The Real Deal - New York Real Estate News

The New York State Senate unanimously passed a bill Tuesday that will allow title companies to resume buying clients coffee, taking them out for lunch or treating them to a round of golf. Sponsored by Sen. James Seward of Oneonta, the bill — which now heads to the Assembly and Gov. Andrew Cuomo — takes aim at new regulations from the Department of Financial Services that prohibit title agents and insurers from offering clients meals, […]

Mark David Fromm and Claudia Saez Fromm — the married duo behind one of Town Residential’s biggest-name teams — have jumped to the Corcoran Group. The Saez-Fromm team, which also includes Ned Hudson, Viviane Giraldi and Sarah Jackson, will join the company’s Chelsea/Flatiron office, Corcoran said. In a statement, the Fromms said they had an “incredible” five years at Town but were looking forward to “new opportunities” and the prospect of taking their business to […]

Harvey Weinstein sells Amagansett mansion for $10M Disgraced movie magnate Harvey Weinstein has sold his Amagansett mansion for $10 million — a far cry from the original listing price of $17.5 million. The five-bedroom, six-and-a-half bath home sits on 1.93 acres at 50 Broadview Road, which also features 260 feet of beachfront on Gardiners Bay. Weinstein and his estranged wife Georgina Chapman de-listed the mansion in October amid the storm of allegations sexual assault allegations […]

From the January issue: Jessica Lappin, 42, is the president of the Downtown Alliance, which manages one of New York City’s largest business improvement districts. The organization spent $20 million last year — the most out of any of the city’s 73 BIDs — on services such as public safety, sanitation, marketing and capital improvements in Lower Manhattan. Lappin’s office is located on the 33rd floor of the Equitable Building at 120 Broadway, with views […]

The Landmarks Preservation Commission has approved Hidrock Properties’ plans for their Park Slope site next to the closed Pavilion cinema following years of controversy over whether the property would become condominiums. Hidrock, run by the Hidary family, plans to use the vacant one-story building at 192 Prospect Park West for retail and will restore the property to how it looked in the early 20th century, according to project architect John Field. The commission had approved […]

Investment sales in Brooklyn have dropped for the second year in a row, according to a new report on the borough from TerraCRG. Overall commercial transactions in Brooklyn were at about $6.3 billion for 2017, down from about $7.8 billion in 2016 and $9.5 billion in 2015, which TerraCRG CEO Ofer Cohen described as the peak of the Brooklyn market. He stressed that 2015 was a very unique year with several institutional transactions and that […]

In a Monday address in Albany highlighting his 2018 budget proposals, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the state’s spending priorities had been shaped by federal tax reform and other potential threats from Washington, D.C. Chief among them is the loss of federal tax deductions for state and local taxes, or “SALT,” which Cuomo said would cost New Yorkers an extra $14 billion. “The main issue in the budget is not the budget. The main issue in […]

Related Fund Management launched a bid to buy Ladder Capital for $15 per share. The subsidiary of Hudson Yards developer Related Companies already owns 8.2 percent of Ladder ’s shares and would buy the remaining 91.8 percent under the proposed deal, taking the commercial real estate lender private. Ladder, a publicly traded real estate investment trust, has $5.9 billion in assets, CoStar reported. The firm is famous for lending more than $250 million to President […]

Approaching a lender to receive a construction loan for a new project can be a walk in the park if you’ve completed successful projects in the past and know the right people. A new developer, however, must depend on other qualities to be sure that they obtain the loan that will make or break their plans. Namely, an airtight proposal with as much research as possible. In addition to knowing your own potential project inside […]

After Brown Harris Stevens was unceremoniously dumped by Christie’s last year, the luxury brokerage found itself without an international partner for the first time in 30 years. So co-president Hall Willkie cracked open his Rolodex. Six months later, he’s rounded up 30 brokerages around the globe that have agreed to promote each others’ listings online — without the fees or marketing costs associated with other affiliation agreements. The initiative went live in late December. “The […]

Will the Chinese investment drought be over soon? Outbound investment from the nation fell 29.4 percent in 2017 to $120 billion, according to newly released government figures, but some observers expect capital controls to be lifted in 2018. “The tighter capital controls, which was the biggest reason behind the slump in (overseas direct investment), will gradually be eased as the yuan stabilizes,” Standard Chartered economist Ding Shuang told Bloomberg. “Policy makers will approve more overseas […]

