The Real Deal - New York Real Estate News

Highpoint Property Group picked up a pair of recently completed East Village condo development from the Amirian Group for nearly $25 million. The real estate firm led by Drew Popkin paid $24.74 million for 436 and 442 East 13th Street, with each six-story building priced at $12.37 million, according to property records filed with the city Monday. Los Angeles-based Thorofare Capital Inc. provided $14.25 million in financing for the deal. “The opportunity to purchase high-end […]

Toll Brothers and Park Tower Group were among the companies that had business before the city when Mayor Bill de Blasio solicited campaign donations from them in violation of conflict-of-interest rules, according to a watchdog report. The findings come from a Department of Investigation report obtained by The City — and followed a two-and-a-half year probe that ended in October. The investigation included questioning de Blasio about warnings from the Conflict of Interest Board and […]

The city’s $173 million purchase of 21 buildings from the Podolsky brothers has attracted scrutiny because of the sellers’ past, their political connections and the price tag itself. A late Monday document dump is poking even more holes in the official version of events. According to 2,000 pages of documents subpoenaed by City Comptroller Scott Stringer, City Hall overvalued the buildings by $26 million using faulty rent assumptions, the New York Post reported. “It’s a […]

The Cosmopolitan hotel and casino was one of the biggest failures of the Las Vegas Strip in the last decade. Now, five years after buying and reversing its fortunes, Blackstone Group is reportedly exploring a sale. The New York-based investment giant has retained Deutsche Bank and PJT Partners Inc. to explore options for the property, including a sale, according to the Wall Street Journal. If sold to a casino operator, the property could be earn […]

The fire that ravaged the more than 850-year-old Notre-Dame Cathedral could put a spotlight on other historic structures around the world, Miami architect Kobi Karp said on Cheddar. “The main concern is what other structures in Paris and in other cities around the world are in this type of jeopardy that can happen so quickly,” said Karp, founder and principal of Kobi Karp Architecture & Interior Design. On Monday, a blaze  destroyed most of Notre-Dame’s […]

Cutchogue’s Bedell Cellars hits market at nearly $18M The upscale winery Bedell Cellars in Cutchogue has hit the market with a $17.9 million price, a month after its owner, Hollywood mogul Michael Lynne, died at 77 in late March, the New York Post reported. Lynne steered the once-obscure New Line Cinema studio, a Tinseltown powerhouse that made blockbusters like the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, The New York Times reported. The three-piece property in Cutchogue spans […]

The government released its long-awaited and latest set of Opportunity Zone regulations Wednesday, hoping to provide investors who have been on the fence with the clarity needed to begin developing projects in distressed areas nationwide. Real estate developers have become enamored with Opportunity Zones, seeking to raise funds into the billions of dollars. But without complete certainty on the program’s rules, many developers have held back on deploying that capital. Industry experts said that development […]

Two of the largest developments ever proposed in Chicago might have won “final” approval last week, but the real work is just getting started. Not only do Sterling Bay and Related Midwest still need to actually build the sprawling Lincoln Yards and The 78 projects, but there are plenty of hurdles that could be thrown in their way, a panel of experts said Tuesday at The Real Deal’s Chicago’s State of the Market. “There’s really […]

CBS renewed 164,000 square feet north of Madison Square Park. The television network inked a 15-year deal for the space in the New York Life building at 28 East 28th Street, formerly known as 63 Madison Avenue, the New York Post reported. Asking rent for the space is in the low $90s per square foot, according to the Post. Facebook last year was eyeing space in the building, but decided to pass. The tech company […]

A Brooklyn development site at the edge of Fort Greene and Downtown Brooklyn has hit the market with an asking price of $65 million. The site comprising three lots at the corner of Ashland Place and DeKalb Avenue can be developed into a mixed-use building of nearly 235,000 square feet, according to the brokers marketing the property. “The site will have a terrific, protected view of Fort Greene Park, due to the low density of […]

France plans to hold an international competition to come up with a replacement design for Notre Dame Cathedral’s spire, which was destroyed in a fire on Monday. The competition will address whether the spire should be rebuilt at all and, if so, whether it or not it should be identical to the one destroyed, according to the Wall Street Journal. The spire destroyed in Monday’s fire was a recreation from the 19th century of an […]

Peru’s ex-President Alan García died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the head on Wednesday morning – hours after authorities arrived at his home to detain him for his alleged ties to the Odebrecht corruption scandal that’s taken down a number of Latin American leaders. García, 69, was pronounced dead at 10:05 a.m., about three hours after arriving at a hospital in Lima, Peru, according to the Associated Press. García reportedly shut himself in a […]

Multifamily building transactions were the name of the game among last week’s New York City mid-market investment sales, with a Brooklyn Heights building trading for $10 million and another in Washington Heights for $13 million. 1. For roughly $18.4 million, an entity managed by BlackRock Realty Advisors parted with a pre-war apartment building at 110 Bennett Avenue in Manhattan’s Hudson Heights neighborhood. The buyer of the six-story, 51-unit property was anonymous, going by the entity […]

