From left: Joe Sitt, 516 Fifth Avenue and 693 Fifth Avenue Joseph Sitt made his fortune thinking big — and not just in real estate. Back in the early 1990s, Sitt had trouble finding retail tenants for his urban properties. So he decided to open his own upscale apparel chain to serve the most promising urban retail sector he could find: plus-size women. “I saw a big niche area,” he told an interviewer in 2003.

For years, private equity firms have been lavished with huge sums of money by investors looking to own New York buildings. But recently, there have been fewer deals that those firms are finding attractive — ones that offer quick and bountiful yields. Plus, many so-called distressed opportunities that were supposed to materialize didn’t, as banks worked out new loan terms with their struggling borrowers. As a result, many private equity firms’ buckets of cash have

Huguette ClarkFor the past two decades, some 17,000 square feet of prime Fifth Avenue real estate have sat fully furnished, but empty. Once owned by eccentric heiress Huguette Clark, the three sprawling apartments at exclusive co-op 907 Fifth Avenue are now visited only by cleaning staff. Clark spent the last 20 years of her life in hospitals despite reported good health, scarcely ever setting foot inside 907 Fifth Avenue or her seaside mansion in Santa

For developers, New Jersey’s Gold Coast — that swath of real estate hugging the Hudson River from Englewood Cliffs to Jersey City — presents a tale of two markets. On the one hand, the rental market has rebounded, recovering to the point where brand-new rental projects are now being built and quickly leased. “The environment is conducive to new development,” said Michael Barry, president of Hoboken-based developer Ironstate Holdings. Lenders are backing “well-heeled, well-positioned, stable”

Commercial real estate insiders in New York City can easily tick off Manhattan’s top power brokers in the office leasing world — and rank the biggest firms here to boot. But a haze obscures the actual amount of business each of these brokers — who collectively handle millions of square feet of office leasing every year — participates in. This month The Real Deal created a first-ever ranking of the city’s most senior leasing agents

In 2008, 21-year-old Jared Seligman had sold some $40 million worth of real estate and gained fame for listing the Olsen twins’ Morton Square penthouse. And he wasn’t the only youngster flocking to residential brokerage during the mid-2000s. During the real estate boom, hordes of recent college grads entered real estate, hoping to cash in on the myriad six-figure deals taking place in Manhattan. There are, of course, still some young hotshots in the field.

The debt crisis may be rocking Europe’s economy, but in a strange twist, it’s actually had something of a positive effect on New York City’s mortgage market — at least for now. In this month’s Q&A, The Real Deal talked to mortgage brokers and mortgage experts, who said that investors are pouring capital into U.S. Treasurys, which is, in turn, helping to keep mortgage rates low and attractive to buyers.

41 Bond StreetGreenwich Village $6.05 million 41 Bond Street Three-bedroom, three-and-a-half-bath, 2,627 sf condo unit in a new development; apartment has private elevator, 11-foot ceilings and radiant heating; common charges $5,674 per month; taxes $599 per month; asking price $6.05 million; 22 days on the market. (Brokers: Dennis Mangone, Prudential Douglas Elliman; Tamir Shemesh, the Corcoran Group)