The Real Deal - New York Real Estate News

Judge tosses 250 Bowery fraud charges against Douglas Elliman

Posted: 25 Jun 2018 03:05 PM PDT

A New York Supreme Court judge tossed fraud and false advertising charges against Douglas Elliman over the sale of allegedly damaged apartments at 250 Bowery. Fraud charges against the developer, VE Equities, its co-defendants were also dismissed last week, but VE still faces charges of negligence. The condominium board at 250 Bowery filed a lawsuit against VE, Douglas Elliman and Morris Adjmi Architects in February 2017 after a water pipe burst and damaged several apartments. […]

Bob Knakal out at Cushman

Posted: 25 Jun 2018 02:44 PM PDT

Bob Knakal is out at Cushman & Wakefield. Three-and-a-half years after Cushman acquired Massey Knakal Realty Services, the brokerage severed ties with the investment-sales broker. “Cushman & Wakefield terminated its relationship with Bob Knakal effective immediately,” a company spokesperson told The Real Deal Monday afternoon. Knakal could not be immediately reached for comment, and the circumstances of his departure were not clear. The broker, along with business partner Paul Massey, built his firm into the […]

Second-home buyers are blurring boundary lines in the Hamptons

Posted: 25 Jun 2018 01:30 PM PDT

With a lack of affordable options in the old, moneyed Hamptons and traffic only getting worse, a bevy of small towns on the edges of the Long Island enclave are seeing more interest from buyers. And brokers are taking note. “I’ve opened up and broadened my horizons a little bit to become more of an expert in some of the outlying areas,” said Brown Harris Stevens broker Cynthia Barrett. “They’re offering so much more to […]

Too late: Loft Law left alone despite compromise bill

Posted: 25 Jun 2018 01:05 PM PDT

Though tenant advocates and landlords cut a deal to change the state’s Loft Law, the legislation didn’t gain enough support in Albany before the session ended last week. The Loft Law was first enacted in the 1980s to require owners of certain industrial buildings in Manhattan that were illegally occupied by artists to bring the properties up to code and enter them into rent regulation. The law was then applied to parts of Brooklyn and […]

Senate kills bill that would have paved way for larger buildings in NYC

Posted: 25 Jun 2018 12:39 PM PDT

The state Senate has quashed a bill that would have made it significantly easier for developers to build taller, denser residential buildings in New York City. Legislators voted down a bill that would have eliminated the residential floor area ratio, which has been set at 12 since 1961, according to Brownstoner. A similar proposal also failed to pass in 2015 and 2016. Bill S6760 would have allowed for exceptions to the cap if “otherwise provided […]

Here’s what the $10M-$20M NYC investment sales market looked like last week

Posted: 25 Jun 2018 12:00 PM PDT

In the world of mid-market New York City investment sales last week, the King’s College bought the Riff Downtown Hotel and the Turtle Bay Music School bought two commercial condominium units at the Corinthian. 1.) The King’s College bought the Riff Downtown Hotel in the Financial District for $19.2 million, or $1,129 per square foot. The property, located at 102 Greenwich Street, is a 17,000-square foot, 36-key hotel just one block south of the World […]

WATCH: Jean Nouvel on fitting 53W53 into NYC’s skyline, architecture as art and more

Posted: 25 Jun 2018 11:35 AM PDT

The architect behind 53 West 53rd wanted the tower to be synonymous with New York City, to be a building that couldn’t easily be slipped into another skyline. “A worldwide catastrophe today is the number of buildings that are parachuted because they were preconceived. Offices, housing, shopping malls all look the same,” Jean Nouvel told The Real Deal, translated from French. “If you travel around the world you won’t know where you are because buildings […]

Why more and more investors turning to real estate syndication

Posted: 25 Jun 2018 11:00 AM PDT

When the equity for what would become New York City’s tallest residential skyscraper came together, it looked less like a partnership than a billionaire boys club. More than 200 ultra-high-net-worth investors crowded into the capital stack for a piece of 432 Park Avenue, CIM Group and Macklowe Properties project that sought to oust One57 as the city’s priciest condominium. Over a frenetic three weeks in 2012, Citibank raised $400 million from more than 200 clients […]

Sales of new homes in the US jumped in May, but…

Posted: 25 Jun 2018 10:30 AM PDT

Nationwide sales of new homes soared in May, thanks almost entirely to activity the South. Purchases of new single-family homes rose 6.7 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 689,000, according to the Commerce Department. That’s much higher than the 0.9 percent expected by economists, according to the Wall Street Journal. The growth is largely thanks to the 17.9 percent rise in sales in the South, which is the largest gain since […]

Long Island Cheat Sheet: Designer’s Oyster Bay home lists for $19.5M … & more

Posted: 25 Jun 2018 10:00 AM PDT

Designer Oleg Cassini’s home in Oyster Bay lists for $19.5M The onetime home of Oleg Cassini, who designed clothes for Jacqueline Onassis, has hit the market for $19.5 million, Newsday reported. The late designer’s widow recently landed in jail amid a protracted legal dispute over his fortune. The Italian Rennaissance style mansion, which was built in 1915, sits on 43.5 acres and has 14 bedrooms and eight-and-a-half bathrooms. It also features a pool, tennis court, […]

