The Real Deal - New York Real Estate News

Entrepreneur Nat Turner, who sold his healthcare tech company in 2018 for $1.9 billion, has purchased the penthouse at 401 Washington Street for $19.5 million, property records show. Turner bought the luxury property from Jonathan Oringer, CEO of Shutterstock, for less than the $20 million asking price. Oringer is now in contract to buy a $27 million penthouse at 56 Leonard St, The New York Post reported. The Washington Street penthouse — listed at its […]

A pair of Connecticut residents are suing the owners of an airport spa chain, claiming that they purposefully undervalued the firm’s real estate portfolio. The suit, which Connecticut residents Moreton Binn and Marisol Binn filed against XpresSpa Group, accuses the owners trying to make the stock price and market capitalization of the company fall from 2016 up through the present. The directors named as defendants in the suit either have a stake in a credit […]

California-based DivcoWest Real Estate Investments has expanded its footprint in New York with its second acquisition in the Big Apple. Divco bought Boston Properties’ 1970s-era office building at 540 Madison Avenue for $310 million, sources told The Real Deal. The purchase price works out to more than $1,050 per square foot for the 39-story, 291,000-square-foot tower at the corner of East 55th Street. A spokesperson for Divco, which focuses most heavily on tech-heavy markets like […]

The Real Deal editorial team brought home nine journalism awards from the National Association of Real Estate Editors for its in-depth coverage of the industry in 2018. “With eye-catching artwork, design and photography, The Real Deal delivers sophisticated coverage, stylishly written, of the people and deals that drive New York City real estate,” judges wrote of the publication’s June 2018 New York issue, which won a gold award for best commercial real estate trade magazine. […]

David Ogilvy, perhaps best known for his role handling the record-setting $120 million sale of Connecticut’s Copper Beech Farms in 2014, announced Monday that his namesake brokerage had disbanded and joined Sotheby’s International Realty. The move by Ogilvy, who started Greenwich-based David Ogilvy & Associates Realtors in 1985, comes nearly a decade after Sotheby’s expanded into the affluent New York City suburb by absorbing century-old residential brokerage Cleveland, Duble & Arnold in December 2011. Ogilvy is […]

Obscure rules surrounding rent-stabilized hotels have occasionally allowed savvy tenants to secure cheap rent for life. But one tenant now claims he had the legal right to take over an entire hotel — and for the moment, city property records agree. In late May, a certain Mickey Barreto filed deed documents with the Department of Finance transferring ownership of the New Yorker Hotel to his nonprofit, Mickey Barreto Missions, and began presenting himself to lenders, […]

In the same month that foreclosure proceedings began on Oleg Cassini’s Upper East Side townhouse, the former Long Island home of the late fashion designer has gone to contract after its price was cut down to $13.5 million. The 43.5-acre estate owned by Cassini at 313 McCouns Lane in Oyster Bay hit the market a year ago asking $19.5 million. Cassini, who died in 2006 at 92, was the grandson of a Russian-Italian count and rose to […]

Islanders’ Belmont arena build still set to start this summer Jon Ledecky, co-owner of the National Hockey Leagues’ New York Islanders, hopes to begin construction of the team’s new arena at Belmont Park this summer even as a long-awaited environmental review for the mixed-use project will most likely be delayed, Newsday reported. Officials from Empire State Development, the state agency coordinating an environmental review for the controversial $1.2 billion redevelopment, had hoped to conclude that process […]

With Albany rendering rent-regulated apartments radioactive in New York, The Real Deal ranked the players who own the most of those suddenly less-desirable units. Check out the list below and read the full story on the pummeling the industry took in the state’s capital here. Blackstone Group Total rent-stabilized units: 11,807 Biggest rent-stabilized property: Stuyvesant Town in Manhattan with 8,659 regulated units LeFrak Total rent-stabilized units: 9,891 Biggest rent-stabilized property: LeFrak City in Corona, Queens […]

Landlords are now going to be so poor, they won’t be able to afford the rent, just like their tenants. Well, not really. But the real estate industry did get slammed last month by monumental rent regulation reforms in Albany, with state legislators passing an incredible series of changes, curbing how landlords in the city can increase rents on stabilized apartments. The votes marked the first time in decades that major reforms have been enacted, […]

There’s another tall mixed-use tower headed to Murray Hill, and it will stand across the street from a separate 31-story development. Lalezarian Properties plans to bring the 35-story, 386-foot-tall project to 509 Third Avenue, according to an application filed last week with the city’s Department of Buildings and first covered by New York YIMBY. Kevin Lalezarian, head of the Long Island-based development firm, did not respond to a request for comment. The site is zoned […]

A bankruptcy auction has once again been set for One Bennett Park in Hudson Heights–and this time, it’s for real. The property, also known as 29 Overlook Terrace, is a notorious construction site that became one of the most prominent symbols of the country’s economic collapse in 2008 due to how long it has sat vacant. It was headed for foreclosure last summer, and an auction had been scheduled for mid-August.  However, this was delayed […]

