The Real Deal New York

From left: Star brokers Tim Davis and Susan Breitenbach of Corcoran, and Harald Grant of Sotheby’s

After edging past Corcoran in 2010, Prudential Douglas Elliman this year hung on to its title as the largest residential brokerage in the Hamptons. Over the past 12 months, Elliman’s total head count fell by one — giving it 319 agents. But that was still enough for the firm to maintain its position as the top residential real estate player in the Hamptons, according to The Real Deal’s annual ranking of the biggest East End firms by number of agents. (Meanwhile, the firm is facing challenges in the city. See story on page 46.) Corcoran remained in the No. 2 spot with 312 agents, but closed the gap somewhat, with six more agents than it had at this time last year.

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Dottie Herman, the president and CEO of Prudential Douglas Elliman (credit: Marilynn K. Yee / The New York Times), and Howard Lorber, the company’s chairmanPrudential Douglas Elliman has the most agents of any real estate brokerage in the city. Its offerings account for nearly one-quarter of Manhattan’s listed apartments, and it turns 100 this year. But in recent months, the firm’s top-banana status may have slipped somewhat. In the last year, Elliman has seen its Manhattan listings decline from 2,010 to 1,320 as of May 2011 — a drop of 34 percent, the largest dip among Manhattan’s major firms. Perhaps more important, the total value of those listings fell sharply, from $3.8 billion to $2.6 billion, according to The Real Deal’s analysis of data from On-Line Residential. Comments

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Chris Schlank (left), managing partner and founder of Savanna, and fellow managing partner Nicholas BienstockAs the market struggles to recover its footing, a few brave souls have dipped their toes into the water of New York’s turbulent real estate investment world. Meanwhile, a small but growing firm called Savanna Partners is diving into the commercial office market headfirst, with a half-dozen debt acquisitions in the past 12 months, and plans for several more by the end of 2011. Other than Los Angeles-based CIM Group, or Ziel Feldman’s HFZ, few companies have made as much of a splash here lately, and none have come close in the office market. [more]

From left: 740 Park Avenue, 834 Fifth Avenue, 4 East 66th Street and 2 East 67th Street

Like mushrooms, glass-walled condos and fancy rentals with wine storage popped up with fury across the city in recent years, and seemed to fundamentally alter New York’s housing stock in the process. No longer would the pinnacle of city living be the exclusive Uptown co-ops that had ruled the roost for decades, the trend seemed to suggest, but instead this new crop of buildings with impressive architecture and an A-to-Z range of luxuries. It didn’t hurt that they were a lot easier to get into. Indeed, why would a buyer subject himself (or herself) to invasive co-op board packages and taxing interviews, the thinking went, when that buyer could get just as nice a home without having to trot out reference letters galore? [more]

>From left: Top residential brokers Paula Del Nunzio, Serena Boardman, Carrie Chiang, Shlomi Reuveni and Dolly Lenz

In March, Brown Harris Stevens broker Paula Del Nunzio put the Woolworth mansion at 4 East 80th Street on the market for $90 million. The listing — the priciest Manhattan residential listing ever — signaled that the era of massively expensive property sales is back, with a vengeance. Brokers say there is more high-end product on the market than last year, and furthermore, many of these new, pricey listings are resales rather than the newly constructed condos that seemed to dominate the luxury market in Manhattan for so long. That trend is reflected in The Real Deal’s annual ranking of the city’s top brokers, which is based on who is marketing the most Manhattan property. [more]

Last month, developer Harry Macklowe signed a contract as the operating partner to buy the 108-unit rental apartment building 737 Park Avenue for $255 million, reports said. The property, on the corner of 71st Street, is located on one of Manhattan’s most sought-after residential blocks, and that fact hasn’t escaped Macklowe’s notice. He has not formally announced plans, but sources say he intends to convert the building to luxury condominiums. Once closed, Macklowe’s acquisition will be the most expensive residential building purchased for conversion since Maurice Mann and Africa Israel bought the Apthorp for $391 million in 2007, data from Real Capital Analytics shows. The deal marks the return of developers doing large-scale luxury condominium conversions following the real estate downturn. This month, The Real Deal took an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the 73-year-old property through rarely seen documents, usually shared only with a selective group of potential bidders. [more]

