The Real Deal - New York Real Estate News

Brookland won’t meet upcoming bond payments; stalls trading in Tel Aviv

Posted: 12 Nov 2018 03:00 PM PST

Boaz Gilad’s Brookland Capital won’t meet its upcoming debt obligations in Israel, the company announced Monday evening, after halting trading on its bonds earlier in the day. Gilad said in a statement that due to a series of delays and increased costs, the rate of development on their dozens of projects in Brooklyn had slowed to the point that they could not meet their bond payments starting next year. Gilad owes bondholders a total of […]

Netscape co-founder James Clark sells Palm Beach home for $90M

Posted: 12 Nov 2018 02:30 PM PST

Netscape’s co-founder just sold a 5-acre estate for close to $90 million to Kathryn and Leo A. Vecellio Jr., marking the second-highest real estate home sale in Palm Beach’s history, according to the Palm Beach Daily News. The off-the-market deal was brokered by Lawrence Moens of Lawrence Moens Associates. It is the largest residential sale in Palm Beach this year. The oceanfront property, known as Il Palmetto sits at 1500 South Ocean Boulevard. It has […]

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

Posted: 12 Nov 2018 01:45 PM PST

In the world of mid-market New York City investment sales last week, Premier Equities bought a Soho commercial condo and investor Elliot Sohayegh sold a Hell’s Kitchen building. 1.) Premier Equities bought a commercial condo unit in SoHo for $14.3 million. The firm, headed by Yaron Jacobi and Uzi ben-Abraham, paid $14.3 million for a 2859-square-foot space at the ground floor of Atlas Capital Group’s 42 Crosby Street. Atlas Capital, the seller in the transaction, […]

Douglas Elliman launches new platform to boost new dev business

Posted: 12 Nov 2018 01:00 PM PST

Douglas Elliman is turning to tech to give its agents a leg up in the new development market. Elliman and Knight Frank Residential, which are global partners, are launching a new platform to centralize information and marketing tools for new dev projects. Dubbed FOLIO, the new initiative launched Monday and will be available to the roughly 21,500 agents across both firms. FOLIO has been about two years in the making, and its launch comes as […]

Tempers flare at meeting between REBNY and resi brokerage chiefs

Posted: 12 Nov 2018 12:30 PM PST

If the Real Estate Board of New York were a restaurant, the city’s top residential brokers have long felt they’re seated near the kitchen. Those old feelings resurfaced last month at a closed-door meeting between brokerage chiefs and REBNY president John Banks. Tempers flared, and Douglas Elliman chairman Howard Lorber, saying he’d had enough, stormed out of the room. “They got the message, let’s put it that way,” said one brokerage CEO in attendance. Reached […]

Upper Manhattan, Bronx multifamily portfolio trades for $60M

Posted: 12 Nov 2018 11:45 AM PST

A trio of families sold a portfolio of multifamily buildings in the Bronx and Upper Manhattan they had owned for more than 30 years for $60 million. MGS Associates — a partnership between the Martinez, Gaveau and Saint-Cyr families — sold the portfolio of 14 properties, which spans 341 units across more than 320,000 square feet, the families’ broker told The Real Deal. “They’re three different families across multiple generations, and they just reached a […]

Kauai estate becomes Hawaii’s most expensive single-family home

Posted: 12 Nov 2018 11:00 AM PST

The former head of Morgan Stanley’s Asia Pacific operations just sold his 15-acre estate for $46.1 million, marking the most-expensive single-family home ever sold in Hawaii. The waterfront property, known as Hale ‘Ae Kai on the island of Kauai, hit the market more than a year ago in May 2017 for $70 million, according to the Wall Street Journal. It sits on Hawaii’s North Shore near the small town of Kilauea. The seller is a trust […]

Here are the week’s top luxury sales

Posted: 12 Nov 2018 10:30 AM PST

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

Long Island Cheat Sheet: Pending home sales in Nassau and Suffolk counties bounce back in October … & more

Posted: 12 Nov 2018 10:00 AM PST

Pending home sales in Nassau and Suffolk counties bounce back The number of pending home sales in October managed to rebound after a drop in September, Long Island Business News reported. Nassau and Suffolk counties saw 2,806 homes contracted for sale. That’s a 4.4 percent increase from the 2,686 homes contracted for sale during the same month last year. Pending sales in Nassau rose by 6.5 percent to 1,221 from the 1,146 in October 2017. […]

FBE flips Inwood site for more than doubled what it paid

Posted: 12 Nov 2018 09:30 AM PST

Abraham Fructhandler’s FBE Limited just sold an Inwood development site for more than twice what it paid in April. Brooklyn-based development firm Hello Living bought 4650 Broadway for $55 million, more than twice the $26 million FBE paid in to buy the site in April. Hello Living is planning a mixed-use development with 272 residential units on the site, which offers 370,000 buildable square feet. The building will be called “Hello Broadway” once it’s completed. […]

