The Real Deal - New York Real Estate News

Developers pay $41M for retail center in one of Staten Island’s biggest-ever deals

Posted: 30 May 2018 02:59 PM PDT

A father-and-son team has purchased a retail center on Staten Island for $41 million, one of the the largest investment-sales deals in the borough’s history, The Real Deal has learned. Developers Murray and his son Dave Berman closed Wednesday on the purchase of South Shore Commons, an open-air retail center that spans approximately 140,000 square feet across six buildings. The complex contains 34 stores, with national retailers including GameStop, Panera Bread, Verizon and Famous Footwear. The seller is Guido Passarelli & Son, […]

Condo deconversions are all the rage in Chicago’s hot rental market – here’s why

Posted: 30 May 2018 02:50 PM PDT

Two years ago, Kelly Elmore was the only attorney at her firm dedicated to handling work stemming from condominium deconversions in Chicago. Today, that unit at the “condo law firm” Kovitz Shifrin Nesbit has 16 members — five of them attorneys. It represents a growing community of condo associations that vote to sell their buildings to investors, who then “deconvert” them and bring them to the rental market as apartments. Elmore said she’s closed 23 […]

Keller Williams’ Ilan Bracha said firm hit 900 agents – but many weren’t earning

Posted: 30 May 2018 02:20 PM PDT

When Keller Williams NYC launched in 2011, the goal was to grow as big as possible as fast as possible. But after reaching 900 agents, co-founder Ilan Bracha said the brokerage ended up with too many duds – agents who were eating up space and resources, but not doing deals. The danger of its hypergrowth-through-recruitment strategy became apparent earlier this year, when Bracha and his co-founder Haim Binstock took a hard look at the company […]

Cushman is planning to file for an IPO in June: sources

Posted: 30 May 2018 01:25 PM PDT

Cushman & Wakefield is gearing up to file for an initial public offering with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sometime in June, sources told The Real Deal. The global commercial brokerage has seriously considered going public for at least the past two years. The firm’s top executives, including chairman and CEO Brett White, reportedly held informal negotiations with banks last year and, in March, interviewed advisers to help prepare for it. The prospectus filing […]

Hamptons Cheat Sheet: Sag Harbor finalizes deal to build waterfront park where condos were once planned … & more

Posted: 30 May 2018 12:00 PM PDT

Sag Harbor finalizes deal to build waterfront park where condos were once planned Sag Harbor officials reached a deal last week with developer Jay Bialsky and Southampton Town that will help push the John Steinbeck Waterfront Park project forward. Southampton will use $10.5 million from its community preservation funds to buy the 1.25 acres from Bialsky, 27east reported. That land would link others to create a continuous waterfront park. Greystone Development was the previous site owner and […]

E&M looks to sell Washington Heights portfolio for $200M-plus

Posted: 30 May 2018 11:38 AM PDT

Irving Langer’s E&M Associates is looking to sell a nine-building portfolio in Washington Heights it bought just two years ago, sources told The Real Deal. The landlord, which is one of the city’s largest owners of multifamily housing, is asking between $200 million and $215 million for the buildings, the sources said. Most of the properties lie along St. Nicholas Avenue between West 164th and 192nd streets. The Iskander family’s Intervest Development Corp. sold the […]

The indestructible tenant? Why discount retailers are surviving the “e-pocalypse”

Posted: 30 May 2018 11:00 AM PDT

It’s been called the “e-pocalypse”: the closing of so many brick-and-mortar stores because customers would rather get what they need with a click. But not every retailer seems to be swept up in the destruction. Discount retailers, which sell everything from spaghetti sauce and shampoo to sweatshirts — sometimes for as little as $1 — are not turning off the lights for good, like department stores and others. They’re actually exploding in growth countrywide, experts […]

Joel Schreiber, RedSky land $104M refi for Williamsburg portfolio

Posted: 30 May 2018 10:30 AM PDT

RedSky Capital, JZ Capital Partners and Joel Schreiber’s Waterbridge Capital refinanced their Williamsburg residential-and-retail portfolio dubbed Redbridge with a $104 million loan, according to JLL, which brokered the deal. JPMorgan Chase provided the financing for the 85,000-square-foot portfolio. The properties are located at 237–241 Bedford Avenue, 247 Bedford Avenue, 160-164 North 4th Street and 159-173 North 3rd Street. Retail tenants include Apple, the Corcoran Group, Sephora and the Dig Inn. JLL’s Jonathan Schwartz, Aaron Appel, […]

