The Real Deal - New York Real Estate News

Amazon, WeWork and more — the biggest real estate stories of 2019

Posted: 31 Dec 2019 02:15 PM PST

Some of the biggest real estate stories of the past year revolved around the actions of two companies: WeWork and Amazon. With 2019 coming to a close, here are the stories that defined the year. WeWork, the troubled unicorn In January 2019, WeWork announced that it was rebranding as the We Company, which would serve as the parent company to a slew of other we-branded companies (WeLive, WeGrow, etc.) In fact, the company had registered

Gary Barnett gets candid about the condo boom of the 2010s and what’s to come

Posted: 31 Dec 2019 01:00 PM PST

When Gary Barnett launched sales at One57 in 2011, he was met with skepticism. Prices at the Extell Development tower ranged from $3,000 to $8,285 per square foot. Some in the industry called those asks “very rich” and questioned whether buyers would fork over such sums. But they did. In 2014, Michael Dell paid $100.47 million for the top penthouse, shattering the city’s sales record and solidifying Billionaires’ Row position as the epicenter of ultra-luxury

Here are NYC’s 10 biggest investment sales of 2019

Posted: 31 Dec 2019 12:37 PM PST

WarnerMedia’s $2.16 billion sale-leaseback of its Hudson Yards office condo topped this year’s list of the 10 most expensive investment sales in New York. In total, the 10 biggest deals of 2019 — all for Manhattan properties — had a combined value of $8.06 billion, just slightly below last year’s $8.36 billion. 1. 30 Hudson Yards condo | $2.16 billion Buyer: Related Companies Seller: WarnerMedia Brokerage: Cushman & Wakefield When WarnerMedia wanted to sell and

Mary Ann Tighe on Manhattan’s office boom of the 2010s

Posted: 31 Dec 2019 12:00 PM PST

The 2010s will go down as a historic boom for Manhattan office development — one that’s not likely to be repeated in the decade ahead. The borough added 28 new office buildings of significant size over the past 10 years, increasing Manhattan’s office space by about 44 million square feet, according to CBRE. That’s roughly double the amount added in the previous decade and four times as much as in the 1990s — a particularly

Compass cites “progress” on 2020 by 2020 goal — but not there yet

Posted: 31 Dec 2019 11:30 AM PST

In the fall of 2017, Compass announced an ambitious plan to grab 20 percent market share in the country’s top 20 cities by 2020. As the deadline approaches, CEO Robert Reffkin told agents the firm still had some ways to go. In a year-end letter to agents on Tuesday, Reffkin said Compass had exceeded 20 percent market share — or come close — in cities like San Francisco and Washington, D.C., as well as Silicon

David Kramer on outer-borough development in the 2010s

Posted: 31 Dec 2019 11:00 AM PST

New York’s outer-borough renaissance was well on its way by the start of the 2000s, but it really kicked into overdrive over the past ten years. Think about 2010, when Two Trees Development secured a rezoning for the Domino Sugar factory site in Williamsburg. Two years later, the Barclays Center opened in Downtown Brooklyn. And while most development in Queens was, at the start of the decade, focused on the Hunters Point waterfront, towers started

All Year’s rating outlook turns negative as bondholders reject two amendments

Posted: 31 Dec 2019 10:56 AM PST

All Year Management may face more trouble on the horizon as the outlook for its two unsecured bond series, and the company as a whole, were downgraded to negative by Israeli rating agency Midroog on Tuesday. At the same time, the agency has placed All Year’s two secured bond series under review for upgrade, as Yoel Goldman’s firm mulls a possible sale of the underlying properties — although two bondholder votes on Monday may have

Kent Swig on 10 years of recovering from the Great Recession

Posted: 31 Dec 2019 09:38 AM PST

As the calendar turned to 2010, New York City’s real estate scene was just starting to show signs of a recovery that would explode into a development boom over the next 10 years. Residential sales activity had begun to bounce back at the turn of the decade, though construction projects were saddled with troubled loans and residential foreclosures were still a problem across large swaths of the city. Following a sustained expansion, the city’s residential

Andrew Heiberger on the future role of a resi brokerage

Posted: 31 Dec 2019 08:45 AM PST

As residential prices skyrocketed over the past decade, brokerages took off the gloves to win new business. And in New York, heightened competition paved the way for consolidation. Many of the city’s independent firms like Stribling & Associates, Mercedes/Berk and Aptsandlofts were sold off or they merged with bigger players. Meanwhile, new entrants like Keller Williams and Compass — the SoftBank-backed firm with 12,000 agents nationwide — upended the status quo. Such upheaval has resulted

