The Real Deal - New York Real Estate News

Lender sues owners of downtown Miami WeWork building over allegedly unpaid loan

Posted: 25 Jan 2021 03:30 PM PST

The owners of a historic downtown Miami office building that is fully leased to WeWork are facing a foreclosure lawsuit. Platform Capital Funding sued the owners of the Security Building, tied to an outstanding loan. The lender is seeking more than $46 million, including principal, interest, late fees and a deposit from a failed sale of the building, according to court records. The complaint was filed against Security Building AR Owner, Andrew Joblon, Richard Weisfisch,

Target’s expansion continues with takeover of old Kmart stores

Posted: 25 Jan 2021 02:00 PM PST

Target has scooped up five Kmart stores as the big-box chain continues to defy the financial havoc brought on by the pandemic. Transformco Properties — the parent of Kmart and Sears — has completed the sale and assignment of five Kmart store leases to Target Corporation, the company announced in a press release. The stores are in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina; Jackson, Wyoming; Scotts Valley, California; Wall, New Jersey; and Auburn, Maine. Though the

Barnett secures $380M mezz financing for Central Park Tower

Posted: 25 Jan 2021 01:55 PM PST

Gary Barnett landed $380 million in bridge financing for his $4 billion Central Park Tower supertall condo tower. Barnett’s Extell Development raised the new capital in the form of mezzanine debt secured by “Class C” shares in the property, according to a filing on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. Sail Harbor Capital and the hedge fund Baupost Group provided the financing, according to a source familiar with the loan. The loan carries an interest rate

Townhouse sales dominate Brooklyn’s luxury market

Posted: 25 Jan 2021 01:15 PM PST

Townhouses remain the hot-ticket item in Brooklyn’s luxury market. There were 18 contracts signed for homes priced $2 million and up in the borough last week, according to Compass’ report. The total value of all the contracts was $54.8 million, down from $83 million over the 25 contracts inked the previous week. The median asking price was $2.5 million with an average listing discount of 2 percent and 211 days on market. The most expensive

Supreme Court declines to hear Sheldon Silver appeal

Posted: 25 Jan 2021 01:05 PM PST

The Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal from Sheldon Silver, effectively ending the disgraced former state Assembly speaker’s path to overturning his 2018 corruption conviction. The court did not provide a reason for turning down the case, although two justices — Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas — dissented, the New York Times reported. The move comes a week after it was reported that former President Donald Trump was considering pardoning Silver, whose conviction

Construction activity dips for fourth straight year: REBNY

Posted: 25 Jan 2021 12:20 PM PST

Construction activity in New York City declined for the fourth straight year in 2020, according to a new report from the Real Estate Board of New York — although activity picked up in the last quarter with several big new projects. Just 1,760 new building plans were filed in 2020, the lowest number the city has seen since 2012, representing a nearly 10 percent decline from 2019’s total. The total square footage of 42.67 million,

NYC investment sales showed signs of recovery at end of 2020

Posted: 25 Jan 2021 11:45 AM PST

New York City’s investment sales market is showing some modest signs of recovery. According to the latest quarterly report from i-sales brokerage Ariel Property Advisors, the total dollar volume in the fourth quarter was $4.7 billion, up 18 percent from the third quarter total. That was just about a half of the total volume during the same period last year, but the quarter-over-quarter jump is noteworthy, said Ariel’s president Shimon Shkury. “We’re starting to see

Luxury report: Patience pays off for buyer of $20M penthouse

Posted: 25 Jan 2021 10:45 AM PST

A Manhattan penthouse that has been on the market since 2015 has finally found a buyer — the priciest listing to go into contract last week. The triplex condo at 37 East 12th Street, which has four bedrooms and four and a half bathrooms, cycled through several brokerage firms before it went into contract asking $19.95 million — down from the original listing price of $33.5 million. It was one of 14 deals last week

Gotham plans massive mixed-use building on Far West Side

Posted: 25 Jan 2021 10:00 AM PST

UPDATED Jan. 25, 7:10 p.m.: Gotham Organization filed plans to build a 436,000-square-foot, mixed use building in Hell’s Kitchen, according to records filed with the Department of Buildings. The plans call for a 47-story building at 538 Tenth Avenue with 453 units, as well as 25,000 square feet of community facility space and ground-floor retail of up to 10,000 square feet. Bryan Kelly, president of development at Gotham, filed the permit application. The development firm,

Hospitality startups pick at carnage of failed rivals

Posted: 25 Jan 2021 09:25 AM PST

Almost everything has remained the same at 70 Pine Street — the oak floors, modern furnishings and colorful art — except for the short-term rental startup operating its 132 rooms. After six years in business, Lyric succumbed to shaky finances and a travel shutdown in July 2020. Now, the 66-story Lower Manhattan building is the New York City flagship for Mint House, a three-year-old startup that caters to business travelers. Mint House is one of

