The Real Deal - New York Real Estate News

Brian Ezratty and Ron Solarz join Newmark Knight Frank

Posted: 21 Aug 2018 03:00 PM PDT

Former Eastern Consolidated brokers Brian Ezratty and Ron Solarz have landed at Newmark Knight Frank, where they’ll head up the brokerage’s new private client group. Newmark president James Kuhn said that Ezratty and Solarz would help the company’s national expansion. Ezratty will join as vice chairman and Solarz will have the title of executive managing director. They were two of the top-performing brokers at Eastern, which shut down last month after a nearly four-decade run. […]

Compass to acquire one of the West Coast’s largest resi brokerages in blockbuster deal

Posted: 21 Aug 2018 02:40 PM PDT

Compass is closing in on a blockbuster deal to buy Pacific Union International Realty, one of the largest brokerages on the West Coast, with $14 billion in sales last year. Pacific Union’s senior leadership was notified Monday about the acquisition; a public announcement is expected on Thursday, sources confirmed. The deal was first reported by Inman. Pacific Union is the fifth-largest brokerage nationwide with 1,700 agents and 54 offices, according to Real Trends, a Colorado-based […]

Brookfield’s plan for GGP: Add housing, office, hotels to underperforming malls

Posted: 21 Aug 2018 02:20 PM PDT

Brookfield Property Partners is wasting no time with its plan to turn around General Growth Properties, the massive shopping mall real estate investment trust it bought for $14.8 billion last month. Toronto-based Brookfield plans to expand GGP’s best performing malls with additional stores, and repurpose poorly performing malls by adding housing, office space or hotels, according to the Wall Street Journal. Battered by diminishing revenue, many mall owners nationwide are transforming their assets, turning the […]

Michael Cohen sells stakes in two buildings, pleads guilty on federal charges

Posted: 21 Aug 2018 01:48 PM PDT

Michael Cohen, the beleaguered former personal attorney to President Trump, sold stakes in two apartment buildings in the East Village and Upper East Side totaling $11.3 million, records filed with the city Tuesday show. Cohen, who is also the former deputy national finance chair of the Republican National Committee, pleaded guilty to felony counts of fraud and campaign finance violations on Tuesday. The charges included failing to report $4.1 million in income to the Internal […]

Here’s what the $10M-$20M NYC investment sales market looked like last week

Posted: 21 Aug 2018 01:00 PM PDT

1.) Abraham Fructhandler’s FBE Limited sold a warehouse in the Mott Haven section of the Bronx at 288 Walton Avenue for $16.8 million. The buyer, rental developer Heatherwood Communities, plans to replace the one-story industrial property with a 170,000-square-foot mixed-use building. Heatherwood owns rental assets in Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island, according to its website. Capital Property Partners’ Daniel Rahmani and Nir Mor represented both the buyer and the seller. 2.) Big City Realty Management […]

Hamptons Cheat Sheet: Town officials look to buy and raze a Hampton Bays motel to build luxury condos … & more

Posted: 21 Aug 2018 12:15 PM PDT

Town officials look to buy and raze a Hampton Bays motel to build luxury condos Southampton Town officials want to buy the Bel-Aire Cove Motel so they can tear it down before securing construction permits and architectural drawings for a willing developer, Newsday reported. The owners are willing to sell for $1,060,000, according to Southampton town supervisor Jay Schneiderman. Last year, the hotel, which largely operates as a year-round residence for its occupants, was found […]

Toll Brothers aims for record revenues as profit climbs 30%

Posted: 21 Aug 2018 11:15 AM PDT

Toll Brothers is poised to end the year on a high note. The luxury builder’s profit climbed in the third quarter, as the company also raised its outlook for 2018. The optimism is thanks to strong new home sales amid housing supply constraints, Toll Brothers said in a statement Tuesday. Net income was $193.3 million, up 30 percent from $148.6 million a year earlier. Revenues climbed 27 percent to $1.91 billion, and home deliveries rose […]

Israeli real estate scion developing 78-unit project on Chrystie Street

Posted: 21 Aug 2018 10:45 AM PDT

Ben Harlev’s Arava Group plans to build a 78-unit residential building at 167 Chrystie Street, a permit application filed with the New York City Department of Buildings on Tuesday shows. The residential portion of the building would span 54,000 square feet while ground floor retail space would account for 5,000 square feet. Harlev, a former Israel Defense Forces captain, acquired the property through a ground lease signed in December in the amount of $9.5 million. […]

Police believe that “some a—hole” on Roosevelt Island is shooting at Solow’s One East River Place rental tower

Posted: 21 Aug 2018 10:01 AM PDT

“Some a—hole” on Roosevelt Island has been shooting at apartments across the East River at Solow Management’s One East River Place rental tower, law enforcement sources told the New York Post. Police sources said a tenant on the 14th floor woke up Friday morning to find glass strewn across the living room floor. Cops found a .38-caliber bullet they believe was most likely fired from a Smith & Wesson handgun, sources told the Post. Police […]

