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• November 2024 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office: Developers are looking to build 71,000 apartments with the extension to the lapsed 421a property tax break. Nearly 650 buildings have sent letters of intent to qualify for the extension, which would give them until June 15, 2031, to complete them. 33,000 planned apartments would not be built unless the state legislature extended the 421a construction deadline beyond June 2026. Bloomberg signed a lease for 925,000 square feet at 919 Third Avenue, bringing its total long-term office commitment in Manhattan to nearly 2 million SF. Amazon is negotiating for 350,000 SF at 452 Fifth Avenue for occupancy in 2025. …
  
  
• November 2024 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: Fortress won the right to go after Cohen for a $187 million personal guarantee he signed in 2022. When Cohen quit making payments on the $534 million loan earlier this year, Fortress sued, alleging default. They will appeal the decision. First, the parties have to see through the $534 million UCC foreclosure Fortress Fortress pursues largest UCC foreclosure ever on the courthouse steps. Assets tied to a $534 million loan Fortress Investment Group alleges is in default and a $187 million personal guarantee the lender won the right to collect on. Fortress could then, potentially, pursue the claim …
  
  
• November 2024 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: Maguire initiated a U.C.C. foreclosure on the equity interests of two mixed-use buildings at 53 and 55 Stone Street. The properties are owned by Alicia CastroLeal Harper. The properties, built in 1900 and 1913, total 16,700 square feet and consist of seven free-market apartments and a pub Underdog, a former taco joint. Both buildings are on the National Register of Historic Places. The Metropolitan College of New York has opted to sell three floors and a portion of the ground floor at 40 Rector Street. The private college has listed part of the property as a portion …
  
  
• October 2024 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office: Hope for longer and larger office spaces was encouraged as more people showed up to work and tenants continued to sign leases. Last month office leasing was 3.5% higher year-over-year. Manhattan’s year-to-date activity of almost 21 million square feet with leasing on track to surpass 30 million square feet for the year. Midtown South leasing volume jumped 45% month-over-month and up 28% from last year, from Yeshiva University’s 160,000-square-foot condominium leasehold at 1293 Broadway. Midtown South 17.4% availability. Average asking rents dropped slightly to foot to $74.56/RSF Midtown leasing activity dropped from 3 million to 1.4 million square feet …
  
  
• October 2024 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: Brookfield is weighing a sale of the retail at 685 Fifth Avenue. 135 East 57th Street, is for sale A judge signed an order on Sept. 6 backdating Cohen’s eviction to his initial default on June 26. The Wallace family is now open to either a new reconstituted ground lease or even a full sale, with all options on the table. Albert Monasebian and Nader Hakakian launched into workout talks after defaulting on the loan backed by 16 East 40th Street, a 12-story building. The partners quit making payments on the $32 million loan. They received a …
  
  
• September 2024 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: The Department of Citywide Administrative Services is directing city agencies to identify underused office space that could be dropped in an effort to cut costs. The project was described to agency heads in the memos as a “mayoral priority”. The process is in the early stages. Proto filed a rezoning application to add to 2950 West 24th Street Proto already owns a 19-story, 360-unit building on the site, which it purchased in 2013 for $35.6 million. Proto is looking to add a 17-story, 415-unit building dubbed the Ocean Queen. Plans call for a 440,000-square-foot building with 15,000 square …
  
  
• September 2024 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: A group of Goldman Sachs-led lenders took control of the TSX Broadway project after Fortress Investment Group and L&L; Holding Co., along with others, failed to repay the loan when it came due. The 46-story tower sits at the corner of 47th Street at 1568 Broadway. It includes 75,000 square feet of retail space and a 669-room hotel. There is also a Hilton-branded Tempo hotel and Palace Theatre. The vacant property at 329-343 West 25th Street, which comprises the church and rectory, a school building and convent. The site spans three adjacent parcels with a combined lot …
  
  
• August 2024 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office Leases: Manhattan office leasing still has a long way to go. Leasing volume during the first half of 2024 was up 16% year-over-year. Even if leasing volume continues at the same pace for the second half of the year, it would still be about one-third below 2019. This past quarter, the Plaza District led leasing, accounting for more than 30% of Manhattan’s leasing volume. The flex office industry leased almost half a million square feet in Manhattan during the highest quarterly volume in the industry since 2019. Certain Midtown corridors are faring better than others. On Park Avenue, for …
  
  
• August 2024 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: The CMBS loan for 200 million at 500 Fifth Avenue, a 727,757-square-foot office property in Midtown, was moved to special servicing because of imminent maturity default. Meyer Chetrit’s 65 Broadway. The $151 million CMBS loan tied to the FiDi office building had landed in special servicing in February. Cash flow couldn’t cover loan payments, The American Express Building was reappraised at $104 million below the loan balance. Lexin Capital is selling a development site at 75 Nassau Street asking $75 million, either in an outright sale or through the sale of a partial stake. The site is …
  
