The Real Deal - New York Real Estate News

54% of NY restaurants expect to close in six months

Posted: 10 Dec 2020 02:49 PM PST

New York restaurants are faring worse than their counterparts in other states. Fifty-four percent of New York restaurants said they would likely not survive the next six months without federal relief, according to the most recent survey by the New York State Restaurant Association and the National Restaurant Association. That’s compared to 37 percent of restaurants nationwide. “Our once-vibrant restaurant industry is suffering,” said Melissa Fleischut, president and CEO of NYSRA. “Our members are in

Pandemic has revived Greenwich’s struggling housing market

Posted: 10 Dec 2020 02:00 PM PST

The Greenwich housing market has made a U-turn since the coronavirus struck and is the strongest it has been in years, according to the Wall Street Journal. Some 127 contracts were signed last month for homes in the tony Connecticut town, more than triple the number in November 2019. Other suburban areas around New York City have experienced an influx of buyers too, but not to the same degree. For comparison, Fairfield County and Westchester

Real estate players celebrate Hanukkah at Trump’s White House party

Posted: 10 Dec 2020 01:15 PM PST

Most real estate holiday parties may be canceled in 2020, but the developer-in-chief held a Hanukkah bash Wednesday evening, inviting some of his friends in the industry to the White House. A crowd of attendees shouting “four more years,” greeted President Trump, as seen in a video posted online. Trump falsely told the mostly maskless crowd if “certain people have wisdom and courage, we’re going to win this election.” “This is the one that everyone

Foreclosures tied to 4 HFZ condo buildings halted, for now

Posted: 10 Dec 2020 12:58 PM PST

HFZ Capital Group scored a victory in a legal battle against its lender CIM Group — but the prolific condo developer isn’t out of the woods yet. A New York Supreme Court judge ruled Thursday that CIM’s two planned foreclosure sales tied to four Manhattan condo buildings were “commercially unreasonable.” Still, CIM can go forward with a new UCC foreclosure sale if it meets certain conditions. HFZ had filed a lawsuit on Nov. 11 to

City Council approves Special Flushing Waterfront District

Posted: 10 Dec 2020 12:52 PM PST

UPDATED, Dec. 10 2020, 4:15 p.m.: The City Council on Thursday voted in favor of a contested $2 billion project planned for Flushing’s waterfront. The council approved the Special Flushing Waterfront District, a series of zoning changes that pave the way for a 13-building mixed-use development, which will include more than 1,700 residential units and 879 hotel rooms, along with retail and public space. The proposal was repeatedly delayed as officials sought guarantees that the

Airbnb share price more than doubles on first day of trading

Posted: 10 Dec 2020 12:30 PM PST

UPDATED, Dec. 10 2020, 5:50 p.m.: Airbnb’s stock shot up on the short-term rental company’s first day of trading, pushing its market valuation past $100 billion. Going into its IPO, the company had set its price at $68 per share, at a valuation of $47 billion. However the stock price more than doubled at the start of trading Thursday, beginning at $146 and hovering around $145 by mid-afternoon. It remained at around $145 through the

Elliman’s Ronita Kalra jumps to Compass

Posted: 10 Dec 2020 11:00 AM PST

After a year of working from home, Ronita Kalra is switching things up. A year after splitting with her former business partner Luis D. Ortiz, Kalra left Douglas Elliman to take her two-agent team to Compass. The main reason she decided to make the move was the brokerage’s integrated platform for agents, which she called “really, really appealing.” “My workflow has become easier,” she said, adding that she’s noticing the benefits the most for her

Manhattan office availability continues to reach new highs

Posted: 10 Dec 2020 10:20 AM PST

Office availability in Manhattan continues to reach new highs. According to Colliers International’s monthly market report, the overall availability rate in November was 13.5 percent, slightly higher than the previous month’s rate and the highest number recorded since 2003. In total, 790,000 square feet of office space was leased in November, down by nearly 80 percent compared to a year ago and down by 55 percent from October. Manhattan’s Midtown and Midtown South submarkets set

All Year falls behind on $118M mortgage

Posted: 10 Dec 2020 09:42 AM PST

All Year Management’s financial woes continue to pile up. After missing a payment on its Israeli bonds late last month, the Brooklyn developer is now delinquent on a $118 million mortgage, according to a disclosure filed Wednesday with the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. The collateral for the mortgage, which is identified only as “a number of non-material properties,” has seen rent collections fall while occupancy has dropped to 78 percent, according to the filing. Yoel