This developer is banned from donating to city officials. Here’s the loophole it used

Posted: 21 Aug 2018 09:15 AM PDT

The Heskel Group is currently prohibited from donating to city officials, but they can still donate to state candidates who those officials support—a loophole they are taking advantage of. The Heskel Group, which is attempting to build a Target at 40-31 82nd Street in Queens with Sun Equities, has been banned from donating more than $400 to any municipal official since it asked the city to approve a zoning change for the project in February, […]

Cerberus launches $500M for single-family rental investments

Posted: 21 Aug 2018 08:19 AM PDT

Cerberus Capital Management is diving deeper into the single-family rental market, hoping to seize on the sector’s increased activity nationwide. The New York-based private equity firm is looking to raise $500 million through a new fund to purchase single-family homes, according to Bloomberg. Cerberus is making the fund evergreen, meaning there is no target date to return capital to investors. There is growing competition among buyers for single-family rentals, which aren’t selling at distressed prices anymore. […]

AECOM Tishman to begin construction work on Waldorf Astoria’s new hotels and condos

Posted: 21 Aug 2018 07:45 AM PDT

AECOM Tishman signed a new deal with Anbang Insurance Group to start construction work at the Waldorf Astoria, which is now scheduled to reopen in 2021. Tishman has been on the job since November 2017 doing mostly interior demolition work. But the contractor signed a new deal to start building the project’s planned 350 condominiums and 350 new hotel rooms, the New York Post reported. “Some executives flew in from Beijing last week to finalize […]

Brooklyn’s Renaissance Realty unloads $34M multifamily portfolio

Posted: 21 Aug 2018 07:00 AM PDT

Brooklyn landlord Renaissance Realty Associates sold a trio of apartment buildings in East Flatbush and Bedford Stuyvesant for $34 million. The Nassau County-based firm sold the 50-unit 428 East 46th Street and the 39-unit 202 East 91st Street to investor Lav Bauta for $18.71 million, property records show. The buildings span 95,480 square feet, bringing the purchase price to nearly $196 per square foot. Marcus and Millichap’s Matt Fotis, Matt Shapiro and Tyler Workman brokered […]

City Council working to give green-building initiative some bite

Posted: 21 Aug 2018 06:15 AM PDT

The City Council is crafting legislation that would mandate buildings reduce carbon emissions by 20 percent between 2020 and 2030. “I consider today a milestone in our quest to make New York City’s buildings greener, our infrastructure more sustainable, and our air significantly cleaner,” City Councilman Costa Constantinides said in a statement Monday. The lawmaker’s remarks indicate the council is looking to give more muscle to the city’s goal of curbing carbon emissions 80 percent […]

Trump pines for days of cheap money at fundraiser hosted by Howard Lorber

Posted: 21 Aug 2018 05:35 AM PDT

At the Southampton fundraiser hosted by Howard Lorber Friday, President Trump lamented that his pick for Federal Reserve chair has raised interest rates. Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell has raised rates five times over the span of Trump’s administration thus far, including twice this year. Trump’s remarks to the private Republican donors at Lorber’s fundraiser are his most personal criticism of Powell’s policies to come out thus far, Bloomberg reported. Presidents normally avoid commenting on […]

Nationwide home foreclosures tick up for first time in 3 years: report

Posted: 21 Aug 2018 05:05 AM PDT

New home foreclosure filings nationwide inched up in July, signaling the first year-over-year rise after three consecutive years of decreases. The report from Attom Data Solutions is an indication the U.S. housing market may be nearing the end of the cycle, and that home prices will begun to fall, experts say. Meanwhile, foreclosure starts are also rising sharply in some of the country’s biggest real estate markets, jumping more than 20 percent in Los Angeles […]

Architecture review: Koolhaas’ canned controversy at 121 East 22nd Street

Posted: 21 Aug 2018 04:30 AM PDT

In many ways, the 18-story building at 121 East 22nd Street resembles many new mid-height modernist Manhattan buildings. However, the 140-unit condo — designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas’ shop, OMA, and developed by Toll Brothers City Living — rebels where it meets the southwest corner of Lexington Avenue and 23rd Street. It is here that we see a break from its modular grid as the structure juts out with a sequence of irregular windows, twisted in […]

“We couldn’t give it away”: Why even cheap listings fell off the market this summer

Posted: 21 Aug 2018 04:00 AM PDT

When a one-bedroom co-op on the Upper East Side hit the market in February asking $739,000, it had no takers. One price cut later, the frustrated seller took it off the market in May — hoping to hit the reset button in the fall. “We couldn’t give it away,” said Bill Kowalczuk, an agent at Warburg. He’d done his homework — looking at other Upper East Side one-bedroom units that had sold in the previous […]