The Real Deal - New York Real Estate News

For the second time, former New York State Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos was convicted on corruption charges in connection to a scandal involving landlord Glenwood Management and other companies. Skelos, who was initially convicted in 2015, was found guilty of bribery, extortion and conspiracy in his retrial in Federal District Court on Tuesday, the New York Times reported. His son, Adam, was also convicted. Skelos had appealed his original conviction last year, following a […]

Sage Realty Corporation, the leasing arm of landlord William Kaufman Organization, refinanced a Greenwich Village office building for the second time in seven months. The firm landed a $97 million mortgage for 2 Gansevoort Street, a landmarked office building in the Meatpacking District, according to records filed with the city on Tuesday.  The new financing replaces a $95 million M&T Bank provided in January. The new lender, New York Life Insurance Company, assumed the existing […]

The luxury housing bubble in Los Angeles keeps expanding. A celebrity plastic surgeon turned home developer is ready to sell a 34,000-square-foot speculation home for $180 million, a home that is next door to Bruce Makowsky’s $188 million spec estate, according to the Wall Street Journal. It puts the pair of modern palatial residences in direct competition to become the most expensive home sold in the country. “It’s like Rolls Royce and Bentley, what brand […]

Donors from New York City’s real estate industry contributed more than $733,000 to the re-election campaign of Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the first half of 2018, an analysis of state contributions data by The Real Deal found. That’s down from the more than $1.2 million property interests gave the governor during the previous six-month reporting period. Gov. Cuomo raised roughly $6 million in total contributions during both periods and now holds more than $31 million […]

Atlantic City seems to be getting back in the game. The recent legalization of sports betting can only help the casino-driven local economy, experts say. But developers are also looking beyond gambling to attract a broader mix of travelers and diversify the city’s revenue stream. “New business is on a parallel track with gaming,” said James Wood, president and CEO of Meet AC, a marketing bureau launched in 2014 to position the casino town as […]

MGM Resorts International has sued more than 1,000 victims of last year’s mass shooting at a Las Vegas festival, claiming it has no liability in the injury or deaths that occurred when a gunman opened fire from inside the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino. In the lawsuit filed Friday in federal court in Nevada and California, the Mandalay Bay owner says a 2002 federal act limits the hotel’s liability, Bloomberg reported. The act, named the […]

Co-working company Spaces, IWG Plc’s answer to WeWork, signed a lease for 100,000 square feet in the Flatiron District. The company took the seventh through ninth floors at CL Investment Group’s 287 Park Avenue South, Commercial Observer reported. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but average asking rents in the area are around $70 to $80 per square foot. CL Investment bought the property, formerly known as the United Charities Building, for $128 million in […]

Omni New York landed a $169.8 million loan for a massive, mixed-use development in Jamaica, Queens. The city’s Housing Development Corporation is providing the financing, according to documents filed with the city today. The debt package consists of five separate notes, the largest of which is a $59.5 million senior building loan. The property at 92-23 168th Street will house a 23-story, 413,000-square-foot mixed-use building. Omni filed permits for the development last August. Once it’s […]

The city’s Board of Standards and Appeals on Tuesday sided with developers of a 668-foot-tall condominium tower, finding that the project complies with zoning rules. The Committee for Environmentally Sound Development had challenged the Department of Building‘s approval of the project, which is being developed by Mitsui Fudosan and SJP Properties. The community group argued that the developers cobbled together an illegal zoning lot — forming an unusual, 39-sided polygon that’s 10 times the size […]

Dock Studios has inked an 18,000-square-foot lease at 349 Scholes Street in East Williamsburg, a deal that doubles the studio’s square footage in the area. The property spent 90 years as a fur manufacturing facility for the company Meisel-Peskin, which still owns the building and recently renovated it. Vincent Lopez and Jacques Wadler of Kalmon Dolgin Affiliates represented both sides in the deal, according to the firm. The lease is for 15 years, and asking […]

High demand for entry-level homes leads to bidding wars on South Fork Inventory for lower-income affordable homes on the South Fork is low and lagging behind the demand for them, experts said. “When we take buyers out looking for properties under $1 million, they often go away discouraged at the lack of selection or must find ways to increase their budgets,” John F. Wines, a broker with Compass in Southampton told 27East. The average worker simply […]

