The Real Deal - New York Real Estate News

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac financing riskier mortgages to indebted homeowners

Posted: 13 May 2019 03:30 PM PDT

Amid a nationwide housing slowdown, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have increasingly backed more home mortgages to Americans steeped in debt. About 30 percent of loans that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac packaged into bonds in 2018 went to home buyers whose debt payments totaled 43 percent of their incomes, according to Inside Mortgage Finance, the Wall Street Journal reported. This was double the amount of mortgages the two backed in 2015. Critics say that […]

David Marx wants to buy a Queens dev site from his own company – if bondholders let him

Posted: 13 May 2019 03:27 PM PDT

A few months after putting one three-acre Queens development site on the market, David Marx’s MDG Real Estate is looking to sell another large site — to Marx himself. In what Tel Aviv Stock Exchange filings describe as an “exceptional” or “unusual” deal, Marx is offering roughly $54 million to take two adjacent vacant plots, located between Parsons Boulevard and Park Avenue in Flushing, off the hands of his British Virgin Islands-registered holding company, MDG […]

Miami investor starts crypto platform for real estate investment

Posted: 13 May 2019 03:00 PM PDT

Miami real estate investor Remy Jacobson is a cryptocurrency enthusiast. But when the Initial Coin Offering – the crypto equivalent of an IPO – craze came and ended at the start of 2018, Jacobson and his brother, Marc-Jean, wanted to create a way the average investor could invest in digital currencies in a less volatile way. The Jacobsons launched a crowdfunding platform called RealT that allows cryptocurrency investors to invest in real estate assets, starting […]

Home sales up nearly 10% as Nassau and Suffolk inventory swells, Airbnb hosts could make $255K during PGA event & more Long Island real estate news

Posted: 13 May 2019 02:45 PM PDT

Long Island home sales up nearly 10 percent as inventory swells In Nassau and Suffolk counties, pending home sales increased 9.6 percent in April when compared to the same time in 2018, according to Long Island Business News, which cited data from the Multiple Listing Service of Long Island. Suffolk had 1,868 pending home sales in April, up 12.9 percent from the 1,655 that traded in April 2018. Similarly, Nassau’s 1,336 home sales last month […]

Trio of Manhattan buildings up for sale following claims of mismanagement

Posted: 13 May 2019 02:15 PM PDT

Three Midtown Manhattan rental buildings are hitting the market thanks to a lawsuit between the partners that own them. The buildings are located at 65 West 55th Street, 155 East 55th Street and 210 East 58th Street, according to Crain’s. They contain about 240 apartments altogether, roughly half of which are rent regulated, and about 100,000 square feet of office space, retail and parking. Investor Alvin Dworman filed suit against his ownership partners at the […]

Day in the life of: Jeremy Moss

Posted: 13 May 2019 02:00 PM PDT

Jeremy Moss, 44, is an executive vice president and the head of leasing at Silverstein Properties, which means his life mostly revolves around Lower Manhattan and the World Trade Center these days. The private real estate firm, founded by Larry Silverstein in 1957, is the leading sponsor of the six-tower redevelopment project — which has overcome several notable setbacks — and has inked leases with a handful of growing office tenants in recent years. Those […]

WeWork’s reign of FiDi continues with 50K sf lease for headquarters division

Posted: 13 May 2019 01:00 PM PDT

WeWork’s portfolio in the Financial District portfolio expanded again after the firm took another 50,000 square feet on Wall Street. The firm signed lease at the Pyne family’s 30 Wall Street for its headquarters by WeWork platform, which provides space to mid-size tenants free of WeWork branding, the company said Monday. It signed up for floors two through six and the 11th floor in the 108,000 square foot building. Asking rents were not divulged. It […]

These are some of the most notable resi sales of the week

Posted: 13 May 2019 12:30 PM PDT

Some of the residential deals in New York City last week that caught our eyes included an upgrade at a NoMad condominium and the sale of a townhouse that, in its heyday, held parties that drew out royal guests. Source: A TRD review of public records filed with the New York City Department of Finance from May 6 to May 10. Kevin Oram, co-founder of Praesidium Investment Management, and Iliana Pappas are trading up at […]

Fortis blames contractor Pizzarotti for leaning Seaport tower

Posted: 13 May 2019 11:45 AM PDT

Fortis Property Group is firing back against Pizzarotti, blaming the construction company for a series of delays and a “misalignment condition” at its luxury Seaport condominium project. The developer filed counterclaims against Pizzarotti in New York Supreme Court on Friday, alleging that the company didn’t properly survey the project at 161 Maiden Lane, resulting in a “slight misalignment” of the building on its north side. The issue was exacerbated by a series of delays at […]

Kaufman Org lands $120M refinancing for Madison Square portfolio

Posted: 13 May 2019 11:15 AM PDT

The Kaufman Organization refinanced a portfolio of four office buildings in the Flatiron District and NoMad with a $120 million loan from Capital One. The loan comes with a three-year term on the Madison Square Portfolio — formerly part of the Ring Portfolio — representatives for Kaufman told The Real Deal. Michael Kazmierski, director of acquisitions for Kaufman New Ventures, said the portfolio is now “100 percent leased.” The new debt takes out a $97.6 […]

