The Real Deal - New York Real Estate News

In the world of mid-market New York City investment sales last week, Jemstone Group bought a retail building in the Bronx’s University Heights neighborhood, and Vito Sacchetti unloaded an Upper East Side rental property at a loss. 1.) Jemstone Group bought a three-story commercial building in University Heights for $16.3 million. The seller, Marco Gueli, bought the corner building at 1-7 West Burnside Avenue, at the corner of Jerome Avenue, in 1994. Tenants at the […]

China Overseas Land & Investment, the developer behind what will be Jersey City’s tallest skyscraper, bought a development site from Extell Development on the East Side of Manhattan for about $75 million, sources told The Real Deal. China Overseas, a subsidiary of the state-owned development giant China State Construction Engineering Corporation, picked up Extell’s assemblage at 499-501 Third Avenue at the border of Murray Hill and Kips Bay along 34th Street. The deal works out […]

Centers Health Care just scored an $80 million construction loan for its conversion of an abandoned Crown Heights hospital into a nursing home. M&T Bank provided the financing, which was consolidated with a previous $15 million mortgage, totals $80 million, records filed with the city’s Department of Finance show. The Bronx-based health care company is in the process of renovating 170 Buffalo Avenue, a vacant hospital bounded by Prospect Place, Rochester Avenue, St. Marks Avenue […]

State and city lawmakers who have Airbnb in their cross hairs are taking an interest in the indictment of former President Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. More than two dozen elected officials sent a letter to Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky this week saying the tech company “must no longer be permitted to shield illegal operators by claiming it is protecting the privacy of hosts when those hosts look like Paul Manafort and his Russian oligarch […]

A group of Bar Works victims is suing JPMorgan Chase for $3 million over its role in the alleged Ponzi scheme. The plaintiffs, a group of 27 Chinese investors, allege that the bank knew Bar Works was a Ponzi scheme but still allowed its mastermind Renwick Haddow to keep an account, which he used to collect millions from his victims. “(JPMorgan Chase) had everything it needed to unmask and stop the fraud — it had […]

Property taxes will stay right where they are if Nicole Malliotakis wins the 2017 mayoral election. The Staten Island Assembly member promised on Monday that she would freeze property taxes if elected during her first year and then put a 2 percent or less cap on them during the rest of her term, according to the New York Post. The city has not increased the property tax rate under Mayor Bill de Blasio, but it […]

Chicago: Related and JDL plan four skyscrapers outside Chicago’s Loop Related Midwest and JDL Development each submitted zoning plans to the city for major towers outside Chicago’s downtown Loop neighborhood, according to the Chicago Tribune. The projects further cement developer confidence in neighborhoods outside the city’s central business district. Related Midwest is planning what would be the two tallest towers in the Fulton Market district: a 58-story residential and hotel tower and a 51-story residential […]

Developer Andy Zhu is facing claims that he bungled the huge Assi Plaza development project in Flushing he just sold for $115 million, emptying the “proverbial piggy bank” with poor business decisions such as $44,000 in unauthorized booze purchases. Hansen Realty Development Corp., which claims to own 75 percent of the partnership that sold the development site at 131-09 39th Avenue, filed a lawsuit in Manhattan Supreme Court seeking more than $60 million in damages, […]

Brown Harris Stevens’ Peter Marra is heading north — to oversee Halstead Property’s growing Connecticut operation. Marra — who was president and part-owner of the family-owned residential firm William B. May until 2004 — most recently led BHS’ Carnegie Hill office. At Halstead, he will “manage managers” and, hopefully, expand the firm’s market share. “I will do battle for them,” he said, when reached by phone Monday. “In this world, the opportunity for expansion is […]

There was a noticeable slowdown in office leasing activity in October. In September, the top 10 biggest office leasing deals totaled over 1.2 million square feet. But in October, the deals were fairly modest, totaling just 687,000 square feet.  Here are the 10 biggest deals inked in October: 1) New York City Economic Development Corporation, 1 Liberty Plaza, Financial District – 220,000 square feet The quasi-government agency inked a lease for 220,000 square feet of […]

The Queens landlord who threatened to evict his tenants if they could not prove they were legally in the United States is now facing a complaint from the State Division of Human Rights. Tenants at 95-36 42nd Avenue in Corona received a letter in June demanding that they come to the property management office with their Social Security card, photo ID, proof of employment and a Green Card or passport or else their lease could […]

Nothing says “I am in the big leagues now” quite like hiring a famous architecture firm. Isaac Chetrit and Ray Yadidi picked Kohn Pedersen Fox, the firm behind Hudson Yards and One World Trade Center, to design an 80-story mixed-use tower on Sixth Avenue in the Garment District. The building will include retail, office space and either apartments or a hotel, sources said. But whether it will be built is still far from clear. Groundbreaking […]

Each week, The Real Deal and CityRealty look back at Manhattan’s priciest apartment sales.

WeWork’s newest community isn’t old enough to hold a job. The $20 billion co-working company is starting a private elementary school for “conscious entrepreneurship” inside one of its New York City locations next fall, Bloomberg reported. “In my book, there’s no reason why children in elementary schools can’t be launching their own businesses,” said WeWork co-founder Rebekah Neumann, the company’s chief brand officer (and the wife of company CEO Adam Neumann), who is helping spearhead […]

It’s not enough for an office to just have a decent microwave and coffee maker anymore. Landlords are now using luxury condos as inspiration to make their offices more appealing to tenants, including amenities like Miele brand convection ovens and faucets for still and sparkling water in their space, according to the Wall Street Journal. Property owners hope these features make it less intimidating for companies to relocate and allow them to increase rents. And […]

Joe Moinian is looking to raise up to $500 million from the EB-5 program for his Hudson Yards tower. The Moinian Group chief said during a groundbreaking ceremony Friday that he’s looking to raise $250 million to $500 million in investments from the program for his proposed 2 million-square-foot 3 Hudson Boulevard project, Bloomberg reported. “We don’t have a number of EB-5 investors committed,” Moinian said. “You can say we’re at the beginning” of the […]

Why do the Chinese buy in the United States? It’s elementary, at least according to many of the real estate executives participating in TRD’s Shanghai showcase.

The luxury residential market notched 28 contracts at $4 million and above last week, the best total since the third week in June when there were 29 contracts signed, according to Olshan Realty’s luxury market report. Extell Development’s One Riverside Park recorded the priciest contract: a six-bed, 6,168-square-foot condo with an asking price of $16.5 million. The unit, the last full-floor residence at Extell’s Upper West Side development, was last listed at a nearly 17 […]

Asking rents for Midtown trophy office towers still haven’t climbed back to their pre-recession peak, but tenant-improvement work letters landlords dangle to get deals done are nearly triple what they were in 2008. Midtown asking rents for prime Manhattan towers are $107 per square foot, still shy of the $111-per-square-foot peak hit in 2008, according to JLL figures reported by the Wall Street Journal. Tenant-improvement allowances, on the other hand, were $87.27 per square foot […]

From the November issue: After decades of buying and holding real estate in the five boroughs, Ben Ashkenazy scored an industry coup a few months ago when he bought a minority stake in the Plaza Hotel — in what was by far his splashiest New York purchase ever. But now, just six months after that fateful purchase, the famed property is in flux again. And this time, Ashkenazy’s namesake firm, Ashkenazy Acquisition Corporation, is positioned to play […]

Instead of lending to construction projects, banks lend to debt funds and mortgage trusts managed by private equity firms, which in turn lend to developers.