Joe Moinian

Joseph Moinian founded the successful ladies’ apparel company Billy Jack for Her before venturing into real estate in 1982. Today, the Moinian Group operates a 20 million-square-foot portfolio of assets across the U.S., valued at more than $8 billion. The firm’s holdings include the newly opened W New York-Downtown Hotel & Residences and a stake in Chicago’s Sears Tower. At the 768,500-square-foot office tower 3 Columbus Circle, Moinian is close to completing a $175 million redevelopment, after a $138 million equity investment from SL Green Realty Corp. helped fend off an attempted takeover by the Related Companies. [more]

Stuart ElliottIt’s that time of year again — time to escape the city and head to the beach. Time to trade your pumps and wingtips for flip-flops and sandals. Time to trade fluorescent office lighting for the sun beating down on your back. Time to reserve lunch tables for lobster roll shacks, get pieces of corn stuck between your teeth, and wash it all down with a beer. With summer season in the Hamptons kicking into gear, we thought, “What better time to take a look at the biggest firms and priciest deals on the East End?” [more]

Actress Jennifer Aniston has long sought to trade the (unrealistically spacious) apartment she inhabited on “Friends” for a real, flesh-and-blood Manhattan home. For years, she’s been spotted checking out everything from newly constructed Financial District condo 20 Pine to the Village co-op 552 LaGuardia Place. Now, Aniston has finally made up her mind. Last month, her purchase of two units at the West Village condominium 299 West 12th Street hit public records, signaling once and for all that Aniston is ready to commit. Whether her buy at the building, developed by prewar tastemakers Bing & Bing, indicates a market recovery is less clear. [more]

Shortly after the financial crisis of 2008, experts worried that the market was in even worse shape than it appeared. The culprit? Thousands of stalled and vacant condo units that were being held off the market — so-called shadow inventory — threatening to add years to New York City’s real estate recovery. In today’s improved economy, many in the industry are wondering what happened to all that inventory. With sales picking up and some new condos morphing into rentals, everyone agrees that the number of shadow units has dropped. But no one knows by exactly how much. [more]

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The agreement by publisher Condé Nast to lease 1 million square feet at One World Trade Center underscored a trend of companies willing to move away from their traditional core locations in Midtown. “Tenants are being more open about where they are located, which is refreshing,” David Goldstein, an executive vice president at commercial advisory firm Studley, said. “It is terrific to bring a creative use into an area that is traditionally dominated by financial services, legal services, insurance companies and the like.” That openness facilitates another long-term trend. With development opportunities tight in the center of Midtown, over the years, builders have been constructing towers farther west and south, a study by commercial firm CB Richard Ellis shows. [more]

In past years, many New Yorkers depended on the searchable classified ad service Craigslist.org to help them find affordable apartments, often without brokers’ fees. But these days, many are trading hours of scrolling through apartments on Craigslist for posting housing queries in the form of status updates on Facebook or Twitter. For the consumer, social media is a way of avoiding the possibility that what’s advertised on Craigslist may not really be what’s available. For the broker, it’s a new opportunity for marketing. [more]

Peter Hauspurg, chairman and CEO of Eastern Consolidated and Daun Paris, president of Eastern ConsolidatedHome may be where the heart is, but what if it’s also in the workplace? This month The Real Deal takes a look at couples who work in the real estate industry. While such pairings aren’t the norm in the business, there are high-profile examples like “Jvanka” — that is, husband-and-wife Jared Kushner, principal of Kushner Companies, and Ivanka Trump, a vice president at the Trump Organization. Trump has reportedly said that having a shared background in real estate has been a boon to her relationship with Kushner, as she’s keenly interested in his descriptions of work machinations that others might find dull — a sentiment echoed by everyone TRD spoke to with a partner in the industry. [more]

