This month in real estate history: City halts “over the counter” property sales

James Felt
James Felt

From the March issue: James Felt, the chairman of City Planning who took the helm of the city’s scandal-plagued Bureau of Real Estate, made the announcement that the sales had ended. The change occurred weeks after the city’s Investigation Commissioner said he was looking into the real estate unit’s practices, which another city agency later called “slipshod.”

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The bureau was a division of the Board of Estimate, the city’s former land use and budgetary body. Most of the properties the bureau sold were ones that city agencies no longer needed and had turned over to the Board of Estimate. [more]