The Albanese Organization is considering converting a 293-unit rent-stabilized residential building in Battery Park City into condominiums. The developer filed a “test the market” application with the the New York State Attorney General’s office earlier this month, allowing it to engage in basic marketing activities before deciding it wants to go through will a full conversion and public offering plan. The Solaire at 20 River Terrace has no active rental listings, according to StreetEasy. And […]

With predictions of a “retail apocalypse” growing by the day, and as more stores close and companies file for bankruptcy, some investors see now as the perfect time to buy ailing shopping centers at distressed prices. Brian Kosoy, the CEO of the Sterling Organization, a private equity firm, started a new fund to invest in grocery-anchored shopping centers, street retail and other shopping centers across the U.S., according to the Wall Street Journal. He said […]

Online-centric brokerage Redfin is seeking to raise up to $239 million, deploying the funds on acquisitions and technology. “Redfin may choose to use a portion of the net proceeds to invest in or acquire third-party businesses, products, services, technologies or other assets,” the company said in a statement Monday. The brokerage noted that it has no such “agreements or preliminary plans” at this time. Redfin is raising money through a combined stock and debt offering. […]

Brooklyn borough president Eric Adams wants to start monitoring landlords in the same manner that the city tracks criminals. Adams proposed creating a database modeled after the New York City Police Department’s crime-mapping Compstat system to monitor landlords of below-market housing. Adams told Crain’s that the system would include a dashboard overlaid on a map of the five boroughs, tracking data from the city Departments of Buildings, Finance and Housing Preservation and Development and the […]

UPDATED, Tuesday, July 17, 12:10 p.m.: Great Neck firm Monarch Realty Holdings is continuing its expansion in the Bronx. The company is in contract to buy two properties in Morrisania and Highbridge for $11.6 million. The package is composed of 1027-1029 Westchester Avenue, a six-story apartment building with 32 apartments and five commercial units, and 1408 Cromwell Avenue, a vacant lot included in the Jerome Avenue rezoning. Monarch plans to keep the Westchester Avenue building […]

The fact that you can see all of your co-workers doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to talk to any of them. According to a new study by Harvard University, open-plan offices might actually deter employees from working together. Instead, workers are more likely to communicate by instant messaging and email, the New York Post reported. But there’s a caveat: The study only looked at two Fortune 500 companies. At one company, after doing away with […]

Buying in the Hamptons is not exactly a science: Prices don’t obey the regular rules of the market. Because homes in the Hamptons are often second-homes for summer getaways, the prices don’t always adhere to usual indicators, like size and location. Still, using data from Zillow, Bloomberg looked at sales in six major Long Island vacation destinations from May 2017 to May 2018 — in an attempt to find where the best deals are located. […]

 For most, the idea of traffic-less, headache-free travel is nothing but a pipe dream. For Elon Musk, it could be the future of mass transit. Last summer, the tech mogul tweeted that he received “verbal govt approval” for his fabeled Hyperloop, a high-speed transportation system that would send passengers sailing through low-pressure tubes at speeds in excess of 700 miles per hour. Though some developers doubt the project will ever happen, The Real Deal sought out […]

Alloy Development is purchasing a pair of interconnected buildings in Dumbo for more than $50 million. The company is in contract to buy 42 Jay Street and 50 Jay Street from Phoenix House, an organization that helps people struggling with substance abuse, according to property records and sources familiar with the deal. The building at 50 Jay Street stands five stories tall, while the building at 42 Jay Street stands seven stories tall. Phoenix House put them on […]

City Council member Brad Lander sat for an interview on public radio last November and ended Kushner Companies’ hopes of building a major mixed-use development in Gowanus, Brooklyn. The firm, and its partners SL Green Realty and LIVWRK, had bought the 140,000-square-foot site for more than $70 million in 2014. But the success of the project depended on a rezoning of the neighborhood, and that depended on Lander, the local Council member expected to get […]

The co-working craze may soon hit its peak in Manhattan. A Savills Studley report said the growing business — dominated by players like WeWork and Knotel — is poised to hit a wall in the next couple years, Bloomberg reported. “The market is getting more fragmented as some hybrid models and different providers get into the space,” Keith DeCoster, the firm’s director of U.S. real estate analytics, told the publication. “Many shared-office-space providers are already […]