Every weekday The Real Deal rounds up New York’s biggest real estate happenings. We update this page throughout the day, starting at 9 a.m. Please send any tips or deals to tips@therealdeal.com.
This was last updated at 5:40 p.m.
Arabian Oud, the Middle East’s largest perfume retailer, is partnering with David Jackson to make an offer for Barneys. Jackson told the Post their offer would be “in the ZIP code of the stalking horse bid,” a reference to Authentic Brands Group’s $271.4 million offer for the retailer’s intellectual property. They plan to keep the seven remaining Barneys open, including the Madison Avenue flagship location. [NYP]
Taconic Investment Partners and Nuveen plan an office project in Hudson Square. The two firms have bought a controlling interest at 2 Hudson Square, a development site near the Holland Tunnel entrance that can accommodate a project of about 300,000 square feet. The lease cost was not immediately available. [Crain’s]
JPMorgan may look to sell 383 Madison Avenue. The consideration comes as the financial giant weighs moving thousands of jobs outside of the New York area in an effort to rein in costs ahead of a possible financial slowdown, according to Bloomberg. Executives are looking into moving employees to cheaper parts of the country including Plano, Texas; Columbus, Ohio; and Wilmington, Delaware. [Bloomberg]
Landlords are starting to miss loan payments under the new rent law. Emerald Equity Group and Sugar Hill Capital Partners started missing payments on loans from LoanCore Capital LLC over the summer, according to the Wall Street Journal. They had both purchased properties in Upper Manhattan in recent years with plans to deregulate units and increase rents, but the law enacted in June upended those plans. [WSJ]
Michael Milken, a symbol of 1980s Wall Street, is taking advantage of the Opportunity Zone program. Milken, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison in the early 1990s for violating tax and securities laws, is a leading proponent of the program and stands to personally benefit from it, according to the New York Times. He has investments in two major projects inside Opportunity Zones in Nevada, including a 700-acre site that the Treasury Department deemed an Opportunity Zone against its own guidelines at the personal instruction of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Mnuchin made the decision soon after spending time with Milken. [NYT]
47 Greene Street and President & CEO of Acadia Realty Trust Kenneth F. Bernstein (Credit: Google Maps)
Acadia Realty Trust is moving forward with a $122 million retail investment in Soho. The company said it had spent another $25.1 million in the once-robust retail area in its third-quarter filing Thursday, according to The Real Deal. This covers seven properties with an average remaining lease of six years. [TRD]
L&L MAG and a partnership between Silverstein and Brookfield are competing for the right to develop 5 World Trade Center. They submitted competing bids for the site last month, according to Crain’s. The Silverstein and Brookfield proposal focuses on building residential space, while the L&L MAG proposal focuses on high-end office space that would aim to stand out from the surrounding office space. [Crain’s]
Community board opposes Lenox Hill Hospital’s redevelopment plan. Manhattan’s Community Board 8 gave thumbs down to the Upper East Side project at its meeting last week, according to the Wall Street Journal. The $2 billion development plan would upgrade the hospital and include a 516-foot hospital tower on Lexington Avenue and a 490-foot residential tower on Park Avenue, which parent company Northwell Health has said will help underwrite construction of the site. [WSJ]
Several New York flood zones are still uninsured years after Hurricane Sandy. More than eight out of 10 properties in New York City that the federal government deemed very vulnerable to the next disaster do not have flood insurance, according to The City. The number of flood insurance policies has also dropped sharply in Staten Island and Queens. Officials in Washington and New York are still at least five years away from developing a common set of maps that will determine who needs to buy flood insurance. [The City]
NYC’s hotel industry is on the lookout for a recession. New York has seen a boom in hotel construction recently, but concerns are on the rise about a supply increase getting coupled with a slowdown in demand as a recession looms, according to TRD. If all planned projects are built, New York will have almost 139,000 throughout the city by the end of 2021, an increase of 15.5 percent from the middle of the year. [TRD]
Sam Chang plans another hotel. The developer has inked a 99-year lease at 777 Eighth Avenue from the Schwartz family for $1.4 million per year, according to the Commercial Observer. He plans to build a 200-key hotel on the property. [CO]
A Midtown penthouse has received yet another price cut. Hedge funder Steven Cohen is now trying to sell his penthouse at One Beacon Court for $34 million, according to Curbed. The unit was first listed in 2013 for $115 million and was relisted in January for $45 million. The duplex spans 9,000 square feet and has five bedrooms and 12-foot-high windows. [Curbed]
A secret deal allows the housing industry to block stronger rules on climate change. The agreement gives housing industry representatives four of 11 voting seats on two committees that approve widely adopted building codes, according to the New York Times. The National Association of Home Builders controls the seats, which have helped the trade group stop changes that would have made homes more energy-efficient or disaster-resistant. [NYT]
A pair of Midtown hotels has defaulted on a $98 million financing package. The hotels are the Hampton Inn at 231 East 43rd Street and the Holiday Inn Express at 60 West 36th Street, according to the Commercial Observer. Their mortgages include an $85 million CMBS senior loan and a $13 million subordinate component that were supposed to be paid off Oct. 6. The Kuwaiti bank Kuwait Finance House owns the hotels. [CO]
2018 Avenue U and 252 Newport Street in Brooklyn (Credit: Google Maps)
Here’s what the $10-$30 million investment sales market looked like last week. Sales included Kayne Anderson’s roughly $21 million purchase of a Brownsville warehouse and Jeon America’s $10.5 million purchase of an office building in Koreatown, according to TRD. [TRD]
UrbanDigs founder Noah Rosenblatt (Credit: iStock)
UrbanDigs is getting into the lead-generation business. The company is launching a new service called “Sell My Apartment” that links sellers with three potential agents in just a few hours, according to TRD. The service aims to connect sellers with qualified agents and help agents get their foot in the door. [TRD]
Nine luxury contracts were signed for about $92.5 million in Manhattan last week. This represented a drop in sales and dollar volume from the week before, when 19 contracts were signed for about $159 million. The properties spent an average of 457 days on the market and had an average discount of 10 percent from the original asking price. [Olshan]
Brooklyn’s luxury market saw 18 contracts signed last week for a total of roughly $52.2 million. Both figures were up from the previous’ weeks eight contracts for about $23.8 million. The average contract was about $2.9 million and the properties spent an average of 111 days on the market. [Compass]