Prepare your inboxes for The Real Deal’s national real estate news roundup

Posted: 30 May 2018 10:00 AM PDT

The Real Deal’s National Weekly Roundup features the top real estate news from the biggest cities in the U.S. The newsletter includes a must-have mix of market analysis, breaking deal news, inside info on what’s happening on the brokerages scenes across the U.S. and much more. Sign up here to join 200,000 subscribers, including residential and commercial brokers, developers, lenders, general contractors, architects and other industry professionals. Please note: If you are using a company […]

City struggles to find a site in the Bronx for jail development

Posted: 30 May 2018 09:30 AM PDT

Rikers Island is closing, but finding a site in the Bronx for a new jail is proving to be a difficult task. The location needs to be finalized over the next few months for the city to meet its deadline of starting the public-review process for all borough jail locations by the end of 2018, according to Crain’s. They are currently looking at two sites in the Bronx, but both come with problems. One site […]

Chinese publisher to add 16 floors in Midtown hotel conversion

Posted: 30 May 2018 09:00 AM PDT

Chinese publisher WanXin Media is moving ahead with plans to convert the office building at 7-15 West 44th Street into a hotel, a permit application filed with the Department of Building on Tuesday shows. The company will build on an additional 16 floors, bringing the height up from 12 stories to 28, according to the plans. WanXin’s hotel is set to hold 155 rooms in 90,375 square feet, indicating larger than average rooms for a […]

Developers, good luck trying to go all out in Central Harlem

Posted: 30 May 2018 08:30 AM PDT

The Landmarks Preservation Commission voted unanimously Tuesday to create a new historic district between Lenox Avenue and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard and between West 130th and 132nd Streets. The district has about 164 buildings, and is notable for its 19th century row houses in Renaissance Revival, Romanesque Revival, Queen Anne and neo-Grec styles. The move is likely to irk developers. “There is a lot of history tied to these buildings, from the Harlem Renaissance […]

No joke: Mel Brooks renting LA home for $135K per month

Posted: 30 May 2018 06:46 AM PDT

In some parts of the country, you could buy a nice house with $270,000. But in Malibu it’ll only get you a couple months of rent. That and a lifetime claim that comedy legend Mel Brooks was once your landlord. The 91-year-old actor, writer, and producer has listed his longtime Malibu home for rent this July and August for $135,000 per month, according to Variety. Brooks and his late wife, actress Anne Bancroft, bought the […]

4.5 million homeowners are still underwater on their mortgages post-crisis

Posted: 30 May 2018 06:15 AM PDT

Almost 4.5 million U.S. households are underwater on their mortgages a decade after the housing crisis. About 9.1 percent of households owed more than their homes are worth in the fourth quarter of 2017, Bloomberg reported Tuesday. And about 713,000 owe at least twice as much as their property’s value, the report said, citing Zillow data. The percentage is declining, but those in areas with stagnant property values are “trapped in their homes with no […]

Design firm CallisonRTKL takes floor at Woolworth Building

Posted: 30 May 2018 05:05 AM PDT

Design and architecture consultancy CallisonRTKL signed a lease for the entire 16th floor of the Woolworth Building. The company would occupy about 28,100 square feet for 10 years at 233 Broadway, the New York Post reported. CallisonRTKL is relocating from two floors at 148 Lafayette Street. The asking rent is $57.50 per square foot. CallisonRTKL, which designs for companies including Nordstrom, was represented by Mitchell Konsker and David Dusek of JLL. The ownership group of […]

Mapping the RE holdings of NYC universities

Posted: 30 May 2018 04:30 AM PDT

 When Seth Pinsky spent his first year at Columbia University in 1989, the school had to work a lot harder to persuade students that its Upper Manhattan location was a safe place. “Their whole pitch was: We have a real campus, unlike other schools in New York. You can be safe here. We have control of our immediate neighborhood, so we make sure that nothing too scary happens in Morningside Heights,” the RXR Realty executive and […]

The retail rent test: Arbitrator to decide how much Barneys’ Madison Ave. store is worth

Posted: 30 May 2018 04:00 AM PDT

As the divide widens over an appropriate rent for prime ground-floor retail digs, a landlord and a retailer are deadlocked in a duel on the streets of Madison Avenue. The dispute between Barneys, the retailer with racks lined with high-end brands, and Ashkenazy Acquisition Corporation over the 230,000-square-foot flagship store at in the Upper East Side is nearing a conclusion, with the landlord seeking to triple the rent. An arbitrator was assigned last year after […]