From left: Steven Roth, Stephen Ross, Darcy Stacom, Marc Holliday and Norman Sturner These days — with credit tight and lawsuits sprouting like weeds — no real estate transaction is simple. Whether it’s a one-bedroom condo or a distressed office building, sales are often slower and more complicated than expected. That said, some deals have so much “hair” on them that they deserve special recognition. This month, The Real Deal took a behind-the-scenes look at… [more]
Mark Jaccom, the company’s CEO, says he has 20 contracts out to new brokers and is “talking to another 30.” Mark Jaccom is trying to poach brokers from rival firms, and he seems to want everybody to know it. Sitting at the head of a large conference table in the Madison Avenue headquarters of Colliers International Tri-State last month, Jaccom held up a two-page spread imprinted with a baseball diamond, and smiled. Next to each… [more]
When the real estate market crashed, tales of lowball offers abounded in New York: Buyers were in many cases demanding discounts of 25, even 30 percent, off asking prices. Those days, relieved brokers say, have passed. But in this steadier-if-somewhat- uncertain market, some say another frustration has emerged. Sellers, emboldened by the market’s relative improvement in the last year, are now the ones pushing their luck. While brokers and analysts agree that the market is… [more]
From left to right: David Greczek and Ammanda Espinal, on-site sales agents for Azure; Karen Mansour, executive vice president of sales and marketing at Prudential Douglas Elliman; John Caiazzo, vice president of the DeMatteis Organization; and Doug MacLaury, senior vice president of the Mattone Group (standing). Right: Azure at 333 East 91st Street. A luxury apartment building towering 34 boxy stories above low-rise Yorkville shops, Azure has always been nondescript by design, and yet theatrically… [more]
Aby RosenLately it seems developer Aby Rosen’s every business relationship is worthy of its own daytime soap opera. While Rosen and his company RFR Holding have been in the news a lot since the downturn hit because of struggles at 610 Lexington Avenue, which is on the brink of foreclosure, and because of a split with hotelier Ian Schrager, in the last few months the headlines have been even more fast, furious — and personal… [more]
Karen Heyman and Alan Heyman, Sotheby’s International RealtyThe business of selling Brooklyn real estate has changed drastically in recent years. When Brooklyn native Karen Heyman first started selling Dumbo lofts in the 1990s, Manhattan residents refused to take the subway there. “I used to have to send my driver over the bridge to pick people up,” recalled Heyman, now a senior vice president at Sotheby’s International Realty. Today, “those same people are now on their… [more]
For a year now, industry insiders have worried about the possibility of a bubble in the commercial real estate market, amid rapidly rising prices for trophy properties. A number of recent purchases, including Harry Macklowe’s $255 million pending acquisition of 737 Park Avenue, have raised eyebrows for their high prices and low cap rates. And yet, experts still seem divided on whether or not the market is overly frothy. Some say investors anxious to deploy… [more]
The giant, 900,000-square-foot relocation and expansion lease that Japanese financial firm Nomura Holdings America signed in Midtown late last month punctuated an improved second quarter in the Manhattan office-leasing market. That improvement came even as the national economy was battling high unemployment and slow growth, preliminary data from commercial services firm Cassidy Turley showed. “Midtown, Midtown South and Downtown all recorded positive absorption in the second quarter,” said Robert Sammons, vice president of research at… [more]
111 Eighth Avenue As any theatergoer knows, there’s nothing like a pause in the action to build the dramatic tension. And that’s exactly what happened when Google — the behemoth technology company based in Mountain View, Calif. — asked for (and quietly received) a several-week break in the active marketing of 111 Eighth Avenue during the second half of November, when it became serious about buying the building. Google, which was represented by CB Richard… [more]
One Park Avenue “‘We are going to have a gun to our head,’” one real estate insider recalled top Vornado Realty Trust executive Glen Weiss saying, once the office giant decided to go ahead with its acquisition of One Park Avenue. In order to buy and recapitalize the building, Vornado had only weeks to nail down a large lease expansion with NYU Langone Medical Center, pay off mezzanine lenders, secure the first mortgage lender, and… [more]
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