The Real Deal - New York Real Estate News

According to this week’s market reports, tax reform may push homebuyers out of high-tax states and Manhattan leasing activity reached the highest level since April 2015. Residential Sales | Redfin High-tax states like New York may be disproportionately harmed by the elimination of state and local tax (SALT) deductions. In a survey of 900 homebuyers, about one-third said that they would consider moving to another state if they can no longer deduct state and local […]

A woman is refusing to leave her late husband’s Pierre Hotel apartment, even thought’s been sold for $10 million, the New York Daily News reported. Tara Kulukundis’ husband, Greek shipping magnate Michael Kulukundis, died in 2010, leaving behind $81 million worth of real estate saddled with debt. Though the executor’s of Michael’s estate sold the apartment in September 2016, the 73-year-old widow has refused to turn over the ultra-luxury pad, according to a petition filed […]

Flushing-based Lily Guo submitted a condominium offering plan for 46-20 11th Street in Long Island City, records with the New York state Attorney General’s office show. The development partnership, which includes Harvey Gessin’s Chatham Development, plans to bring 42 condo apartments to market with a total project sellout price of $48.1 million. Guo is the president of the American Regional Center for Entrepreneurs, and company that raises money for real estate projects through the EB-5 […]

From the December issue: Laurie Zucker, 61, serves as vice chair of the Zucker Organization and its property management arm Manhattan Skyline, where she oversees 2,200 apartments in New York City and more than 200 commercial properties across the country. The company — which her father, Donald Zucker, founded in 1961 — began as a mortgage brokerage but went on to build roughly 30 ground-up residential and commercial projects and acquire thousands of apartments over the […]

Claremont Group unveiled the 10,000-square-foot, Piet Boon-designed amenity space at 101 Wall Street, an office-to-condo conversion in the Financial District. Firm principal Alex Lari hosted an exclusive group of residential brokers to test out the multi-level suite, which includes a golf simulator, rooftop terrace and training studio. He was joined by The Real Deal publisher Amir Korangy. For an inside look at the event, check out the above slideshow. All photos by Erica Press for The Real […]

Savanna completed the raise of nearly $600 million for a new value-add fund, the private-equity firm’s largest fund to date. The Midtown-based firm headed by Christopher Schlank and Nicholas Bienstock raised $591 million at the final closing for its fifth fund, which already picked up a pair of Manhattan properties this year, the company announced Wednesday. “Having acquired two fantastic properties in prime locations with significant opportunities to add value, we are well underway in […]

House and Senate Republicans say they’ve agreed to a framework on a tax overhaul bill, which Congressional leaders said should be approved next week. As of Tuesday night, House and Senate negotiators were considering limiting deductions for mortgage interest loans to $750,000, according to Bloomberg. The House version had previously suggested a $500,000 cap, down from the current $1 million. Despite public claims that the agreement between House and Senate Republicans was a done deal, […]

American Christmas warehouse in Mount Vernon sold for $11.85M An Austria-based company paid $11.85 million to buy American Christmas — or at least the festive lighting company American Christmas Inc. and its Mount Vernon warehouse. The 110,000-square-foot building sits on 2.25 acres off of Warren Place. It has housed the festive lighting business of American Christmas since 2010. MK Illumination, which is the largest festive lighting company in Europe, will move its U.S. headquarters to […]

A developer looking for distressed properties to purchase has a few options on how to sniff them out. The most obvious way to determine whether a property is in trouble is to monitor the progress of its permits. Buildings with years between development steps, such as the time between when a project is filed with the Department of Buildings and when it receives its permit, signal to potential investors, lenders and interested developers that the […]

When Xinyuan Real Estate paid $54 million for a Williamsburg development site in 2012 with plans to build a luxury condominium, the project was heralded as the first go-it-alone venture by a mainland Chinese firm. Two more deals — including last summer’s $66 million acquisition of the RKO Keith’s Theater in Flushing — gave the publicly-traded firm nearly 1 million square feet of New York condo product in its pipeline. But in recent weeks, the […]

