The Real Deal - New York Real Estate News

Feds seize pill-pushing doc’s Brooklyn condo

Posted: 08 Jul 2022 10:54 AM PDT

The feds have given an oxycodone-pushing doctor a bitter pill to swallow. U.S. Marshals have taken possession of a condo in Kensington, Brooklyn, that belonged to disgraced physician Lazar Feygin, property records filed Wednesday show. The apartment is one of several properties seized from Feygin, 75, who served time in Rikers Island after pleading guilty in 2019 to felony charges related to an alleged oxycodone “pill mill” run from his Brooklyn offices. While he reportedly

Seritage Growth Properties looks to sell off all assets

Posted: 08 Jul 2022 09:45 AM PDT

Sears spinoff Seritage Growth Properties could sell all of its assets and dissolve as its deadline to pay off a loan from Warren Buffett’s firm nears. The company’s board has recommended a plan to liquidate its properties and return the proceeds to shareholders, according to a proxy filing released on Thursday. The plan requires a two-thirds vote from shareholders, but it is already about halfway there. Eddie Lampert, the former chairman of Seritage, exchanged his

Tri-state deal roundup: Affordable housing, multifamily sale, hospital conversion

Posted: 08 Jul 2022 09:00 AM PDT

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul makes her tri-state deal roundup debut this week by handing out more than $100 million for affordable housing developments. One of them is Baldwin Commons in Hempstead. Park Grove Development scored $3.1 million for the 33-unit project near the hamlet’s Long Island Rail Road station. The development has already been supported by a $10 million award from a statewide initiative. Newsday reported the 32,000-square-foot development at 785 Merrick Road still

Brooklyn landlord forced to return $300k to tenants

Posted: 08 Jul 2022 08:00 AM PDT

Small security deposits are adding up to big trouble for a Brooklyn landlord. New York Attorney General Letitia Jame on Thursday announced an agreement with SGW Properties to return nearly $300,000 of security deposits to tenants. James found the company, founded by Yeshaya Wasserman in 2008, didn’t comply with a 2019 change to the rental law that required a written, itemized list of reasons for a withheld security deposit. SGW will return the security deposits

Saudi retail magnate relists 432 Park Avenue penthouse

Posted: 08 Jul 2022 06:45 AM PDT

Saudi retail magnate Fawaz Alhokair is once again trying to sell his pricey penthouse at 432 Park Avenue. Alhokair last year listed the unit for $170 million, an ask that would have made it one of the most expensive sales in city history if it fetched even close to that price. However, the highest unit in the supertall is back on the market, with a new brokerage in tow. Tal and Oren Alexander, fresh off

Rudin moves ahead with office building at 415 Madison Avenue

Posted: 08 Jul 2022 05:45 AM PDT

UPDATED July 8, 2022, 10:56 a.m.: Despite the Manhattan office market’s cloudy future, the Rudin family is moving ahead with plans for a new Midtown office building — one that looks 55,000 square feet larger than it did two years ago, although the project hasn’t actually grown. Rudin Management filed a permit application last week to build a 342,000-square-foot, 40-story tower at 415 Madison Avenue, as first reported by PincusCo. It would replace a 24-story

Isaac Chetrit nears $350M loan for Midtown project

Posted: 08 Jul 2022 05:00 AM PDT

Eli and Isaac Chetrit are closing in on a $350 million construction loan to build a 69-story tower in the Garment District. The Chetrits, along with Ray Yadidi of Sioni Group, are seeking to use the loan to raise their 300-unit residential tower at 989-993 Sixth Avenue, according to a source familiar with the deal. The loan has yet to appear in property records. The group plans to demolish a 21-story office building at 989

How LA’s short-term rental stars cater to the rich and famous

Posted: 08 Jul 2022 04:30 AM PDT

It’s midsummer in Southern California — boom time for local real estate agents who serve celebrities, Saudi royals, off-season sports stars and others in the short-term, tall-order luxury rental niche. It’s a slice of business that carries the reputation of being a big moneymaker and a source of major headaches. Veterans confirm that luxe short-term leases can charge double or triple what long-term ones do. Just don’t call it easy money, said Patrick Michael, founder

Mystery buyer drops $76M on Crown Building condo

Posted: 08 Jul 2022 04:00 AM PDT

A gem fit for a king just traded hands at the Crown Building. A mystery buyer linked to an offshore shell company paid $76 million for an apartment at Aman New York, OKO Group’s luxury condo and hotel project at 730 Fifth Avenue, records show. Working through Albatross Apartment LLC, the buyer purchased what appears to be a full-floor unit, according to the development’s condo declaration. Public records tie the LLC to Zedra Trust Company,

Bloodbath: Mortgage industry keeps cutting staff

Posted: 07 Jul 2022 02:35 PM PDT

The giant sucking sound in the home loan industry grew louder Wednesday when Sprout Mortgage told employees it’s going out of business. The company broke the news to its more than 300 staffers during a conference call Wednesday, according to HousingWire. A former employee of the Long Island-based mortgage lender told the publication that Sprout had already slashed its workforce several times. Sprout’s closure comes a week after Texas-based First Guarantee Mortgage essentially shuttered operations

