The Real Deal - New York Real Estate News

Johanna Trujillo invested $20,000 in what seemed like a sure thing — a piece of Manhattan real estate. She and her mother bought into a co-working development with meditation rooms and views of Park Avenue South. That was the draw of Prodigy Network: It allowed regular people to make real estate investments that were usually accessible only to the rich and well connected. Trujillo, 39, who moved to the U.S. from Colombia when she was

New York’s commercial real estate market took a beating in 2020. In one indicator, the 10 largest investment sales of the year totaled $5 billion, a 37 percent dropoff from the $8 billion the previous year. Not surprisingly, finance deals dropped off considerably this year, as well. The 10 largest loans in New York totaled $7.9 billion, about 28 percent less than the $10.9 billion from the previous year. Even during the pandemic, some of

The numbers are in: Manhattan condo developers are pulling back. The combined projected sellout for the 10 priciest projects approved to start marketing this year is just $1.86 billion, down from $3.1 billion last year, according to an analysis by The Real Deal. Only two years ago, the combined total was $7.3 billion, with HFZ Capital Group’s XI condo topping the list. The 2020 figures illuminate the shift toward smaller, less expensive projects as the

 Vacant offices. Shuttered restaurants. Empty hotels. The pressure on real estate was relentless this year as the pandemic took down struggling sectors — and some healthy ones, too. Except for a few blessed sectors, such as industrial space (hello, Amazon!), fiascos were unavoidable. To explain the catastrophe that was 2020, we picked 10 of the biggest real estate disasters to highlight. Where is everybody? Say this for the Partnership for New York City: It is

 Self-storage giant CubeSmart purchased two buildings in Brooklyn and Queens for a combined $125 million and secured a new ground lease valued at $50 million, according to property records filed Thursday. The self-storage sector has proven to be among the most resilient to the pandemic, as economic headwinds tend to bolster demand for storage space. CubeSmart paid $77 million to acquire a 79,000-square-foot storage facility at 338 3rd Avenue in Gowanus — where the city

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.” Charles Dickens sure nailed the state of the Los Angeles real estate market in 2020. While the office market stared into the abyss and retail continued to get pummeled, the top of the residential market went into overdrive. Spec developers who flew too close to

Long Island’s Nassau Coliseum can expect to see a surge in event bookings in late 2021, but that may be short-lived. The Uniondale arena — where the NHL’s New York Islanders also played — shuttered because of Covid in June. In August, EB-5 developer Nick Mastroianni was approved to take over as the leaseholder from billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov’s Onexim Sports and Entertainment. Onexim had $100 million in loan obligations on the property. This week, Mastroianni

Award-winning singer and songwriter Julio Iglesias closed on the sale of a waterfront Indian Creek lot that was reportedly purchased by Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. Cabana Love LLC sold 4 Indian Creek Island Road to Top Line Ventures Limited, a British Virgin Islands company that lists a Dubai address, for $32.2 million. Iglesias transferred ownership of the lot in November to Cabana Love LLC, which is managed by his attorney, Russell L. King. Page

As 2020 comes to a close, so too have All Year Management’s days as a listed company on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange — for the time being. Dec. 31 marks the last day of trading for the Brooklyn developer’s four outstanding bond series, due to its recent failure to make bond payments and publish third-quarter financial reports, Commercial Observer reported. In a series of recent filings, Yoel Goldman’s firm disclosed that the lender on

It’s been a year of extreme highs and extreme lows in the proptech industry. While startups offering catering to digital transactions surged, co-working and flex-office spaces struggled with a sharp drop in business, as Business Insider reports. Several companies in the sector laid off large numbers of staff and sought financial lifelines in order to survive. Others shuttered office locations and wound down their operations. “Breather, in its current form as an operator, doesn’t make

The city is forging ahead with its push to help New Yorkers find alternatives to the traditional lump-sum security deposit. The Department of Housing Preservation and Development and the Housing Development Corporation issued a formal request this week to identify companies that could provide other options for tenants, rather than requiring them to pay landlords hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars up front. But — crucially for landlords — this wouldn’t diminish the amount paid

The coronavirus pandemic colored many of the stories at The Real Deal in 2020, but our reporters’ picks for their favorite pieces of the year show that not everything was about Covid-19 in the real estate industry. While some of these stories touch on the ways the pandemic changed real estate in the past 12 months — from creating more opportunities for landlords to pick up distressed properties, to putting pressure on Manhattan’s already shaky

 Note: These items are independently selected by our team. However, TRD may receive a commission when you purchase products through affiliate links. As we say goodbye (and good riddance) to 2020, you’re probably thinking about a toast to ring in the New Year — and what should fill your glass at the start of 2021. Whether you’re celebrating New Year’s Eve with friends or family, or ending this unusual holiday season on your own, a

In a year when so many lives were lost, real estate was not spared. The industry mourned both legendary figures and those who died too soon. But it was the death of Stanley Chera, the 77-year-old patriarch of Crown Acquisitions, that epitomized the year. The real estate titan had decamped New York City for Deal, New Jersey, early in the pandemic at the behest of his longtime friend, President Donald Trump. But on April 11,

Bad news for office landlords: About a quarter of the country’s childcare providers remain closed, months after most of the toughest lockdown measures were lifted. A study by Procare Solutions, first reported by CNBC, shows that only 73 percent of providers are back up and running — and many are half empty. The study looked at childcare centers, preschools, day care and other programs. It didn’t take into account home-based providers. The closures were slightly

Once bitten, twice shy? Not so for Japanese investment firm SoftBank, which despite its ill-fated bet on WeWork has agreed to pump a pile of cash into another real estate tech startup. SoftBank plans to invest another $200 million into struggling construction startup Katerra, a move that will effectively save it from bankruptcy, the Wall Street Journal reports. Under the deal, Greensill Capital, a financial services company also backed by SoftBank, will get a 5

In the first installation of TRD Tips, Simon Ziff sat (virtually) with The Real Deal‘s editor-in-chief Stuart Elliott to give some insights on real estate investing. Ziff, whose Ackman-Ziff Real Estate Group closed more than $7 billion in deals last year and about $85 billion in total since he became president, said he expects distressed deals to happen “deeper into the downturn.” But that’s not stopping him and other investors from watching what loans are being

By any measure, 2020 was not a normal year for New York’s real estate industry. And condo filings were no exception. The total projected sellout of the planned condo projects in Brooklyn and Queens that made this year’s list was $384 million — a far cry from last year’s total of just over $2 billion. In fact, the most expensive condo filing of the year — a Long Island City project with a projected sellout

“Unprecedented” may have been overused in news stories this year, but no word better describes the events of 2020. The coronavirus pandemic defined the year, claiming several hundred thousand American lives and wiping out millions of jobs. Huge sectors of the economy were shut down, flipping the real estate industry on its head and forcing developers, landlords and brokers to scramble. Covid exacerbated problems in brick-and-mortar retail, strained offices and housing in city centers and