the Hudson Companies have been converting the site of the former Church of Saint Ann at 110-124 East 12th Street into a new student dorm that could go as high as 26 stories, the Observer reported.

With possible rise in foreclosures ahead, homeowners have little knowledge of where to turn for help [more]

More than half say they’re likely to buy a new home in next five years; golf courses out, but ‘green Comments

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Reingold replaces Krasnow as head of New York operations [more]

CB Richard Ellis found its new Downtown Manhattan office leader on another island – Long Island. Early last month, the commercial brokerage services giant hired Sheldon Cohen, the director of real estate planning and development for Nassau County since 2002, to be a senior managing director and the manager of the daily operations at the CBRE office at 140 Broadway, where 39 people work.

Cohen, who is trained as an attorney and has an MBA from Stanford University, was the first person to hold the Nassau County position, and also sat on the county executive’s executive management team. As real estate planning and development director, Cohen implemented the county’s first strategic real estate consolidation plan, which, according to a CBRE release, provided for a significant program of property disposition, acquisition, and management of county land. He also handled lease negotiations as well as building and space management for the county, which has more than 1.3 million people.

Cohen, 50, succeeds broker Bruce Surry, who has doubled as the Downtown office’s manager. Surry, the New York Post reported, will now focus full-time on brokering.

Warburg Realty Partnership will be moving both of its lower Manhattan offices to new locations by spring.

The firm’s temporary Tribeca office on Vestry Street will find a permanent home in an approximately 2,000-square-foot, second-floor office at 100 Hudson Street this month. It will support 21 brokers.

Warburg’s Greenwich Village office, now at 795 Broadway, will move to a 2,750-square-foot storefront office at 65 West 13th Street by the spring, where 31 brokers will be based.

“Each of them has a different raison d’ tre,” Warburg president Frederick Peters told The Real Deal. “The Tribeca office is just a response to the fact that we wanted to be in Tribeca, and we saw it as an opportunity. The Village office, our lease was coming up, so we thought either we’re going to renew it or we were going to do something else. And we decided we actually wouldn’t mind having a little more space.”

No stranger to office expansion in Manhattan, Warburg has since late 2004 opened locations in Harlem and the Upper East Side as well as the temporary location in Tribeca, which opened in September.

How an appraiser’s housing data goes from raw numbers to the next day’s paper [more]

Barbara Corcoran, ABC next up on the small screen with shows about real estate [more]