The Real Deal - New York Real Estate News

Real estate titans… and their toys

Posted: 04 Jul 2019 01:00 PM PDT

There were live camels, trapeze artists, a 12-minute fireworks display and an enormous birthday cake carved in the shape of a Chinese temple. Blackstone boss Stephen Schwarzman’s 70th-birthday party, hosted at his Palm Beach mansion in February, drew dozens of high-profile guests including Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, art dealer Larry Gagosian and billionaire businessman David Koch. Many of them cheered as Gwen Stefani crooned “Happy Birthday” at the end of the night. The party, which […]

The rise of the anonymous LLC: Tracing the history of the favorite property investment vehicle

Posted: 04 Jul 2019 11:00 AM PDT

For more than four years, nobody knew who bought the only $100 million apartment in Manhattan. Real estate agents and architects who worked with the buyer were all sworn to secrecy, according to the Wall Street Journal, and even after several rounds of building permit applications to renovate Michael Dell’s 11,000-square-foot penthouse at One57, the name of the billionaire behind “P89-90 LLC” only became known after a loose-lipped insider told a reporter. Since becoming legal […]

How an MLS slipped through NYC’s cracks

Posted: 04 Jul 2019 07:00 AM PDT

It was like the meeting of the five families. In 2001, the dons of New York City’s residential brokerages all gathered to discuss whether they should band together to create a formal Multiple Listing Service that would act as a clearinghouse and provide consumers with a searchable listings database for the first time. But tensions were running high. The meeting came after nearly a year of industry infighting that was sparked when the city’s two […]

Inside real estate’s surveillance state

Posted: 04 Jul 2019 05:00 AM PDT

The Edge in Amsterdam is widely considered the smartest building in the world. Since the 15-story office property opened four years ago, its 28,000 sensors have collected roughly 55 terabytes of data on everything from the air’s CO2 levels to workers’ daily coffee orders. If that information were stored as music files, it would play continuously for more than 100 years. And the more info the glass-encased building collects, the smarter it gets. “We think […]