The Real Deal - New York Real Estate News

Macklowe sues former 432 Park retail partner

Posted: 13 Dec 2021 03:45 PM PST

Macklowe Properties is suing its former retail partner at 432 Park Avenue for $3.3 million in unpaid leasing fees. The fees relate to the lease of the 71,000-square-foot retail space now occupied by auction house Phillips de Pury, according to Crain’s, which first reported the suit filed in New York Supreme Court. The gallery space, at the base of the supertall luxury tower, was jointly owned by Macklowe and Sheikh Hamad Bin Jassim bin Jaber

Fairstead, Invesco pay $350M for affordable Bronx portfolio

Posted: 13 Dec 2021 03:15 PM PST

The profit potential of affordable housing will never get the Billionaires’ Row developers like Steve Roth and Gary Barnett too excited, but a major purchase by Fairstead and Invesco Real Estate is a reminder that there is money to be made on the asset class. It just takes a lot of units. The firms are paying more than $350 million for a portfolio of 48 Bronx buildings totaling 2.3 million square feet across almost 2,000

Madison Realty Capital makes its biggest construction loan yet

Posted: 13 Dec 2021 02:57 PM PST

David Schwartzman’s Harridge Development has scored $485 million in construction financing for Crossroads Hollywood, its $1 billion mixed-use development, The Real Deal has learned. Madison Realty Capital provided the construction loan to Harridge to build studio space and residential units along Sunset Boulevard just east of Highland Avenue, property records show. Terms of the loan were not disclosed. Crossroads Hollywood has been in the works since 2015, with plans to incorporate the landmarked outdoor mall

UES penthouse asking $35M leads Manhattan luxury contracts

Posted: 13 Dec 2021 02:45 PM PST

The Manhattan luxury market’s strong run continued last week. Buyers signed 33 contracts for homes asking $4 million or more in the borough last week, according to Olshan Realty’s weekly contract report. It was the 37th week this year in which 30 or more purchase agreements were signed for luxury Manhattan homes. “It’s extraordinary,” said Donna Olshan, the author of the report. “We’ve blown all the other years away in every respect.” The top asking

Hochul reboots JFK Terminal 1 project with nearly $10B price tag

Posted: 13 Dec 2021 02:15 PM PST

The Terminal 1 project at John F. Kennedy International Airport is ready to take off, with a new $9.6 billion price tag. Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Monday that the deal for the terminal has been restructured, allowing the project to move forward after a two-year delay. A consortium led by the Carlyle Group along with Johnson Loop Capital Infrastructure and Union Labor Life Insurance Company will finance the development, which is now expected to break

Silverstein lends $340M at Miami Worldcenter project

Posted: 13 Dec 2021 02:15 PM PST

The flow of money from New York to South Florida continues. Silverstein Capital Partners provided Dan Kodsi’s Royal Palm Companies with a $340 million construction loan for Legacy Hotel & Residences, a mixed-use condo and hotel tower planned for Miami Worldcenter in downtown Miami. The financing marks the third largest construction loan ever in Florida, following two others for projects in Miami-Dade County, according to a press release. The two others were: a $558 million

Williamsburg townhouse goes into contract after 53% discount

Posted: 13 Dec 2021 01:45 PM PST

One Brooklyn townhouse seller who asked for the moon will have to settle for a nice chunk of cheese. The owner of 10 Orient Avenue in Williamsburg had slashed the original $5.5 million asking price to $2.6 million before going into contract last week, according to Compass’ weekly report. The fat price chop for the 25-foot-wide double duplex helped skew last week’s average discount — the difference between the initial and final asking price —

What a $660-psf gift shop lease says about Times Square’s recovery

Posted: 13 Dec 2021 01:15 PM PST

Tourism may be down, but retailers are still making bets on Times Square. Most recently, a souvenir shop signed a lease for 1,000 square feet of ground-floor space at 566 Seventh Avenue. The store will be paying $55,000 a month for the space, next door to the newly opened Margaritaville Resort. On its face, a $660-per-square-foot lease for a new gift shop may not seem like a comeback story for the city’s most tourism-dependent retail

Now streaming: Have the holidays brought shoppers back to stores?