Some credit experts call it the best-kept secret in home mortgage finance. Others say, so what?
Millions of Americans whose credit scores have declined in recent years because of economic stresses could start rebuilding their scores if their rent, utilities, cell phone, insurance and other monthly accounts were reported to the national credit bureaus. But typically they are not, and as a consequence fail to show up as positive factors on credit scoring systems such as FICO or VantageScore. These on-time payments essentially go to waste for consumers, even though monthly rents often can be as large as mortgage bills, and years of utilities and other payments are widely recognized as strong indicators of creditworthiness. [more]

Republicans accused of ‘affordable housing massacre’

Catherine Young As Democrats and Republicans in Albany spar over New York City rent regulations set to expire June 15, Senate Democrats accused GOP members of attempting an “affordable housing massacre” at the behest of city landlords, the Daily News reported. The charge came in response to a bill introduced last month by Senate Housing Committee Chairwoman Catharine Young that would ease the requirement that rents must reach $2,000 a month before an apartment can be deregulated. Amid Democrats’ accusations, the Metropolitan Council on Housing submitted a request for copies of all communications between landlord groups and top GOP leaders in the Senate. A spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos denied the GOP was working on landlords’ behalf. [more]

Here is a quick test for the entrepreneurially inclined: Open the front door of your apartment, peer down the hallway, and then take a slow, observant walk up to the roof. What exactly do you see? For most, the answer will be dusty linoleum, mass-produced Swedish light fixtures or, for the unfortunate few, a rickety staircase. A select few, however, will see revenue — possibly tens of thousands of dollars — that could help fill the coffers of their co-ops or condominiums. [more]

Alf Naman and HL23Alf Naman is standing in front of a wall of plate-glass windows, in skinny jeans and a blazer, sipping a Pellegrino and gazing down on workers tending a grassy stretch of the High Line at 23rd Street. A sliver of New York Harbor shimmers in the distance. It’s the kind of multimillion-dollar view the veteran real estate broker spent decades showing off to clients when he worked on the Upper East Side. But this particular $5 million apartment — one of 11 units in a 14-story luxury building known as HL23 — has an added twist. Naman built it himself. Naman, who has been inching toward full-time development work for years, will find out soon enough whether buyers respond to his refined tastes, and those of his development partner, Garrett Heher, and his broker, Erin Boisson Aries of Brown Harris Stevens, who is handling sales at the 515 West 23rd Street project.

Click here to flip through The Real Deal’s June issue in a new format.

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Sam Zell and a rendering of 500 West 23rd StreetSince the 2008 financial meltdown, the pace of new residential construction in Manhattan has been limited by tight capital markets, rising labor and material costs, and weak demand for new housing. But a new luxury West Chelsea rental project from billionaire Sam Zell is being closely watched as an indicator of where new development is headed in the near future. Already, the project at 500 West 23rd Street has been a focal point for union protests. Certainly, with 23 union contracts set to expire this month in New York, the kerfuffle is indicative of the deteriorating relationship between big developers and organized labor in the city. [more]

There was plenty of red carpet at the Morgan Library as Costas Kondylis, the architect responsible for 86 NYC buildings, was feted at the May 11 premiere of “Building Stories,” a TRD-produced documentary about him. he screening was swarming with Manhattan’s real estate elite, including developers Joe Moinian (interviewed in this month’s “The Closing”), Ziel Feldman, Robert Gladstone, Henry Justin, Izak Senbahar and Joe Sitt; brokerage firm heads Andrew Heiberger of Town Residential and Pam Liebman of Corcoran; superbrokers Wendy Maitland, Bruce Mosler, Louise Sunshine and more, including social luminaries Katherine Karadjordjevic, Crown Princess of Serbia, her dashing husband Prince Alexander, and will he-run-for-mayor Gristedes magnate John Catsimatidis. [more]

Edmund Hume, president of REBNY in the 1970s.1973: REBNY accused of co-op commission price fixing

1950: Queens grows past Bronx to become third-largest borough

1921: State committee unearths NYC commercial mortgage abuse [more]