Brooklyn’s luxury market notched $44M in contracts signed last week

Posted: 12 Nov 2018 09:00 AM PST

There were 15 contracts signed in the Brooklyn luxury market last week, split between nine townhouses and six condos. The properties sold for about $43.7 million overall and went for an average price of roughly $2.9 million, according to the latest report from Stribling & Associates. The firm defines the borough’s luxury market as all homes priced at $2 million or higher. That’s up from the week before, when just 11 contracts were signed for […]

Deadly Woolsey Fire burns famous properties, could worsen with strong winds

Posted: 12 Nov 2018 08:30 AM PST

Firefighters worked throughout Sunday to contain two wildfires in Southern California ahead of what is expected to be a period of high winds that threaten containment efforts. As of Sunday night, the Woolsey Fire had spread to 85,550 acres and was 15 percent contained, according to the Los Angeles Times. The Hill fire, the smaller of the two, has burned 4,531 acres in Ventura County and is 75 percent contained. At one point on Friday, […]

Calling all subscribers: Get the scoop on co-working during our next conference call

Posted: 12 Nov 2018 08:00 AM PST

Join The Real Deal’s editorial staff on Tuesday, November 13 at 2 p.m. for our next subscribers-only conference call. TRD’s senior content director, Jill Noonan will talk to reporters Konrad Putzier and Will Parker about our November cover story, which explores New York’s co-working boom and how the industry is going more corporate (besides those who are keeping it cool.) Do you have questions about the future of co-working? What would you like to know about TRD’s […]

Trump likely to take lead on Fannie/Freddie reform now that Dems control the House

Posted: 12 Nov 2018 07:44 AM PST

With control in Congress split following last week’s midterm elections, the Trump administration is likely to take its own steps to overhaul Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The White House is expected to consider steps to reduce the government’s role in backstopping the mortgage industry as Trump nominates a successor in the coming weeks to the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the Wall Street Journal reported. The administration is limited as to what […]

Manhattan’s luxe resi market records 20+ contracts for third week in a row

Posted: 12 Nov 2018 06:45 AM PST

Manhattan’s luxury residential market notched more than 20 contracts for the third week in a row, according to Olshan Realty’s weekly market report. Twenty-one contracts were signed at $4 million and up last week. The Time Warner Center’s unit 72C was the week’s priciest deal, with an asking price of $17.95 million. That’s a reduction of more than 25 percent off the $24.5 million the four-bedroom apartment at 80 Columbus Circle had been asking when […]

Cuomo looking to go around City Council to pave way for Amazon’s Long Island City HQ

Posted: 12 Nov 2018 06:05 AM PST

Gov. Andrew Cuomo is likely to turn to a controversial planning process used on projects like Atlantic Yards and the World Trade Center in order to push forward Amazon’s potential headquarters in Queens. The Cuomo administration is planning to create what’s known as a general project plan to rezone a roughly 20-acre site around the Anable Basin on the Long Island City waterfront to pave the way for a sprawling office and mixed-use campus, Crain’s […]

City officials conduct one of the largest Airbnb raids at Far West Side condo building

Posted: 12 Nov 2018 05:35 AM PST

The city’s Airbnb enforcement officials raided the Far West Side Atelier condominium last month, handing out nearly two dozen violations to owners who allegedly rented out apartments on the home-sharing site. And the crackdown — one of the largest yet on short-term rentals — could be a sign of what’s to come as the city gets tough on sites like Airbnb. Officials last month issued violations to 20 different condo owners — two of whom […]

Former Town exec Melissa True is now leading agent development and recruitment at Elliman

Posted: 12 Nov 2018 05:00 AM PST

As agents increasingly hop from one brokerage to the next, Douglas Elliman is doubling down on recruitment and retention efforts — and enlisting former Town Residential executive Melissa True to carry out the mission. True has joined Elliman as “senior manager of culture and careers” in New York City, the brokerage said. In the newly created role, True will focus on boosting agent productivity and helping grow headcount at New York’s largest brokerage, which has […]

SL Green is buying back $2 billion of its shares — is it rolling the dice?

Posted: 12 Nov 2018 04:30 AM PST

When it comes to buying New York City trophy towers, SL Green Realty is about as aggressive as they come. But lately the mega-landlord is also spending money on something other than prime Manhattan property — it’s buying up itself. On the heels of a stock performance slump among real estate investment trusts, SL Green recently kicked off a share buyback strategy that has rarely been done on such a large scale with public companies […]

Compass agents put $20M in commission toward buying company stock options

Posted: 12 Nov 2018 04:00 AM PST

Masa Son’s investment in Compass is apparently worth imitating. More than 1,000 agents at the SoftBank-backed brokerage have invested a portion — or in some cases, all — of their commission dollars into stock options totaling more than $20 million, the company said. Although Compass has offered lucrative bonuses and equity to attract talent, CEO Robert Reffkin said the Agent Equity Program was the company’s response to agents who wanted to invest a portion of […]