The Real Deal - New York Real Estate News

Mogul or frontman? It’s notoriously difficult to tell with developers. Figuring out how much of a stake a developer holds in a project takes an act of God — or, in some cases, a divorce. According to evidence presented at Harry Macklowe’s divorce trial Thursday, the founder and CEO of Macklowe Properties owns a mere 8 percent interest in the retail component at 432 Park Avenue. Macklowe and his partners paid CIM Group $450 million […]

CIM Group agreed to buy the Gramercy office building 67 Irving Place out of bankruptcy for $44 million, but the deal is still awaiting court approval. In a statement filed in federal bankruptcy court earlier this week, attorneys representing the troubled building said they seek approval of the sale in a Sept. 26 hearing. Landlord Puble N.V., headed by Charis Lapas, filed for bankruptcy in May. It owed $13.3 million to mortgage lender Dalan Management […]

Princeton International Properties and its partners just landed a $195 million financing package for a Plaza District office building. LoanCore Capital Credit REIT, an affiliate of Jefferies LoanCore, provided the financing for 111 East 59th Street, a 14-story, 200,000-square-foot building, documents filed with the city’s Department of Finance show. The financing includes a $50 million mortgage, which will be added to a previous $103 million loan. A new $8.6 million loan was consolidated with a […]

KABR sells White Plains office building for $13.7M via online marketplace Ten-X West Caldwell, New Jersey-based private equity real estate firm KABR Group this week sold a four-story office building at 75 South Broadway to Zef Perlleshi for $13.7 million. KABR’s Westchester Business Center will remain in the building, which is reportedly 96 percent occupied. Other tenants include the New York Department of Education, General Services Administration and New York Worker’s Compensation Board. Dan Lessing […]

Hyperkinetic landlord Raphael Toledano, whose alleged methods in evicting tenants from rent-stabilized apartments made him a major target of the New York City tenant movement, faces eviction at his $13,800 a month Upper West Side home, where he claims to be a rent-stabilized resident, court records show. According to a housing court petition filed on June 1 by landlord Simon Baron Development, Toledano reached the end of a three-month lease at 393 West End Avenue […]

Nothing thrusts the future of waterfront cities into question quite like a pair of devastating hurricanes. Hurricane Harvey, where wetlands were paved over to make way for new development, highlighted Houston’s libertarian-tinged zoning deficiencies. Meanwhile, Irma recapitulated the dangers of developing on the water’s edge. “We have to control how we develop these cities,” Judith Rodin, former president of the Rockefeller Foundation, said during an event on Thursday. “We have to learn how to live […]

Keith Rubenstein plans to increase his already sizable footprint in the South Bronx by moving his company there. Somerset Partners, which is planning a massive development with the Chetrit Group on the South Bronx waterfront, is moving its headquarters to the area, Rubenstein told The Real Deal. The firm’s office is currently located in the heart of Midtown at 450 Park Avenue. The company signed a five-year lease for 3,000 square feet of space on […]

If you ask Robert Nelson, gentrification isn’t a bad thing. It’s just misunderstood. “I think there are a lot of myths out there about gentrification, and there are a lot of things that gentrification does that helps neighborhoods,” the head of Nelson Management Group said. “Back in my property in Soundview… there are some of my residents who literally jump into the car and drive into Manhattan to go to the Whole Foods on the […]

From the September issue: Dustin Stolly is the vice chair and co-head of Newmark Knight Frank’s debt and structured finance group for the New York tri-state region. The 38-year-old debt broker jumped to Newmark in July after nearly a decade at JLL, and said he has participated in about $30 billion in deals over his 14-year career. When The Real Deal last ranked mortgage brokerages by their $50 million-plus deals, in May 2016, JLL took sixth […]

Foreign investors are becoming a rare species in New York’s real estate market, and that may have put the kibosh on the sale of One Worldwide Plaza. New York REIT put the entire office tower on the market earlier this year and hoped to sell it for $1.7 billion or more, but after receiving disappointing bids it changed track merely sold only a 48.7 percent stake. The company’s CEO Wendy Silverstein blamed a lack of […]

A 40,000-square-foot vacant lot on the outskirts of Queens is slated to make way for a new office building thanks to a food supply company. Jetro Restaurant Depot, which provides supplies to independent food businesses, filed plans with the Department of Buildings on Thursday to construct a four-story office building and a four-story parking garage in College Point. The office would be located at 17-10 Whitestone Expressway, while the garage would be at 17-16 Whitestone […]

A Manhattan appeals court cut the “King of Cranes” a break on Wednesday, slashing $60 million off of jury awards related to a fatal crane collapse in 2008. The appellate panel reduced the $95 million judgment against James Lomma to $35 million, finding that the awards were “excessive,” the New York Post reported. A jury had awarded $39.5 million to the family Donald Leo Jr., who fell 240 feet to his death when the bearing […]

Two cranes went down and streets flooded, but it could have been worse

Just five landlords lay claim to about half of Midtown East’s commercial square footage that the city plans to rezone to allow for taller offices. SL Green Realty has 8.7 million square feet in the area slated for rezoning, and is therefore the biggest landlord in the area, Crain’s reported, citing data from brokerage CBRE. The real estate investment trust is making use of 1.2 million square feet of air rights from Grand Central in […]

From TRD Los Angeles: The shark found his bait. Famed businessman Robert Herjavec found a buyer for his home on Hillside Avenue above the Sunset Strip, sources told The Real Deal. The home was listed for $4.49 million and is currently in escrow. The modern, three-story home offers three bedrooms and four baths across its 4,900 square feet of living space. Amenities include a movie theater, wine cooler, rooftop swimming pool and fire pit. The […]

Traditional retailers are on track to see their best month in more than a year, even as shares of e-commerce giant Amazon lag. The S&P 500’s retail sector climbed 4 percent since the beginning of September, its best month since July 2016, the Financial Times reported. Shares of Macy’s climbed 9.1 percent after dropping 42 percent from the beginning of the year through the end of August. And Nordstrom, which saw shares drop 7 percent […]

Mayor Bill de Blasio will lay out a plan today that would require thousands of buildings to comply with new energy-efficiency targets.

Apollo Global Management co-founder Joshua Harris just bought an Upper East Side mega mansion for $45 million – a nearly 40 percent discount to its $72 million asking price last year. Harris, who also owns the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers and a stake in the NHL’s New Jersey Devils, made “the buy of the century,” an insider familiar with the deal told the New York Post. “When it first came on the market, Josh put in […]

From the September issue: If only the Real Estate Board of New York got commissions for closing deals. Within a span of four months, at a pace that would make even top dealmakers envious, the influential trade association checked off three items that had loomed large on its agenda for years. Most recently — after five years of wrangling that spanned two administrations at both REBNY and City Hall — the City Council voted unanimously […]

The number of new residential leases signed in Manhattan reached 7,061 in August.

Media mogul Barry Diller suddenly pulled the plug on his proposed $250 million Pier 55 project.