JLL signed a deal with a firm that analyzes pings sent from mobile devices to track consumer shopping habits, the latest indication that the notoriously low-tech commercial real estate industry moving to catch up with the times. The world’s second-largest CRE services firm cut the two-year deal with Atlanta-based Alexander Babbage, which JLL said will provide valuable information to landlords and retailers about buying, selling and leasing shopping centers, the Wall Street Journal reported. The […]

From TRD Miami: The champagne, art and real estate flowed throughout Miami Art Week, with some developers hosting eye-popping exhibits and blowout parties to celebrate Art Basel. At the start of the week, Faena Miami Beach released a public art installation on the beach, including a “sinking Taj Majal” with giant chandeliers, a 2-ton concrete elephant and pieces of the abandoned Atlantic City Casino. Other events included an opening preview of Red Dot Miami and Spectrum Miami, […]

The crane operator whom investigators found responsible for a fatal collapse in 2016 is fighting back and suing for defamation. Multiple probes into the March 2016 crane collapse on Worth Street that killed mathematician David Wichs and injured three others found crane operator Kevin Reilly responsible for the accident, but Reilly himself is now insisting he was not the root cause, according to the New York Post. Independent company Crane Tech Solutions conducted a probe […]

After several price chops, Louise Blouin finally found a buyer for her West Village penthouse at 165 Charles Street. The 4,551-square-foot pad sold for $23.7 million — barely more than a third of its first listing price of $60 million, the New York Post reported. The price was chopped to $35 million in 2014 and again to $29.95 million last year. Blouin, who owns the magazines Modern Painters and Art + Auction, bought the four-bedroom, […]

New development condos were the weakest player in this year’s condo market, showing a 13 percent drop in sales volume relative to 2016 while the rest of the market remained mostly flat, according to a new report. The average price for a Manhattan condo stood at $3.1 million in 2017, the same as the previous year, when it set a record, according to the report from CityRealty, which is based on projected numbers through the […]

The School of Visual Arts renewed its 80,000-square-foot lease at 380 Second Avenue through 2031. The school’s current deal in the 10-story building wouldn’t have expired for another three years but the tenant decided to renew early, the New York Post reported. The Gramercy Park building is owned by ABS Partners Real Estate, according to its website and property records. The School of Visual Arts occupies floors two, five, seven and eight. Lipinski Real Estate […]

UPDATED, Dec. 13, 10:00 a.m.: Normandy Real Estate Partners secured a $170 million mortgage from SL Green Realty to fund the acquisition and redevelopment of ABC Carpet & Home’s headquarters in the Flatiron District. The investment firm is paying $133 million for the property at 880-888 Broadway and a connected building at 38 East 19th Street — a deal The Real Deal first reported in August. The sale closed this week, the New York Post […]

The largest voice for brokers in Washington is not finished lobbying on tax reform. The National Association of Realtors, by far the highest-spending real estate lobbying group, on Tuesday announced its final campaign to preserve homeownership incentives and brokerage business benefits in the new tax plan. The House of Representatives and Senate are reconciling a final bill, which some lawmakers expect to be ready for the floor by early next week. In a letter addressed […]

From the December issue: Brookfield Property Partners’ bid last month to the buy the remaining shares of GGP — the country’s second-largest mall REIT — has Wall Street reconsidering the prevailing narrative that the American mall is dead. Adding fuel to the fire, Daniel Loeb’s Third Point hedge fund purchased a 5 percent stake in Macerich in November, and it was also revealed last month that Paul Singer’s Elliott Management hedge fund had bought a nearly 4 percent […]

Developer Chris Jiashu Xu is selling his Archer Towers development site in Jamaica for roughly $55 million, The Real Deal has learned. BRP Companies is in contract to buy the adjacent lots at 163-05 and 163-25 Archer Avenue, according to sources familiar with the deal. The 90,000-square-foot property offers more than 700,000 buildable square feet and currently contains a single-story retail strip with a food court, Rent-A-Center and a supermarket. There is also an eight-story […]