NYC’s strong hotel pipeline pushes down occupancy, revenue: report

Posted: 31 Dec 2019 07:45 AM PST

New York City’s booming hotel inventory includes 113 new developments set to open in the next few years, with just over half located outside Manhattan. That’s according to the latest hotel development report from NYC & Company, the city’s official official marketing, tourism and partnership organization. The report projects that New York’s hotel inventory will reach 144,000 rooms by the end of 2021 — up 65-percent from the 87,000 rooms the city had in 2010.

Kelly Mack on the new development boom of the 2010s

Posted: 31 Dec 2019 07:15 AM PST

The 2010s were a time of decadence for real estate, according to Corcoran Sunshine chief Kelly Mack. The decade birthed the likes of uber-luxury condominiums like One57, 432 Park Avenue and 220 Central Park South. Ambitious developers and investor appetite pushed the median sale price in Manhattan to $1.025 million in the third quarter of 2019. That’s a jump from $850,000 in 2009, according to appraisal firm Miller Samuel. Since 2013 alone, more than 16,200

If you liked Uncut Gems, you’ll love this story

Posted: 31 Dec 2019 06:46 AM PST

There are figurative cutthroat businesses, and there are literal ones. Yitzchak Tessler knows the difference. Chain-smoking in his Midtown office, he recalled his days flying from South Africa into civil war-torn Angola to buy gemstones. In the 1980s, “blood diamond” hadn’t yet become a rallying cry for human-rights groups, and traders could work in war zones with impunity. The country’s capital, Luanda, was a woebegone place — sewage in the streets, no running water in

London sees flurry of commercial deals after Boris Johnson win

Posted: 31 Dec 2019 06:05 AM PST

Boris Johnson’s big election win on Dec. 12 has given a boost to London’s commercial real estate market in the closing weeks of 2019. Office investors closed or entered into more than £1 billion ($1.31 billion) worth of deals in the roughly two weeks since, the Wall Street Journal reported, accounting for about 10 percent of the entire year’s deal volume. “With the low interest-rate environment set to continue, investment volumes should rebound sharply if

Vornado closes out 2019 with another $59M sale at 220 CPS

Posted: 31 Dec 2019 05:30 AM PST

The year may be over, but the eye-popping closings at Vornado Realty Trust’s 220 Central Park South are not. Noble Birch (US) Inc. dropped a little over $59 million for the 48th floor at the ultra-luxury Billionaires’ Row tower — a deal that had been in contract since March 2015, property records filed Monday show. That price works out to about $8,960 per square foot for the five-bedroom home, though Vornado had been hoping the

Big portfolio sales grind to a near halt in 2019

Posted: 31 Dec 2019 05:00 AM PST

It was anything but a banner year for large portfolio sales. Generally driven by big multifamily packages, the market took a big hit this year as investors sat on the sidelines while Albany hammered out new rent laws. The five biggest portfolio sales of 2019 totaled just $1.6 billion — less than half of the $3.4 billion tallied by the top five deals of 2018. 1. Putnam Portfolio | $1.2B Buyer: L+M Development Partners, Invesco

Fixing real estate’s persuasion equation in a changing political landscape

Posted: 31 Dec 2019 04:30 AM PST

In a small Venezuelan restaurant on a bustling street in Jersey City, a group of people on a stage held placards and homemade signs with a simple message: Vote no! The men and women — fighting to repeal a new ordinance restricting short-term rentals — were the public faces of Keep Our Homes, a campaign with legitimate grassroots elements but also nearly $5 million in funding from Airbnb. The effort ultimately flopped: Some 70 percent

The best of: TRD reporters share their picks for top stories of 2019

Posted: 31 Dec 2019 04:00 AM PST

From troubles at SoftBank-backed startups and botched building sales, to big interviews with key players — including a Trump cabinet member — The Real Deal’s reporters continued to deliver hard-hitting coverage of the industry in 2019. Here’s a look at some of the most compelling TRD stories of the year, curated by the reporters themselves: Rich Bockmann, New York associate web editor “How do brokers get listings from the DOJ?”: There’s no spectacle quite like