The Real Deal - New York Real Estate News

Inside Fried Frank’s annual holiday bash

Posted: 26 Dec 2019 03:15 PM PST

It’s the be all and end all of real estate holiday parties. Fried Frank’s Jonathan Mechanic played the sort of master of ceremonies for the firm’s annual event, held Dec. 3 at Cipriani 42nd Street. Attendees spotted throughout the night included Roy March of Eastdil Secured; MaryAnne Gilmartin, who just launched her own firm, MAG Partners; William Friedland of Friedland Properties; Eliot Spitzer of Spitzer Enterprises; Steve Siegel of CBRE; Bruce Mosler of Cushman &

Airbnb is taking steps to protect its customers. Is it enough?

Posted: 26 Dec 2019 02:09 PM PST

On Halloween night, a shooting broke out at a crowded house party in a California property that had been rented on Airbnb. Five people were killed and several more injured. The owner of the property told the San Francisco Chronicle the woman who rented it said she wanted to host a small family reunion. A spokesperson for Airbnb said the company was “horrified by this tragedy [and] have taken action to ban the booking guest

Jimmy Choo co-founder Tamara Mellon sells condo for $19M

Posted: 26 Dec 2019 01:45 PM PST

Jimmy Choo co-founder Tamara Mellon has found a well-heeled buyer for her Greenwich Village condominium. Property records show an anonymous buyer shelled out $18.8 million the eighth-floor spread at the Greenwich Lane, a complex with five buildings and five townhouses developed by the Rudin family and Global Holdings. Mellon’s apartment at 155 West 11th Street is 3,965 square feet with three bedrooms, an eat-in kitchen and 1,264 square feet of private outdoor space. She first

Prada gives landlord Jeff Sutton a lawsuit for Christmas

Posted: 26 Dec 2019 01:44 PM PST

Six years ago, Jeff Sutton told Prada that he intended to renovate the building that houses the luxury fashion giant’s flagship, 724 Fifth Avenue. The parties struck a deal, according to a lawsuit Prada filed on Christmas Eve in Manhattan: Prada would temporarily leave — with a year’s notice from Sutton’s Wharton Properties — while the landlord undertook the work. Sutton also was to pay Prada $5 million and post a $25 million letter of

Good while it lasted: Tenant paid $1 rent for 5 months

Posted: 26 Dec 2019 12:55 PM PST

For five months, a tenant in East Harlem paid $1 a month in rent because his landlord, Isaac Kassirer’s Emerald Equity Group, did not file paperwork to a regulator. But what seemed like a lucky break — born from a bad one — didn’t last. Last year, Yuri Kavalerchick returned to his East Harlem apartment to find that a pile of debris and construction materials outside of his bedroom window was on fire, sending up

Brooklyn? Fuhgeddaboudit. Queens has the biggest outer-boro hotel projects

Posted: 26 Dec 2019 11:00 AM PST

Outer-borough hotel builders are flocking to Queens. Eight of the city’s 10 biggest hotels under construction outside Manhattan are located in the borough. In all, these hotels under construction this year are expected to bring 2,110 rooms to Queens and 768 to the more populous Brooklyn. Source: NYC & Company report of hotels under construction, as of Nov. 1, 2019. 1. At 110-00 Rockaway Boulevard in South Ozone Park, the Resorts World Hotel is set

Trump Org’s office holdings help offset hotel losses: analysis

Posted: 26 Dec 2019 10:53 AM PST

Since President Donald Trump took office, the Trump Organization has seen revenue at its hotels suffer due to association with his name. But those struggles have largely been offset by a less prominent side of the company’s business, according to an analysis by the New York Times. Commercial properties account for 30 percent of the organization’s revenues, according to the president’s financial disclosure statements. Hotels make up 25 percent of the total while golf courses

Gentrification tax? Pols pitch fix for “completely screwed” system

Posted: 26 Dec 2019 08:04 AM PST

City lawmakers are making another push to overhaul New York’s notoriously arcane property tax system. A proposal backed by 13 Republican and Democratic City Council members would tax new homebuyers on the actual market value of their properties, the New York Post reported. Taxes for existing owners would remain unchanged. “The Post calls it a gentrification tax or a ‘yuppie tax,’ but most NYers know it as the ‘de Blasio loophole,’” Staten Island City Councilman

Skate gear retailer Blades to close its last store

Posted: 26 Dec 2019 07:32 AM PST

Nearly 30 years after opening its first store on the Upper West Side, skate gear retail chain Blades is shutting down its last location. Blades’ Soho store had become a fixture in New York City’s skating scene, but the enthusiastic customer base wasn’t enough to overcome the headwinds facing retail. The store has been losing money for the last three years, the Wall Street Journal reported. “Financially, it was a good thing for a while,”

Big sales, big discounts: The luxury market’s tumultuous 2019

Posted: 26 Dec 2019 07:00 AM PST

It was a testing year for New York City’s luxury market. While eye-opening closings made headlines — especially Ken Griffin’s $238 million penthouse — there was a 16 percent decline in luxury contract signings overall from the previous year. According to Olshan Realty’s year-end report, which analyzes contract signings above $4 million, there were 935 of them representing a total value of $7.65 billion in 2019. It was the lowest dollar volume since 2012. The

Bruce Willis sells Westchester estate for $7.66M

Posted: 26 Dec 2019 06:15 AM PST

Yippee-ki-yay, Westchester. Bruce Willis and his wife, model and actress Emma Heming, have sold their nearly 9,000-square-foot mansion near Bedford Corners for $7.66 million, after cutting the asking price by more than 40 percent over the course of the year, according to the Wall Street Journal. The couple listed the 22-acre estate, at 340 Croton Lake Road in Mount Kisco, for $12.95 million in January with plans to relocate to the West Coast. By August,

These architects designed the most new dev in NYC this year

Posted: 26 Dec 2019 05:45 AM PST

It’s been a busy year for projects in the outer boroughs, and some architects have been especially active. In fact, the architectural firms designing the most new development in the city this year had projects in all five boroughs, with more than half outside of Manhattan. Their work included an office building for Disney, a Staten Island warehouse for Amazon and a new high-rise in Midtown East for New York luxury housing stalwart Zeckendorf Development.

Warped lumber, failed projects: TRD investigates Katerra, SoftBank’s $4B construction startup

Posted: 26 Dec 2019 04:30 AM PST

In an email to employees last week, Katerra CEO Michael Marks had a few uplifting thoughts on the year gone by. His startup, which seeks to transform the $12 trillion global construction industry through technology and automation, has grown to more than 8,000 employees, is nearing profitability and will soon open a new state-of-the-art factory in California. Clients are returning, he wrote, and the company has more than $15 billion worth of building projects in

2019 in memoriam: Lives lost, legends to remember

Posted: 26 Dec 2019 04:00 AM PST

This year, the real estate industry said goodbye to some of its legends and adversaries, and mourned the loss of others whose lives came to an abrupt end. Earlier this month, Burt Resnick, who headed major landlord Jack Resnick & Sons, died at the age of 83, marking a changing of the guard within one of the premier families of New York real estate. His son, Jonathan Resnick, the firm’s president, will lead the business