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This Week in Comments

What aspects of the real estate industry need more transparency?
1. Actual percentage under contract at new developments. I have been lied to by so many brokers about how many units are under contract.
2. Brokers lie or exaggerate about offers. Need to know real bids — high and low. [There’s] no way you can tell if the truth is being told. Need to have transparency here, desperately.
3. Cubic feet not just square feet should be recorded with an independent architectural firm not just BS broker talk about — “in co-ops they don’t measure it.” Imagine buying a stock or a car and [the] seller can’t give you [the] exact info.

Co-ops starting to bend — ever so slightly
What are the editors or publishers of The Real Deal smoking ? Do they really expect me to believe that a co-op board will listen to a broker? I will put this very simply, co-op boards hate, repeat hate, brokers.

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Halstead’s Ramirez says “it truly is the perfect storm right now”
Anyone with a good apartment should hold onto it until the prices go back up. And anyone looking to buy is only going to get the crap that no one else wants. In other words, it’s the perfect time to buy bad real estate.

The biggest bargains the last time around
1. No matter how much the market dips and how cheap the properties are traded [at] we will never see what we saw back then. The value of the dollar is not the same and the fact that buyers cannot get even close to the same type of financing makes it impossible, plus the fact that owners are still not willing to budge on their prices.
2. Most of these amazing deals that went on never come to market and there is always a story behind why they are so cheap. Good examples are the AIG building and the Chase building that just got sold. It is a really low dollar-per-square-foot, but does anyone know the details on the leaseback?

SL Green involvement at 510 Madison comes at steep price
Given SLG’s mission to own Midtown, etc., this seems like a prudent and efficient deployment of a significant slug of capital in a market that isn’t trading. And based on CBRE’s rates, they could drive yields on cost to over 10 percent? Why not buy it?

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