The golf industry is pushing back against a new bill that could raise property taxes for golf course owners in New York. The proposed legislation would give local governments the option to assess and tax golf courses on “highest and best use,” the Wall Street Journal reported. That means many facilities could be considered residential developments with a much higher value. Industry players have argued the change would raise taxes on many facilities and lead […]

With a shifting housing market, increased competition from technology-based companies and a looming economic downturn, there’s a lot coming at Chicago brokers. Instead of fretting about those market forces, the best way for brokers to thrive is to focus on their own personal business, a panel of real estate experts said at The Real Deal’s Chicago State of the Market forum Tuesday. Housing sales in the Chicago market saw a slight drop last year, and […]

Another seller is looking to offload Trump-branded property.Simon Clausen, a tech millionaire and one of Australia’s richest men, has listed his condo at Trump International Hotel and Tower for $22.9 million. The four bedroom, four-and-a-half bathroom pad at 1 Central Park West is on the market for around $5,200 per square foot. It has an 80-foot long gallery hallway, views over Central Park from the living room, dining room and master bedroom, and a full […]

Shorewood Real Estate Group is bringing a new rental tower to Jamaica, Queens, marking the first project to be financed by the company’s Opportunity Zone Fund. Plans filed with the Department of Buildings on Tuesday envision a 24-story, 315-unit building at 160-05 Archer Avenue, which will also include the adjacent lot at 92-25 160th Street. Like many of Shorewood’s previous projects in Manhattan, the Jamaica project will include co-working space among its amenities. The building […]

Blink Fitness is opening locations in two underserved neighborhoods in Brooklyn after signing new leases. The fitness company signed a 15,100-square-foot lease at Joseph Brunner’s 1134 Fulton Street in Bedford-Stuyvesant, according to Commercial Observer. In a separate deal, the gym also signed an 18,000-square-foot lease at 5901 Flatlands Avenue in the Flatlands neighborhood, taking the entire two story building. Retail Zone’s Ezra Saff represented the gym in the deals, and said that the firm is […]

Ultra luxury mansions in Vancouver are being transformed into college dorms, thanks to a new tax that charges landlords who leave their residential properties vacant. One student, 22-year-old Isaiah Boodhoo, rented a bedroom in a mansion for $825 a month after seeing a listing posted on Facebook, according to Bloomberg. The property was owned by an Afghan musician who rents out the nine-bedroom home to 14 students. The recent trend has been prompted by new […]

It’s a tale of two cities for residents living in three Prospect-Lefferts Gardens buildings. A lawsuit filed this week by 10 tenants at rent-stabilized buildings at 599, 607 and 611 Flatbush Avenue alleges that landlords Miriam, William, Richard and Michelle Shasho have subjected them to decrepit conditions while illegally converting vacant units into plush Airbnb rentals, according to the New York Daily News. Tenants say they consistently have no heat and hot water, live with […]

Even more home sellers are taking aim at the National Association of Realtors and major home-selling brokerages over buyer commissions and multiple listings services, according to a new antitrust lawsuit filed this week. The suit, filed in the Northern District of Illinois by Sawbill Strategic Inc., alleges that the industry group and the “big four” home-selling brokerages — Realogy, HomeServices of America, RE/MAX and Keller Williams — are “conspiring to require property sellers to pay […]

SL Green Realty has locked in another tenant for One Vanderbilt, bringing the 1,400-foot-tall East Midtown tower to 60 percent occupancy. Private equity firm KPS Capital Partners signed a 15-year-lease for 28,000 square feet on the 52nd floor of the building, the landlord said Wednesday. In addition, SL Green said law firm McDermott Will & Emery will expand its 20-year lease by 14,000 square feet to take 129,000 square feet in total. The building has […]

SL Green Realty’s bet on a Hudson Yards building appears to be paying off after the office landlord signed a massive lease with First Republic Bank. The bank will take 212,000 square feet at 460 West 34th Street, and will serve as the 20-story building’s anchor tenant from floors two through six and a retail portion of the ground floor, according to the New York Post. SL Green, one of city’s largest property owners, went […]

Sales activity in the city’s once high-flying multifamily market haven’t been this slow since the beginning of the decade. The city saw $2 billion worth of activity across 75 deals and 110 buildings during the first quarter of 2019, according to a report from Ariel Property Advisors. This was a 22 percent drop in dollar volume, a 43 percent drop in transaction volume and a 50 percent drop in building volume compared to the first […]

Last year, Luxury Mortgage Corporation’s Mira Dick worked with a former Wall Street banker who was having trouble locking in a mortgage for a $2.2 million Manhattan condo. The buyer, who was in his 20s, had quit his job to launch his own fund. Without a salary and bonus package, traditional banks shied away from issuing him a loan. But Dick’s Stamford, Connecticut-based firm financed 80 percent of the Upper West Side apartment purchase. “We […]

In the lobby of a pre-war building in Manhattan Valley, Rhea Vogel tells the camera crew she’s worried. She inherited 938 and 940 Amsterdam Avenue from her late father, a Holocaust survivor. But there are looming changes to the state’s rent control laws she claims will put her in the red. “I’m not sure how long I can hold onto these buildings and still do right by my tenants,” she says. In another video, Reshit […]