The Real Deal - New York Real Estate News

When the Carlyle Group agreed to move to One Vanderbilt, SL Green Realty sweetened the deal by offering to pay off the company’s old lease — a sum that could exceed $100 million. SL Green agreed to take over the global asset manager’s office lease at 520 Madison Avenue, which is set to expire in 2031, Crain’s reported. The Carlyle Group plans to move into One Vanderbilt in 2020. The existing lease could be worth […]

Keller Williams franchises raked in higher profits last quarter. The brokerage reported $98.3 billion in sales volume in the U.S. and Canada in the second quarter — up 8.7 percent from a year earlier. Franchisee owner profit rose 1.3 percent year over year to $70.3 million, according to a release from the company. The growth comes as the firm has been expanding its artificial intelligence-based assistant, Kelle. Through the service, agents can access listings, market […]

Dalan Management recapitalized a pair of Midtown South office buildings in a deal that values the properties at more than $54 million. Boston-based Marcus Partners paid $54.5 million to buy the adjacent 11-story buildings at 10-12 East 33rd Street from Dalan Management, a spokesperson for the buyer told The Real Deal. Following the sale, Dalan retains a minority stake in the buildings with an undisclosed equity investment in the joint venture with Marcus Partners. Marcus […]

Jeff Sutton‘s Wharton Properties just landed $50 million to refinance one of its retail properties in the Garment District. Germany-based Landesbank Hessen-Thüringen, also known as Heleba, provided the financing package, which includes $49.4 million in existing loans and $562,500 in new debt, according to documents filed with the city’s Department of Finance on Monday. The financing is for 29 West 34th Street, a three-story retail building whose tenants include Aldo and Geox. Sutton didn’t immediately […]

Huntington pulls contract with Bohemia-based architects over fees The Huntington Town Board revoked the contract it had with Bohemia-based DCAK-MSA Architectural and Engineering PC — doing business as Savik and Murray — which had been hired to design the James D. Conte Community Center in Huntington Station. Town officials said the firm was charging excess fees and didn’t advance the project beyond the conceptual phase. Patchogue-based BBS Architects, Landscape Architects and Engineers PC will take over the project, […]

Luxury apartments keep lingering on the market. As inventory grows and a buyer’s market creates the opportunity to extend negotiations, high-end properties are moving at a sluggish pace. In this environment, it’s sellers and developers who are quick to course correct and adjust pricing that have an advantage, brokers said. “Longer days on the market and more negotiability — the two go hand-in-hand,” said Donna Olshan, head of Olshan Realty. In the last week of […]

Wells Fargo is being investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice for allegedly colluding with affordable housing developers nationwide to drive down the prices of low-income tax credits – potentially defrauding hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal program. Among the banks, Wells Fargo is the largest buyer of the tax credits. The San Francisco-based bank said last year that it had invested $9 billion into the program over the previous five years. Banks […]

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

Brookfield Asset Management secured an option to buy the land under 666 Fifth Avenue from Kushner Companies as part of a deal to lease the office tower for 99 years, according to the memorandum of lease. The option to buy the so-called fee interest becomes available “at certain limited times and circumstances during the term of the lease,” the memorandum reads. It wasn’t immediately clear under what times and circumstances the purchase option is permitted. […]

EXp Realty’s massive growth push is paying off. The virtual brokerage’s revenue soared as the company’s been adding agents and growing transaction volume. In the second quarter, revenue for eXp World Holdings, the parent company of eXp Realty, climbed to a record $130.5 million, versus $39 million a year earlier. Net loss was $1.9 million, compared with a net loss of $2.1 million in the second quarter of 2017, according to the company’s statement. At […]

The Trump administration wants to use federal grants as leverage to get communities to reconsider their zoning codes to allow for more housing development. It’s a shift in policy at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which under the Obama administration focused on integrating lower-income housing into wealthy neighborhoods, the Wall Street Journal reported. HUD Secretary Ben Carson said restrictive zoning rules have limited home construction, thus driving up prices and making it […]

To a company that’s been around for 164 years, what looks to others like an existential crisis is just more sand in the hourglass. That was the message Steve Baird kept coming back to during an hour-long sitdown with The Real Deal. The CEO of Baird & Warner lends his company’s longevity to its adaptability, having morphed from a commercial brokerage to a land developer to one of the largest home sellers in the Chicago […]

Anthony Bourdain’s Time Warner Center apartment is now available as a $14,200-per-month rental, two months after the celebrity chef committed suicide. The two-bedrom, two-bathroom pad has hardwood floors and floor-to-ceiling windows with views of the Hudson River, according to TMZ, which first reported on the listing. The New York Post identified the condominium as unit 64F, which property records show sold for $2 million in 2004. Bourdain in 2010 told Fodors.com that he liked to […]

In August, Joe Moinian watched yet another potential anchor tenant for his planned Hudson Yards tower slip through his fingers, when the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer agreed to move into a rival project next door.    It’s a drill the developer has become all too familiar with. In the past several years, tenants have enthusiastically flocked to Manhattan’s Far West Side. Companies such as Coach, Time Warner, the National Hockey League and mega-asset manager BlackRock have […]

Rising home prices in Hong Kong have buyers turning to tiny apartments. The world’s least-affordable housing market saw transaction volumes for residential units no bigger than 300 square feet jump 52 percent during the first eight months of the year compared to the same time in 2017, according to data from Picacorp Properties cited by Bloomberg. Those 300-square-foot spaces are smaller than two parking spaces, and now make up 12.4 percent of total apartment sales […]

Manhattan’s luxury residential real estate market saw just 12 deals signed at $4 million and up last week, according to Olshan Realty’s weekly market report. That was the lowest total since the first two weeks in January, and down from 17 contracts signed during the same week a year ago. The week’s priciest contract went to the townhouse at 4 Sutton Square, which had an asking price of $12.99 million. That’s a reduction of roughly […]

Financial services broker-dealer BTIG Partners is moving its trading floor to the Plaza District with a 65,000-square-foot lease at EQ Office’s Park Avenue Tower. The company, founded in 2002, signed a 15-year deal for the second, third and fourth floors in the base of the office tower at 65 East 55th Street, sources told The Real Deal. BTIG also took space on the ground floor for a private entrance, giving the company a building-within-a-building at […]

New York is no doubt home to its fair share of towering skyscrapers — but what about those that reach nearly 2,000 feet into the sky, and sometimes more? At 1,792 feet tall, One World Trade Center comes close. But the city has yet to make room for the elusive “megatall” building, like the Burj Khalifa in Dubai and the under-construction Jeddah Tower in Saudi Arabia. There are many reasons for New York’s vertical problem, […]

For former Keller Williams agent Parish Pradhan, home flipping started as a side gig in 2014. That’s when he and a few buddies pooled their money to buy, rehab and flip a single-family home in Westchester County. At the time, no lender would take a risk on a first-time borrower. Four years and 17 deals later, Pradhan is still syndicating money from clients and friends to buy and sell homes in Westchester and Fairfield County, […]

UPDATED, Aug. 13, 9:00 a.m.: Montefiore Health System just landed a $1.2 billion financing deal. The Dormitory Authority of the State of New York (DASNY) issued $685 million in bonds on a portfolio of the hospital system’s facilities in the Bronx, according to records filed with the city on Friday. And Montefiore issued $482 million in bonds on its own. DASNY provided a series of 2018 30-year revenue bonds, which were used to pay down […]