Posted: 13 Dec 2021 12:45 PM PST

Happy holidays, from the team behind TRD’s podcast, “Deconstruct.” To celebrate, we’re digging into the one big question on the minds of retail brokers, mall owners and investors: Are shoppers returning to brick-and-mortar stores this year? Between supply chain issues, labor shortages and now a new Covid variant, this shopping season is somehow even stranger than the last. A new episode of “Deconstruct” looks at how the holidays have spurred a return to stores, as

Diminished return: What’s next for ICSC?

Posted: 13 Dec 2021 12:15 PM PST

After a nearly-two-year Covid hiatus, ICSC’s return to Las Vegas last week attracted a tepid response from the industry, leading some to wonder whether it was merely a temporary symptom of the pandemic or representative of the new normal. If the latter, the trade organization could be in for some trouble. Most of its revenue has historically come from its in-person conferences. The Las Vegas event, in particular, was seen as a must-attend for retail

The commodity office playbook is “dead:” Developers bet on pricey perks

Posted: 13 Dec 2021 11:30 AM PST

Developers desperate to bring employees back to the office are trying to lure them with pricey perks — and in some cases, it could be working. Amid hybrid work policies and delayed office-return dates, the Wall Street Journal reported developers are still turning to added perks like outdoor spaces and on-site chefs as amenities in hopes of making their office properties more enticing than working from home. “Commodity office is just something we’re not thinking

Dated, half-empty Hauppauge office building sells for $24.5M

Posted: 13 Dec 2021 10:20 AM PST

Office properties have not done well during the pandemic, especially dated ones that lack the amenities and technology of recently constructed commercial buildings. So the $24.5 million that Damianos Realty Group just spent to buy a half-empty, 37-year-old office building in Suffolk County won’t be the end of its investment in the asset, the firm told Newsday. Damianos bought 150 Motor Parkway in Hauppauge, a 200,000-square-foot office building with a fitness center and cafe, from

Mitch Kossoff pleads guilty to defrauding real estate clients, faces 13 years

Posted: 13 Dec 2021 09:25 AM PST

Real estate attorney Mitch Kossoff admitted in a Manhattan courtroom Monday to defrauding clients over a period of three years. It closes a chapter on a curious scandal that has unfolded by bits and pieces since Kossoff went AWOL eight months ago and $14 million went missing from escrow accounts. “I defrauded multiple clients of my law firm,” Kossoff said in copping to three charges of grand larceny and one for scheming to defraud. He

Can universal housing vouchers ever come to the US?

Posted: 13 Dec 2021 09:00 AM PST

When then-presidential candidate Joe Biden pitched expanding the nation’s housing voucher program to 11 million people, the proposal garnered little attention. It still did not make waves when Congress proposed $90 billion toward that goal. The proposal eventually did catch the eye of lawmakers in October — to the extent that it was considered an easy cut from a $3.5 trillion spending package to appease moderate Democrats demanding a less expensive bill. Covering rental assistance

Boston, San Francisco lead surging life sciences market

Posted: 13 Dec 2021 07:45 AM PST

Life science real estate has reached new heights in the wake of the pandemic, and a new report shows the sector is showing no signs of slowing down. Demand for U.S. lab space reached a record high while vacancy fell to 4.9 percent, according to a report from CBRE. That figure sets the sector above and away from the U.S. office market, which stands at a 17 percent vacancy rate. The Boston-Cambridge market continues to

New SPAC to target real estate startups

Posted: 13 Dec 2021 06:21 AM PST

A new blank check company is entering the SPAC space, setting its sights on financial software startups focused on mortgage and real estate. Southport Acquisition Corp. priced an initial public offering on Friday. Inman reported the company is offering 20 million units at $10 each, hoping to raise more than $234 million; that’s dependent on BofA Securities exercising a 45-day option to purchase an additional 3 million units. An investor prospectus from Southport reveals more