Mortgage originations on track to beat 2003 record

Posted: 10 Dec 2020 09:25 AM PST

American homeowners are taking out mortgages at a near record rate. Banks issued $2.8 trillion in mortgage debt in the first nine months of the year, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing data from Inside Mortgage Finance. With low interest rates leading homeowners to refinance, experts predict that originations could exceed $3.7 trillion — the prior record set in 2003 — by the end of the year. “2003 was a record that nobody thought would

The Real Deal wins 14 NAREE journalism awards

Posted: 10 Dec 2020 08:05 AM PST

The Real Deal snagged 14 awards from the National Association of Real Estate Editors for its industry coverage in 2019, a record number of wins for the publication. “With clever headlines like ‘Fredrik Goes to Hollywood’ (as in top New York residential seller Fredrik Eklund), The Real Deal signals its tone,” the judges wrote, referring to TRD’s gold for best residential trade magazine. “It delivers real-estate scoops and news without sounding stodgy.” The publication’s December

HousingWire acquires real estate brokerage rankings firm Real Trends

Posted: 10 Dec 2020 07:35 AM PST

HW Media, the publisher of real estate news website HousingWire, has acquired rankings firm Real Trends. The acquisition, which was announced Thursday, means HousingWire will be responsible for putting out Real Trends’ popular brokerage reports, including Real Trends 500 and The Thousand. The company said in a statement that its methodology would not change. “Real Trends is an incredibly strategic acquisition for our organization that not only accelerates our presence with real estate agents and

Salesforce to shrink office footprint

Posted: 10 Dec 2020 06:54 AM PST

Software giant Salesforce recently made headlines with a $27.7 billion deal to buy workplace messaging app Slack. But the company won’t be expanding its commercial real estate footprint — quite the opposite. Chief financial officer Mark Hawkins said on a call with analysts last week that Salesforce planned to consolidate and sublease certain sites as more people worked from home. “The pandemic has also empowered us to reimagine how we operate in this work-from-anywhere, digital

Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen sell Tribeca home for $40M

Posted: 10 Dec 2020 06:00 AM PST

It may be a buyers’ market in Manhattan, but no one told Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen. The celebrity couple has reportedly reached a deal to sell their Tribeca home for almost $40 million — a huge jump from what they paid for it two years ago. “They are in contract to sell and the deal is expected to close soon,” a person familiar with the matter told the New York Post. The couple purchased

Why real estate gets blamed for poverty

Posted: 10 Dec 2020 05:30 AM PST

This should be a happy week for real estate, with a Flushing megadevelopment getting the City Council’s blessing after nearly being derailed by politics and labor issues. It was a big win after a string of private developments failed to survive the gauntlet of “progressive” New York City politics, among them Amazon’s HQ2, the Olnick Organization’s Lenox Terrace expansion and Industry City’s rezoning. But the Flushing experience reopened industry wounds that had not healed, and

Net lease REITs piece together Covid strategy

Posted: 10 Dec 2020 05:00 AM PST

What do a Target in Phoenix, a Wegmans in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and a Marshalls-Homegoods store in California’s Napa Valley have in common? They’re among the 26 tenants occupying 91 properties across the U.S. that net lease REIT Agree Realty Corp. acquired in the third quarter. The $458 million worth of purchases set a quarterly record for the half-century-old real estate investment trust. At a time when the pandemic continues to throttle many real

Tenants sign leases in record numbers but rents stay down

Posted: 10 Dec 2020 04:30 AM PST

Renters were out in force in Manhattan and Brooklyn again last month, as rents continued to slide and concessions from landlords rose. In Manhattan, tenants inked new leases in numbers not seen in 12 years, according to Douglas Elliman’s monthly rental report. More than 4,000 new leases were signed in the borough in November, a 30 percent year-over-year jump from about 3,100 the year before. The borough’s rental inventory is the third-highest on record with

Foreclosure filings are way down. There’s a reason

Posted: 10 Dec 2020 04:00 AM PST

One of these is not like the others: Homeowners are still struggling to meet their monthly mortgage bills, the coronavirus is on the rise, the economy is scuffling and foreclosures filings are way down. November foreclosures filings dropped to 10,042, a 14 percent dip from October and an 80 percent drop from the roughly 50,000 filings in November 2019, according to Attom Data Solutions’ latest figures released today. But homeowners are not suddenly more financially