UPDATE, July 1, 3:10 p.m.: A local real estate family has officially unwinded its portfolio, with the sales of two Brooklyn apartment buildings. The properties, located at 145 Henry Street in Brooklyn Heights and 15-19 Wyckoff Street in Cobble Hill, traded for $36.5 million combined to a group of investors led by Isaac Abraham, according to Lee & Associates. Abraham, the co-founder of Witnick Real Estate Partners, could not be reached for comment. The seller […]

A drawn-out family feud over a corner of Madison Avenue real estate came to a close last week when an octogenarian socialite finally parted ways with the property. Barbara Slifka, a former fashion editor at Harper’s Bazaar and a philanthropist who serves on numerous boards including the Guggenheim and the New York City Ballet, sold the property at 477 Madison Avenue to Aby Rosen’s RFR Holding for a price north of $260 million, sources told […]

Five years after hitting the market, the sprawling mansion at 2 North Moore Street in Tribeca has finally found a buyer. Sources said the six-story house sold for $27 million — which is $21 million less than the initial asking price of $48 million in 2014. The same sources said the unknown buyer closed last week to avoid paying New York’s new mansion transfer tax, which goes into effect today. By closing before July 1, […]

The Real Deal’s July issue is now live, and digital subscribers are getting the first look at what’s inside. Subscribers now have access to stories including: – Our cover package on the fallout from the industry’s crushing blow in Albany – A ranking of the top residential agents by closed sales in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens – A breakdown of the big sales at 212 Fifth Avenue, the luxe tower where Amazon’s Jeff Bezos just […]

The lobby of the Coral Gables theater is jammed with dozens of real estate techies. Some of them are the brains behind South Florida-based startup companies searching for capital and clients. The rest are brokers, developers, real estate investment managers and other industry executives looking to get in on the ground floor of the next big real estate software application. More than 400 attendees showed up for the May 14 Future of Real Estate Tech […]

There were 18 contracts signed in Brooklyn’s luxury market last week for a total of about $50.2 million. The properties included 12 townhouses, five condominiums and one co-op, and they went for an average price of about $2.8 million, according to the latest report from Compass. (The brokerage recently acquired Stribling & Associates, which produced this weekly report.) The firm classifies luxury properties as all homes priced at $2 million or higher. The market was […]

Manhattan’s luxury market saw 25 contracts signed last week for a total of about $237 million, the 10th straight week of 20 or more sales. The contracts signed at $4 million or above were split between 16 condominiums, six co-ops and three townhouses. Sales and dollar volume were both down from the week before, when the market had its best week of the year with 29 contracts signed for about $291 million. The top sale […]

Across the nation demand for apartments is now at a five-year high, a consequence of slow home sales and economic uncertainty. The number of move-ins during the second quarter shot up 11 percent compared to last year, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing data from RealPage. That surge caused the national occupancy rate to hit 95.8 percent, according to the report. In Chicago and Houston, demand grew particularly strongly, as move-ins outpaced new construction […]

The $3.8 billion iBuyer startup Opendoor is shaking things up internally. The company started firing about 50 of its roughly 1,300 employees in June, and it has asked between 200 and 300 employees throughout the country to move to its Phoenix location, according to Bloomberg. It is also scaling back on its free lunch policy, a common perk at startups. Opendoor plans to double its Phoenix employees to more than 500 next year and will […]

High winds tore down scaffolding at an under-construction condo building in Park Slope Sunday afternoon, injuring three people. The scaffolding crashed down from the Parlour Condominiums site and fell into an open-air patio space below, where it smashed through a glass astrium, according to CBS New York. One victim suffered serious head injuries and went to the hospital. Parts of the scaffolding were dismantled later on Sunday, and the Department of Buildings is investigating the […]

Debrah Lee Charatan, wife of the notorious Robert Durst, has sold an Upper East Side co-op she owned with Steve Holm for slightly less than $4.5 million, according to property records. The co-op is a two-bedroom unit in 860 Fifth Avenue on the Upper East Side, where buyers are only permitted to finance 50 percent of the sale. Charatan and Holm, a real estate lawyer who has worked for Durst in the past, did not […]

Chany Rosen is always on the run. Perhaps that’s why at just 28 she’s already made a name for herself in New York City’s cutthroat property business. The expeditor gave up a teaching career to help landlords and other clients find their way through the city’s often byzantine Department of Buildings. Rosen’s 15-person team at Brooklyn-based Cavalry Associates, which she formed with her brother, Yoel Bochner, handle everything from code violations to zoning issues. As […]

The owners of three $11 million condominium units on the Upper East Side are trying to write themselves out of a tabloid-style, modern-day Greek epic. Specifically, the buyers claim that the condo sponsors — shipping magnate Spiros Milonas and wife Antonia, 50-50 partners in Axia Realty LLC — have failed to hand control of the property at 40 East 72nd Street to a new board of managers, failed to pay common charges and property taxes […]