The holiday season is before us, but the festive mood — especially when compared to the last few Decembers — is missing. It is hard to be merry when the rest of the country is suffering from the mortgage fallout. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that New York will be spared.
With that said, we bring you our main spread about the slowdown in New York City’s commercial market. While we are on track to have a record-breaking year for commercial building sales — for the third consecutive year — the mood has been grim in the latter part of 2007.
That’s because the credit crunch, while not hurting New York as much as the rest of the nation, is making some waves here, impacting sales over $500 million. And to make the climate even gloomier, the number of extra-large office leases has dropped significantly as well.
While it may be hard to feel bad about owners who aren’t able to finance their next billion-dollar trophy purchase or companies who can’t expand their lavish offices to the size of football fields, the fact remains that big purchases, no matter how extravagant, set the momentum for the rest of the market.
But as the saying goes, when you’ve got lemons, you make lemonade. Throughout all of this, the smaller shops have been getting fat on the crumbs and loving it.
We also head outside New York to bring you our second National Market Report, which examines nine cities across the country. In addition to regulars we wrote about in the last report like Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., we cover some new areas that are undergoing historic transformations, including San Diego, which is rebuilding after the wildfires, and New Orleans, where the real estate brokerage scene is rebounding post-Katrina.
In the old Greek myths, when two titans fought, the earth would rattle. Well, brace yourselves: Sheldon Solow and Harry Macklowe, two of New York’s billionaire real estate titans who have been fighting since 2004, are back at it again.
Solow has accused Macklowe of serious misdeeds in the last few years. The spat started when Solow and Macklowe were both trying to buy the GM Building, but Macklowe ultimately prevailed. Since then, Solow has claimed Macklowe’s offer was unscrupulous because he knew what the highest bid was. Now, Solow is adamant about taking steps that may very well put Macklowe’s prized properties in his hands.
Finally, we are pleased to announce that Jill Gardiner, formerly of the New York Sun, has joined The Real Deal. We are excited to have her as part of our editorial team. We also say goodbye to Mikhail Boguslavsky, our research director, who is moving on to new challenges.
Enjoy your holidays, and have a happy New Year.