The Real Deal - New York Real Estate News

Where are all the million dollar homes? Spoiler alert: Wherever more people can afford them. Few homeowners live in homes valued at a million dollars or more in the U.S., but in some cities, it’s more common than you think, according to a report from LendingTree. Only 4.3 percent of owner-occupied homes in the country’s 50 largest metropolitan areas are valued at $1 million or more, according to the report, which analyzed census data. Take

Harbor Group International paid $54 million for an apartment complex in Rockland County, amid the continued strong suburban housing market. The deal for the 169-unit community at One Crystal Hill Drive in Pomona penciled out to around $319,500 a unit. The seller was a joint venture of Spirit Investment Partners and the Bascom Group. A team led by CBRE’s Jeffrey Dunne and Gene Pride represented the seller. Known as the Henry apartments, the complex was

The Moinian Group landed a $223 million refinancing deal for its 467-unit Flatbush apartment building. The deal comes less than a year after the developer secured a $170 million refinancing package for the complex, located in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, from an AIG subsidiary last July. The Bank of China provided the new loan, which leaves the developer with $53 million in cash after paying down the AIG loan. The 26-story newly developed rental complex, dubbed

BLDG has its sights set skyward in Long Island City. Lloyd Goldman’s real estate investment firm has filed a permit application to construct an 800,000-square-foot, 818-unit mixed-use building at 42-02 Orchard Street, along Jackson Avenue. The tower will feature multiple ground-floor retail spaces and more than 60 floors of residential units, according to the plans. Perkins Eastman will design the 780-foot-tall building, which will also include a swimming pool, gym and lounges, according to PincusCo.

Defrauding agents. Illegal telemarketing. Encouraging breach of contract. Stealing trade secrets from rival firms. These are just some of the allegations leveled against Compass so far this year. The brokerage, which went public in April, is involved in nearly a dozen active lawsuits dating as far back as 2014. In the majority of these cases, Compass finds itself playing defense. Plaintiffs include local rivals, former agents, concerned citizens and a housing watchdog group. Several cases,

The state legislature is considering measures that would require developers hire union labor on affordable housing projects. Not surprisingly, the industry is not happy. Affordable housing developers have criticized the proposal, arguing it would hike costs to build desperately needed affordable units in an already expensive development environment, according to Bloomberg. Supply costs have been steadily rising, along with home sale prices in Southern California. Cities like Los Angeles, however, support affordable housing projects in

A startup backed by Jeff Bezos and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is the latest venture working to extend real estate investing to the masses. Arrived Homes, a company that offers shares of rental properties starting at $100, raised $37 million in equity and debt from investors that include the Amazon founder’s private investment company Bezos Expeditions and Benioff’s Time Venture in a fundraising round led by Core Innovation Capital, Bloomberg reported. Arrived Homes isn’t the

A joint venture between alternative investment firm Angelo Gordon and local developer We’re Group landed a $350 million floating rate loan for 16 Long Island office properties. Barclays and Citigroup provided the loan, which has a two-year term with three one-year extension options, according to the commercial mortgage rating report by DBRS Morningstar. Commercial Observer first reported the deal. In November 2019, Angelo Gordon acquired a 95.5 percent leasehold interest in the 2-million-square-foot portfolio from

Apparel sales are surging. Subway ridership is at a 15-month high. Lines of customers are forming at Midtown salad shops during the lunch rush. For better or worse, New York City’s office workers are slowly returning to workplaces long abandoned. The city’s office market, battered during the pandemic, is similarly showing signs of a rebound, with companies yanking their spaces off the sublease market in anticipation of an earlier than expected return to the workplace.

Electra America Hospitality Group nabbed The Roger New York hotel for a hefty discount. The joint venture between Electra America and luxury extended-stay firm AKA Hotel Residences snapped up the 193-room hotel at 131 Madison Ave. for $19 million. That’s $71 million less than what the hotel’s last buyer, LaSalle Hotel Properties, paid in 2010, Commercial Observer reported. The seller in the transaction was Pebblebrook Hotel Trust, which acquired ownership of LaSalle in 2018 through

Two proptech firms that aim to help homebuyers compete in hot markets are steps closer to going public after naming new executives. New York-based Orchard tapped Patrick McClymont, former chief financial officer of IMAX and auction house Sotheby’s, as its CFO last month, the Wall Street Journal reported. And HomeLight, a Bay Area startup, appointed to its board Sean Aggarwal, chairman of Lyft and former CFO of Trulia, according to Bloomberg News. Both companies try

Gary Barnett is one deal away from a blank canvas. But it could be a tough one. The developer known for painstakingly piecing together sites for towering projects has been putting together an assemblage on First Avenue since 2014. The L-shaped site, between East 85th and East 86th streets, consists of nine lots for which Barnett’s Extell Development paid more than $77 million, plus an easement and air rights that cost nearly $5 million. But

The world’s top-ranked tennis player scored a small win with the sale of his Miami Beach condo. Novak Djokovic sold his unit at Eighty Seven Park in North Beach for $6 million, slightly more than the $5.8 million he paid for the condo in 2019. Djokovic — who could complete a “Golden Slam” this year if he wins the remaining two major tournaments and the Olympics — bought the three-bedroom, three-and-a-half-bathroom unit 901 from the

The mayor’s race is still undecided, but real estate is on the verge of victory. Notwithstanding left-wing candidate Maya Wiley’s recent gains, the latest polling indicates the industry will get a mayor it can work with: Eric Adams or Kathryn Garcia. Only two years ago, that seemed unlikely. Anti-real estate forces had risen as housing costs did. Political candidates increasingly blamed the industry for gentrification and rent burdens and rejected its money. The state legislature

In 2014, Oceanwide Holdings announced plans to build a 2.4 million-square-foot megaproject in San Francisco. The twin-tower development would be the Chinese conglomerate’s first big push into North America, at a time when Chinese firms were spending billions on massive projects and on acquiring high-end properties from California to New York. Seven years later, the stalled project — dubbed Oceanwide Center — has come to represent something else: a $1.6 billion burden. Another is a

Garret Lepaw is returning to Corcoran Group as the senior managing director of its Brooklyn Heights office after more than five years as an executive manager of sales at Douglas Elliman. Lepaw will work alongside senior managing director Yael Streit overseeing about 130 agents. “I wanted to get back to my roots. That’s what it’s all about,” Lepaw said. Not only did he start his career as an agent in Corcoran’s Union Square office 17