The Apex condoRobb Pair, president of the brokerage and development firm Harlem Lofts, had an uncomfortably close-up view of that neighborhood’s tumbling sales market in recent years. He estimates that the three-family townhouse that he owns at 119th Street and Lenox Avenue, where he lives with his family, has lost about a million dollars in value since its peak in last decade’s boom. [more]

From left: Shawn Vardi, Lee Brodsky, Hunter Gellin and Mark Shemel

Think Properties started with a tsunami. New York natives Shawn Vardi and Mark Shemel had crossed paths socially since high school. But it was Shemel’s fortuitous 2004 trip to Thailand that really brought them together. (Note: correction appended). Vardi, who had started a jewelry business after college, knew Thailand well. “I had called Shawn to ask for some advice” on travelling to the area, recalled Shemel. He then headed off to Asia, only to be stranded when the history-making tsunami swept across the Indian Ocean. [more]

Few blocks in Manhattan are changing as rapidly, or as fundamentally, as 102nd Street between Madison Avenue and Central Park, an area dominated by Mount Sinai Medical Center. The hospital, which currently occupies a superblock stretching from 98th to 102nd streets between Fifth and Madison avenues, has three simultaneous projects in the works. These include two striking, brand-new buildings that are eventful for the neighborhood: Mount Sinai’s new Center for Science and Medicine, a research building, and a 43-story residential tower at 4 East 102nd Street. Together with the third project — a 16-story prewar rental building at 1212 Fifth Avenue that’s being converted into condos — the changes considerably improve the quality of the area’s building stock. [more]

The last three years may have brought Manhattan apartment prices down, but actually moving in New York City is getting more and more expensive. Faced with skyrocketing operating costs, but also under pressure to keep monthly owners’ charges low — and reserve funds high — condo and co-op boards are feeling the pinch. That means zeroing in on easy revenue-boosters, many of which are charges imposed on new buyers and renters. Often totaling several thousands of dollars, these costs come in the form of application review fees, administrative fees, move-in fees and various other add-ons from managing agents and boards. These fees, which have been on the rise in many co-ops and condos since the downturn, are usually just an annoyance for buyers, but for potential renters, they can be a deal-breaker. [more]

As New York City real estate is to the country, the Plaza District seems to be to New York: The last to fall and the first to rise. In this month’s Q & A, The Real Deal talked to commercial brokers, analysts and building managers about the office district — one of the toniest commercial submarkets in Manhattan. They said that while rents there declined by over 40 percent during the recession, they have shot up by as much as 32 percent in the last year, and the district is outperforming other high-profile commercial submarkets like Times Square in its recovery. [more]

A home in West Islip, the Long Island town most likely to be impacted by hurricanesLong Island

Coastline is largest hurricane risk in area

A recent report on 10 coastal metro areas found that Long Island has the most residential property at risk of hurricane damage, according to the Long Island Press. [more]

The Boston Waterfront
Boston

Vertex Pharmaceuticals signed a 15-year, $1.1 billion lease to move its base of operations from Cambridge to the South Boston waterfront, according to the Boston Herald. The biotechnology company announced last month that it had finalized a $72.5 million-per-year lease on 1.1 million square feet of office space at South Boston’s Fan Pier Complex, where developer Joe Fallon is slated to soon begin construction on two 18-story structures for Vertex. Thomas Menino, the mayor of Boston, had angered Cambridge officials in January by offering a $71.8 million package of state and local government incentives to attract Vertex. The deal, however, remains contingent on Vertex gaining necessary approvals for Incivek, a hepatitis C drug. [more]

Seagram BuildingRosen wants $2,000 psf for Seagram stake

Aby Rosen’s RFR Holding is looking to unload a 49 percent stake in the landmark Seagram Building at more than $2,000 per square foot, which would revalue the property at about $1.8 billion. According to the New York Post, the record price per square foot for an office building was set at $1,585 in 2007 with the sale of 450 Park Avenue, and while prices have rebounded somewhat since the real estate crash, such a price is untested in today’s market. “If you want to test the strength of the market, it’s certainly the building with which to do it,” said Woody Heller, head of the capital transactions group at Studley, which is not involved in the marketing of the building. [more]

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Click here to try your hand at an interactive version of The Real Deal’s June 2011 crossword puzzle.