Forbearance rate stubborn among home-mortgage borrowers

Posted: 25 Jan 2021 08:30 AM PST

Home-mortgage borrowers’ pandemic recovery has hit a wall. The forbearance rate among mortgage borrowers had been improving since peaking in June at 8.55 percent. But after declining to 5.5 percent — or about 2.7 million homeowners — progress ceased in November, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing the data from Mortgage Bankers Association. At the same time, the number of job openings has declined, and unemployment claims remain high. “With the waning recovery, and more

Stream this: Cinema chain AMC secures $900M in financing

Posted: 25 Jan 2021 08:15 AM PST

While most of AMC’s movie theaters are now open nationwide, the cinema chain last month warned that it needed $750 million to avert bankruptcy. The struggling AMC Entertainment Holdings got that lifeline, securing a total of $917 million in financing, according to the Wall Street Journal. The company hopes the infusion will give it a cushion to weather it through, as Covid vaccine distributions ramp up. AMC has executed a commitment letter for $411 million

Tishman Speyer’s half-empty Hudson Yards tower tops out

Posted: 25 Jan 2021 07:30 AM PST

The Spiral, Tishman Speyer’s 1,041-foot-tall tower across from the Hudson Yards megaproject, is getting closer to completion. The 2.85-million-square-foot office building at 66 Hudson Boulevard, between 34th and 35th streets, recently marked its topping out, the New York Post reported. It’s expected to be completed in the third quarter of 2022. But finding tenants to fill the building is slow going in the pandemic-battered office market. Nearly 50 percent of the space in the Bjarke

Sugimoto-curated 79th floor at 432 Park quietly hits market

Posted: 25 Jan 2021 07:00 AM PST

“Among the clouds, at one thousand feet, exists an inner floating garden,” reads the first line of the Engel & Völkers Mercedes Berk team’s off-market listing at 432 Park Avenue. The image seems out of place, borderline absurd, to pair with the rigidly square footprint and design of Harry Macklowe’s controversial supertall. But for the wealthy couple who bought the unfinished 79th floor for $59 million in 2016, that was the point. The pair spent

Latch to go public via Tishman Speyer’s SPAC

Posted: 25 Jan 2021 06:30 AM PST

Tishman Speyer’s SPAC has found its match. The New York real estate giant announced that its special-purpose acquisition company, TS Innovation Acquisitions Corp., will merge with smart-lock maker Latch, the Wall Street Journal reported. The deal would take Latch public with an expected valuation of $1.56 billion. When the deal closes — likely in the second quarter — the company expects to trade on Nasdaq under the symbol LTCH. As part of the deal, Tishman

South Florida hits record $5B in residential sales volume in December

Posted: 25 Jan 2021 06:00 AM PST

Residential sales continued to soar throughout South Florida in December, with median prices of both single-family homes and condos on the rise. A boost in high-end sales, which has occurred throughout the pandemic, led to double-digit year-over-year increases in sales volume in the tri-county region, according to reports from the Miami Association of Realtors. In Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, a record $5 billion worth of residential real estate sold in December. The results

UES townhouse trades 40% below latest appraisal

Posted: 25 Jan 2021 05:30 AM PST

Architect Sharon Davis realized no one would pay the appraised $22 million for her Upper East Side townhouse. But she may not have expected the market to soften as much as it did. The renovated, 6,150-square-foot home on East 81 Street sold for $13.175 million, or $2,142 per square foot, according to property records. The buyer, PGG Holdings LP, an entity linked to a law firm in Jackson, Wyoming, went into contract early this month

Quarters is out of cash, Convene’s revenue plunges

Posted: 25 Jan 2021 05:16 AM PST

Spare a Quarter? The music has stopped for German co-living brand Quarters, whose U.S. expansion is ending in bankruptcy. Eight properties and two LLCs tied to the company filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, listing between $1 million and $5 million in combined liabilities and less than $500,000 assets. Quarters is an offshoot of Berlin-based Medici Living Group, which was founded in 2012 and pitched itself as the “WeWork of co-living.” After raising $1.4 billion to

Hard money, hard decisions: Nonbank lenders face pressure to deal with problem loans

Posted: 25 Jan 2021 04:30 AM PST

Downtown Capital Partners, an alternative lender based in White Plains, New York, fired off a note to All Year Management and its founder, Yoel Goldman, last month: Cough up tens of millions of dollars of unpaid debt on a Gowanus development site or risk losing the property. The note from Downtown Capital threatening to take over the vacant site is one of several signs of All Year’s broader financial problems. The Brooklyn-based developer is also

The Closing: Ray McGuire

Posted: 25 Jan 2021 04:00 AM PST

For this month’s The Closing, The Real Deal sat down with banker-turned-mayoral candidate Ray McGuire. Like many candidates in the Democratic primary, he lacks name recognition and experience in politics. Instead, McGuire, 63, was one of the highest-ranking Black executives on Wall Street, most recently serving as vice chairman of Citigroup. He’s come a long way from Dayton, Ohio, where he grew up on what he calls “the other side of the tracks.” “If I