Revlon trying to escape pricey leases at 200 Park Avenue South

Posted: 07 Jul 2022 01:55 PM PDT

Revlon’s financial struggles are spreading beyond the makeup aisle and into the city’s office market. The bankrupt beauty conglomerate has asked a judge to terminate office and retail leases of its subsidiary Elizabeth Arden at ABS Partners’ Everett Building at 200 Park Avenue South, Crain’s reported. Elizabeth Arden, which Revlon acquired for $870 million in 2016, occupies nearly 36,000 square feet of offices at the Union Square building and a 10,000-square-foot, ground-floor retail space —

Mortgage rates falling back toward 5%

Posted: 07 Jul 2022 11:30 AM PDT

Suddenly, a 5.3 percent mortgage seems low. That was the average rate on a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage this week, the Wall Street Journal reported. The average rate was a significant drop from last week, when Freddie Mac had the average rate at 5.7 percent, and mid June, when it surpassed 6 percent. Still, it is much higher than at the beginning of the year, when homeowners enjoyed an average rate of 3.22 percent. Last week’s

Free at last: Carpenters union nearly rid of court-appointed monitor

Posted: 07 Jul 2022 10:30 AM PDT

After nearly 30 years of court supervision, the city’s largest construction union just moved a step closer to shedding its corruption monitor. A federal judge recently signed off on reducing the role of the New York City District Council of Carpenters’ overseer, who will now intervene in union affairs on an “as needed” basis. The monitor will also no longer be involved with the union’s benefit funds. Joseph Geiger, the union’s executive secretary-treasurer, said the

NYC cinema owner racks up Airbnb fines in Montauk

Posted: 07 Jul 2022 09:30 AM PDT

For some city dwellers who long dreamed of owning a Hamptons vacation home but were dissuaded by the expense, Airbnb became the financial bridge that made it possible. Short-term rentals through the platform could cover the mortgage and operating costs, yet leave enough time for the owners to enjoy the house on days it didn’t rent. But East End towns were not so enamored of the concept. Renters who stayed for a month or the

Criterion sells LIC self-storage for $80M

Posted: 07 Jul 2022 08:30 AM PDT

A few years after Shibber Khan’s Criterion Group first explored selling a Long Island City site on Northern Boulevard, the firm has finally executed a deal. Criterion sold the commercial unit at 31-08 Northern Boulevard to the Carlyle Group for $80 million, public records show. The commercial condo unit spans 180,000 square feet, occupying part of the building’s first floor and the entirety of the remaining floors. The Queens-based development firm bought the development site

Acclaimed restaurateurs claim street-level spot at Tishman Speyer’s Spiral

Posted: 07 Jul 2022 07:30 AM PDT

Tishman Speyer continues to fill out the space in its Spiral, welcoming acclaimed restaurateurs into the fold at its Hudson Yards tower. The team behind the Llama Inn in Williamsburg and Llama San in the West Village are leasing a 6,000-square-foot street level space at 66 Hudson Boulevard, the New York Business Journal reported. The restaurant will have both an indoor dining room and outdoor seating. Terms of the lease were not disclosed. Annual asking

Can AmTrust’s new president make aging office buildings cool?

Posted: 07 Jul 2022 06:30 AM PDT

Nobody wants aging office towers — including the people who run them. When Jonathan Bennett arrived at AmTrust Realty as president last fall after a decade working for the Nakash family, he assumed responsibility for 12 million square feet of mostly boring, dated office buildings. Some are a quarter empty. Others are the cold, unwelcoming homes of government agencies. One, he discovered, has an untouched 1980s-era Bally Total Fitness on one of its upper floors,

The anti-NY strategy: LA transit buys land to stop gentrification

Posted: 07 Jul 2022 05:45 AM PDT

Construction of rail stations often sparks adjacent high-end development and rent increases that price out mom-and-pop operators and low-wage earners. Now L.A. Metro plans to bank land to prevent such gentrification. It’s a decidedly different approach to that taken by New York City, which funded the extension of the No. 7 train to Hudson Yards by issuing bonds to be repaid by the higher property taxes generated by the $2.4 billion project. The Metropolitan Transportation

East Hampton to buy 28 acres around Lake Montauk

Posted: 07 Jul 2022 05:00 AM PDT

The Town of East Hampton is looking to protect Lake Montauk from further development by purchasing tracts of land around it. The town board has proposed buying two separate parcels of land totaling 28 acres, 27East reported. The purchases would total about $9 million and would come out of the Community Preservation Fund, which receives 2 percent of property sales and was left flush with cash by the surging market. The board already authorized the

Ben Ashkenazy goes on the offensive

Posted: 07 Jul 2022 04:30 AM PDT

Listening to Ben Ashkenazy’s lawyer, you might think the real estate mogul was living out the plot of “Air Force One.” “The lender has come in like a hijacker and thrown them out of the pilot seat and said, we now drive this 747 … get out,” attorney David Ross said at a May court hearing. Ross took to the skies in his argument, but the property in question was in fact one of the

Slip slidin’ away: Paul Simon sells New Canaan estate at loss

Posted: 07 Jul 2022 04:00 AM PDT

The sound of silence might have marked the closing as Paul Simon sold his 32-acre Connecticut estate for significantly less money than he paid for it. Simon and his wife, fellow musician Edie Brickell, sold the New Canaan property at 82 Brookwood Lane on July 1 for $10.8 million, Dirt reported. The price was well below the $16.5 million the couple shelled out for the property two decades ago. Selling the home, which is miles