Blumenfeld Development Group lands $235M refi for East Harlem retail center

Posted: 13 May 2019 10:31 AM PDT

Blumenfeld Development Group has received a $235 million refinancing package for East River Plaza, its massive retail project on the East Harlem waterfront. The money comes from ING Real Estate Finance for a quartet of sites with addresses at 505 East 116th Street, 545 East 116th Street, 509 East 117th Street and 520 East 117th Street, according to property records filed with the city Monday. ING and Blumenfeld did not immediately respond to requests for […]

Silver Lake-backed startup Lightbox makes even more RE Tech acquisition noise

Posted: 13 May 2019 10:05 AM PDT

Months after paying over $200 million to acquire real estate data firms EDR and ExactBid, a tech startup that’s attempting to create a Bloomberg Terminal-like platform for real estate just picked up two additional companies. New York-based Lightbox, backed by venture capital firm Silver Lake Partners, said Monday that it had acquired Real Capital Markets, a commercial real estate marketplace, and Digital Map Products, a cloud-based location and mapping platform. The firm did not disclose […]

Millennials are borrowing from startups to pay the rent

Posted: 13 May 2019 09:30 AM PDT

Who needs payday lenders and their sky-high interest rates when startups are more than happy to issue loans to millennial renters just scraping by in the share-economy? StayTony, Domuso, Till and Uplift are among the startups issuing loans to recent college graduates and those with irregular paychecks, with borrowing rates that are often under 20 percent, the Wall Street Journal reported. The downside is that it may lead young renters to live beyond their means. […]

Storage Deluxe to bring new 220K sf facility to East Williamsburg

Posted: 13 May 2019 07:30 AM PDT

Storage Deluxe has purchased an East Williamsburg development site for $45.5 million, where it plans to build a facility spanning about 220,000 square feet. The self-storage builder bought 74 Bogart Street and plans to demolish the building and replace it with a seven-story self-storage property, according to Crain’s. It will likely spend more than $50 million to develop the property. CubeSmart will operate it, and it should be finished by the fall of 2021. Storage […]

Brooklyn’s luxury market saw 15 contracts close above $2M last week

Posted: 13 May 2019 07:00 AM PDT

There were 15 contracts signed in Brooklyn’s luxury market last week worth about $46.2 million overall, and the biggest deal was again struck in Brooklyn Heights. The properties were split between nine townhouses and six condominiums, and they went for an average price of about $3.1 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. While total sales […]

Why Manhattan borough president Gale Brewer didn’t pay her mortgage for 5 years

Posted: 13 May 2019 06:30 AM PDT

Manhattan borough president Gale Brewer and her husband were at risk of losing their home on the Upper West Side until earlier this year. Brewer and her husband Calvin Snyder have lived in the same four-story townhouse on West 95th Street for 24 years but recently had to deal with a two-year foreclosure case stemming from a five-year period where the couple was not paying their mortgage bills, according to The City. Brewer told The […]

There were 23 deals last week in Manhattan’s luxury market: Olshan

Posted: 13 May 2019 06:00 AM PDT

Manhattan’s luxury market saw 23 contracts signed last week for a total of about $207 million, according to the latest report from Olshan Realty. The contracts signed at $4 million or above were split between 17 condos, four co-ops and two townhouses. While sales volume was down from the week before, falling from 25 to 23, dollar volume jumped up, increasing from about $187 million to $207 million. The top sale last week was for […]

The Oculus’ $32M skylight has ripped

Posted: 13 May 2019 05:30 AM PDT

The $3.9 billion World Trade Center Oculus has a leak. A rubber seal running along the center of the skylight is believed to have ripped during the opening and closing on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks last year, according to the Wall Street Journal. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey spent about $30,000 this the winter using Flex Tape to try plugging the leaks, but the skylight leaked again on […]

This NYCHA plumber made more than the mayor and the governor last year

Posted: 13 May 2019 05:00 AM PDT

A plumber with the New York City Housing Authority made more than $300,000 last year in salary and overtime, giving him a higher salary than Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio. The worker, 65-year-old Vincenzo Giurbino, appeared to put in an average workday of 16 hours, split between 1,449 hours of regular time and 1,825 hours of overtime, according to The City. Employees at the financially strapped agency overall earned almost $100 million in […]

Why real estate is becoming a prime target for hack attacks

Posted: 13 May 2019 04:30 AM PDT

IBM’s X-Force — the company’s ethical hacking team — ran a test in 2016 on a property management firm that oversaw 20 buildings nationwide. The “white hat” hackers reportedly probed one of the building’s internet firewalls and broke into its management system with relative ease. Related: Real estate’s surveillance state “We could have actually turned the heat up, turned off the air conditioning, potentially taking down all the servers,” X-Force research strategist Chris Poulin said […]

Inside the fight to revamp Right to Counsel

Posted: 13 May 2019 04:00 AM PDT

The hallways of Bronx Housing Court are crowded and chaotic on a typical weekday morning. Lawyers and tenants scurry across the white tile floors and lounge on the worn-down benches of the Grand Concourse building, where occasionally the sound of one person shouting out a name will rise above the chatter. The elevated discussion is usually from an attorney trying to find a tenant facing eviction who they want to assist. Even though New York […]