25 Washington StreetLeasing Update

Dumbo

Gair2
25 Washington Street

The nine-story, 105-unit luxury rental conversion by Two Trees Management is now open for business. Rents range from $2,300 to $6,000 for one- and two-bedroom units. Amenities at the redbrick building include a rooftop recreational area, an indoor fitness center and unit/bike storage. The project is named after Robert Gair, the structure’s 19th-century builder, who is also responsible for nine other waterfront buildings in the area. Contact: www.gair2.com. [more]

Chelsea

$2.37 million

133 West 22nd Street

2-bedroom, 2-bathroom, 1,336 sf condo in a new elevator building; 24-hour doorman; unit has northern exposure and a 400-square-foot terrace; building has roof deck and health club with outdoor pool; common charges $1,213 per month; taxes $313 per month; asking price $2.45 million; 35 weeks on the market. (Broker: Jessica Levine, Prudential Douglas Elliman) [more]

From left: Ayush Kapahi, Jerry Swartz and Jonathan HarringtonJerry Swartz, the cofounder of 35-year-old real estate financing company Pergolis Swartz Associates, has left the firm to start his own company, prompting a lawsuit filed by his former partner.Swartz started the new real estate capital advisory firm, HKS Capital Partners, in March with former Pergolis Swartz colleagues Ayush Kapahi and Jonathan Harrington. [more]

A screenshot of MapThatPad.comLike many would-be renters, Nihaar Gupta quickly became frustrated looking for an apartment on Craigs-list last year. In response, he and partner Thomas Kunjappu created MapThatPad.com to make the home search easier. At first, they focused on renters’ needs, but now they’re introducing tools for brokers, too.The site, which launched last year, was initially aimed at renters, allowing home-seekers to organize all listings from various sites, including StreetEasy.com, Craigslist and the New York Times, and place them on a single map that they could share with roommates. But in an effort to generate more revenue, Gupta and Kunjappu last month rolled out several features aimed at real estate brokers as well. [more]

Brian DusseauWhen Keller Williams, the self-proclaimed second-largest brokerage in the nation, stormed into Manhattan this year with super-broker Ilan Bracha at the helm, industry insiders wondered if its arrival would prompt a wave of movement among high-profile agents. [more]

Residential

Bond New York

Robin Vrba, formerly of the Corcoran Group; Aurelia Dawson Alleyne, formerly of Prudential Douglas Elliman; Michael Richards, formerly of Halstead Property; Jim Foley, formerly of Brown Harris Stevens; Jeff Silberman, formerly of A.C. Lawrence; and Fairry Bonner, who previously worked at Corcoran, joined the firm. [more]

Hakeem JeffriesLast month, the real estate industry found itself in hot water with Brooklyn politicians, who suddenly seem very interested in the inner workings of New York property sales. [more]

The Durst Organization’s party last month at the “RECon” convention in Las Vegas

Ah, conventioneering. Though dressed impeccably in a pinstriped suit during last month’s “RECon” global retail convention in Las Vegas, broker Ariel Schuster said he felt a bit groggy. “We were out until 3 a.m.,” the Robert K. Futterman & Associates star told The Real Deal in the early afternoon of the conference’s third day. But “The Hangover Part II” this was not. Schuster had been entertaining landlord clients at a late-night dinner following a party hosted by Futterman at the Cosmopolitan Hotel. Comments

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“The Happy Home Project”Jean Nayar had been a design editor and writer for more than 25 years when she decided to transition into real estate. A few months ago, she became an agent at residential brokerage Bond New York. “Print was beginning to implode,” explained Nayar, a Minnesota native who has lived in New York City for 26 years. “It was my cue to make a move.” [more]