Consumer watchdog rules out legal action of Zillow ad program

Posted: 25 Jun 2018 08:41 AM PDT

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will not take legal action against Zillow Group over potential kickbacks in its co-marketing program, the Seattle-based listings giant said Monday. The consumer watchdog, which opened an investigation in 2015, ended its probe of a program that lets agents and lenders share marketing costs. The CFPB had been looking at allegations that the program violated the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA), which prohibits business referrals in exchange for […]

Here are the week’s top luxury sales

Posted: 25 Jun 2018 08:00 AM PDT

Each week, The Real Deal and CityRealty look back at Manhattan’s priciest apartment sales.

Inside the house of Lennar: Where will the nation’s biggest homebuilder turn next?

Posted: 25 Jun 2018 07:30 AM PDT

UPDATED: June 22, 4:43 p.m.: The last decade of Stuart Miller’s 20-year-plus tenure as CEO of Lennar was one for the books. Before announcing his move into the role of executive chairman this past April, the Miami native — and the company — had weathered some significantly stormy weather. Miller led Lennar through one of the worst housing collapses in U.S. history, fended off an alleged extortion scheme by a convicted fraudster and grew the […]

Brooklyn luxury market saw 14 contracts signed last week

Posted: 25 Jun 2018 07:15 AM PDT

There were 14 contracts signed in Brooklyn’s luxury market last week, split between four condominiums and 10 houses. The properties sold with a cumulative listing price of $40.4 million overall and went for an average price of about $2.9 million, according to the latest report from Stribling & Associates. The firm defines Brooklyn’s luxury market as all homes priced at $2 million or more. This was a slower week than the prior one, when 17 […]

This is the fastest-growing BK nabe

Posted: 25 Jun 2018 06:30 AM PDT

Apartment prices in Bushwick have jumped faster than any other New York City neighborhood over the past decade. The median price of $788,700 in the trendy Brooklyn neighborhood is 84 percent higher than it was in 2008, according to data from Trulia cited by Bloomberg. As neighborhoods like the Lower East Side and Williamsburg became too pricey, buyers started looking deeper in Brooklyn. “As Williamsburg flourished, Bushwick was discovered,” New York University urban planning professor […]

Why a veteran with $3,600-a-month housing stipend struggled to find housing in NYC

Posted: 25 Jun 2018 06:04 AM PDT

One U.S. Air Force veteran with a $3,600-a-month housing budget had to become homeless before he could find a place to live in the city. Alex Donahue, 31, moved to the city to attend the City University of New York, and had a monthly housing allowance from the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill. But he had difficulty finding an apartment, because his housing allowance – along with additional veteran’s compensation – comes tax free. So on paper, […]

TOMS Shoes to open first Brooklyn store

Posted: 25 Jun 2018 05:47 AM PDT

TOMS Shoes is opening its first location in Brooklyn. The company, famous for its program of giving one pair of shoes to a needy child with every purchase, signed a lease for 1,500 square feet at RedSky Capital’s 160 North 4th Street in Williamsburg. The asking rent in the deal was $250 per square foot, according to Isaacs and Company, which represented the tenant. Isaacs and Company’s Trever Gallina said TOMS targeted the Williamsburg corridor […]

Manhattan’s luxe resi market saw an unexpected boost last week: Olshan

Posted: 25 Jun 2018 05:07 AM PDT

Manhattan’s luxury residential market experienced an unexpected shot in the arm last week, recording 33 contracts at $4 million and up, according to Olshan Realty’s weekly market report. It was the strongest third week of June on record since Olshan started keeping track in 2006. An Upper East Side townhouse at 110 East 76th Street snagged the week’s No. 1 spot with an asking price of $51 million. The 15,000-square-foot home is one of six […]

Does FiDi have too many condos?

Posted: 25 Jun 2018 04:30 AM PDT

The Financial District has undoubtedly come a long way since the turn of the millennium, when its streets went dark at the end of the workday. But while it’s had plenty of cheerleaders pushing to make it a more 24/7 neighborhood with a better residential-commercial split, the question now might be: Does it have too many condos? There are more new condos set to come online over the next few years in the Financial District […]

City Council members accepted thousands of dollars from hotel union ahead of Airbnb bill vote: report

Posted: 25 Jun 2018 04:00 AM PDT

A new report released by Airbnb shows that City Council members who backed legislation to regulate the home-sharing service and others like it accepted tens of thousands of dollars in contributions from a powerful hotel lobby. According to the report, Council members Keith Powers and Laurie Cumbo received the most from the New York Hotel Trades Council, each accepting nearly $115,000 during the 2013 and 2017 election cycles. For both members, the sum represented a […]