 When Chateau Louis XIV, an ostentatious 17th-century-styled French palace on the outskirts of Paris, sold for $300 million in 2015, it was widely believed to be the most expensive home sale in modern history. The chateau had the expected immoderate touchings of Parisian royalty, with gold fountains, marble statues and elaborate gardens lining the 57-acre property. But the new development also featured the trappings of the 21st century — modern elevators, smartphone-controlled amenities, a moat […]

Treetop Development is slightly shifting its plans for the South Bronx. The company announced last year that it would build a pair of 12-story residential buildings in Mott Haven,a development expected to cost about $160 million, but it now plans to bring 11- and 14-story buildings to the site instead, according to Treetop’s Azi Mandel and filings with the Department of Buildings. Treetop filed plans for the 11-story building on Tuesday, which will bring 134 […]

Greenland USA is no longer planning to switch one of the Pacific Park sites from residential to office use. The site, known as B4 and located at the northeast corner of the Barclays Center at Atlantic and Sixth avenues, will remain residential, Scott Solish, director of development at Greenland, told The Real Deal on Tuesday. Though the company considered seeking approval to change the site’s use to commercial and shift affordable housing in the project […]

Scripps Networks Interactive has shortlisted a pair of buildings for a new Manhattan headquarters that could be as large as 400,000 square feet, sources told The Real Deal. The negotiations come as Scripps gets ready to consolidate its footprint amid a proposed $15 billion merger with Discovery Communications. Cove Property Group’s 441 Ninth Avenue on the Far West Side and Global Holdings’ 1250 Broadway at the edge of Koreatown are on the shortlist, sources told TRD. A […]

From TRD LA: A subsidiary of HNA Group has once again asked for more time to arrange financing for a luxury development planned for the former Kai Tak airport in Hong Kong, as the company struggles to deal with its mounting debt. Hong Kong International Investment Group Co. asked for six more months to arrange a bridge loan for the project and received an extension through July 15, Bloomberg reported. HNA, which has racked up significant […]

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

A new report shows that several foreign governments and affiliated groups have paid for events at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. Public Citizen, a liberal-funded watchdog group, released the report, noting that Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak and his delegation stayed at the hotel in September 2017. A firm tied to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia paid $270,000 last year for lodging, parking and catering at the hotel during a lobbying campaign to […]

The de Blasio administration says it created or preserved more than 24,500 affordable housing units last year, the highest number seen in the city in nearly 30 years. The mayor announced the record on Tuesday, which surpasses 1989’s 23,100 affordable units, the Associated Press reported. His administration has created or preserved more than 87,500 affordable housing units in the past four years. Just before being re-elected, de Blasio increased his pledge to build or preserve […]

Preservationists aren’t happy that only the exterior of 550 Madison Avenue is eligible for landmark status. The Landmarks Preservation Commission is considering making the Philip Johnson-designed office building (formerly AT&T’s headquarters) a landmark but decided last month that its interior didn’t merit the designation, the New York Times reported. The commission argued that because a statue (called “Golden Boy”) had been removed from the building’s lobby in the 1990s, the lobby is no longer in […]

The number of heat complaints this year has skyrocketed, with most of the 311 calls coming from the city’s least expensive neighborhoods. There have been 29,386 heat complaints since the beginning of 2018, a large jump from the 8,092 seen during the same time period last year, the New York Daily News reported. In the past two years, the most calls originated from Erasmus in Brooklyn, Hamilton Heights in Manhattan and Norwood in the Bronx, […]

From the January issue: On the evening of Dec. 19, roughly 30 of Douglas Elliman’s top executives gathered at Bouley Test Kitchen in the Flatiron District for the residential firm’s annual managers’ party. All the firm’s key players were on hand: Chairman Howard Lorber, CEO Dottie Herman, plus newly minted President Scott Durkin and Susan De França, the firm’s hard-charging development chief and rumored successor to Herman. If there were any residual hurt feelings from […]

Vornado Realty Trust is selling its retail condominium on the Upper East Side to Ralph Sitt’s Status Capital for nearly $85 million, The Real Deal has learned. The Steve Roth-led real estate investment trust is set to close on the sale of the condo at the base of the 26-story Marquand at 11 East 68th Street this week, according to sources familiar with the deal. The 11,000-square-foot condo is fully leased to British clothing brand […]