  
• July 2024 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: Brookfield hopes to sell 3333 Broadway for $350 million for the 1,193 unit rental complex that has five connected buildings and is one of the biggest apartment complexes in Manhattan. Mitsui Fudosan America is looking to sell its majority stake at 525 West 52nd Street, a 392-unit property. Mitsui and Taconic are seeking a deal that would value the building at $275 million. The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority is looking to sell its New York Edition Hotel at 5 Madison Avenue. The 271-key hotel in the landmarked clock tower overlooking Madison Square Park is asking $271 million. …
  
  
• June 2024 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: New York City’s Conversion Accelerator Program has received interest from 64 office landlords seeking to convert their office properties to housing. Four buildings that have already been converted or begun construction through the accelerator, creating about 2,100 apartments. 650 First Avenue and 980 Sixth Avenue have received permits to begin renovations for reuse. The accelerator, announced in August, assists developers in navigating city laws and bureaucracy to expedite complex conversion projects. Coupled with Mayor Eric Adams’ plan to rezone Midtown, the initiative's aim is to create 20,000 apartments from underutilized office stock over the next decade. City Planning …
  
  
• June 2024 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: The Kaufmans are looking to sell a half-empty office building on Third Avenue. The family’s Sage Realty put the 40-story tower at 767 Third Avenue up for sale with Eastdil Secured, which has told potential buyers that the pricing guidance is around $100 million. Aby Rosen’s RFR Holding is trying to unload an office building in Gramercy Park as its lone tenant exits. Anna Delvey need not make an offer. RFR is looking to sell 281 Park Avenue South. It’s unclear how much the company is seeking for the 45,000-square-foot property, though it is willing to either …
  
  
• May 2024 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: Chanel and LVMH are in talks to purchase 745 Fifth Avenue from Paramount . LVMH’s interest in the property, when it was believed not to be the only bidder. The 35-story building is at the corner of 58th Street along an iconic retail corridor. Milsteins to unload all of their UWS Dorchester Towers condos. They are seeking $375 million for all of its 324 condo units at the Dorchester Towers on the Upper West Side. Default reported for $250 million CMBS loan at 25 Broadway. Debt at landmarked Cunard Building sent to special servicing. The $250 million …
  
  
• April 2024 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office: Last year, Law firms leased 3 million square feet in Manhattan. Daily attendance of law firms is 65%. Law firms are leasing 40% less space or an average of 600 square feet per lawyer. Rents for prime office space in New York City peaked at the beginning of last year but dipped over the next three quarters. Average effective rents for prime Class A office space which includes new construction, trophy and recently-renovated buildings peaked around $105 per square foot in the first quarter of 2023. That was up 19% from the same time in 2019. Average effective rents, …
  
  
• April 2024 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: Owners of the retail condos at 697 Fifth Avenue, 647 Fifth Avenue and 205 East 59th Street are suing the city’s Department of Finance, claiming its tax assessments are too high. The anchor tenants at all of these buildings have either ended or renegotiated leases since 2022. The Real Estate Board of New York has proposed increasing average wages and benefits paid to construction workers on projects receiving a new version of the 421a property tax program. Leaders of the Building and Construction Trades Council rejected the offer. The Department of Environmental Protection is going after 2,400 “chronically …
  
  
• April 2024 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: The Duell family is seeking about $300 million for their nine-building portfolio of largely retail properties: 5 East 57th Street, a 22-story, 49,000-square-foot property, containing 19 commercial units, 90% occupied and 673 Madison Avenue, the 9,000-square-foot building. The rest of the Duell portfolio for sale is in Greenwich Village including a mix of retail and residential space. Investors are working together to try and sell the 1,331-key property for around $350 million for Manhattan’s Row hotel. An investment group led by David Werner, which owns the ground underneath the hotel at 700 Eighth Avenue, is jointly marketing …
  
  
• March 2024 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office: Office values are down 25% year-over-year through December. With the rise of remote working and other economic conditions, there’s no guarantee those values will ever reach previous levels again. Office owners are showing more willingness to sell properties at a discount. As declining occupancy rates and higher interest rates have driven down values on buildings, some of which were bought at previous market cycle peaks. High interest rates have discouraged dealmakers, while office values have fallen by billions (maybe trillions) of dollars thanks to remote work. Peel back a few layers and things might not be quite so dire, …
  
  
• March 2024 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: Central Queens Academy rents 48,000 square feet at 85-65 Queens Boulevard for its second elementary school. Related Companies proposed a casino development at the Western Rail Yards of Hudson Yards. The project, estimated to cost $12 billion, includes three skyscrapers, each around 1,200 feet tall. The gaming and resort building would span 2.7 million square feet and include a 1,750-room hotel, conference facilities, retail outlets, and restaurants. The project is contingent on receiving one of the state’s three downstate casino licenses and obtaining a zoning change of the Hudson Yards. Starwood Property Trust reported higher loss reserves of …
  
  
• February 2024 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Retail: Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steakhouse renewal for 25,000 SF restaurant at 1121 Sixth Avenue. Madewell signed a 10-year lease to consolidate its two Brooklyn stores along North 6th Street in Williamsburg for 8,300 sf. Barnea Bistro signed a 15-year lease at 114 West 47th Street in Times Square for 7,602 sf. Max Deals, the home goods retailer, signed a 20-year lease at the base of a new residential construction located at 1049 Ogden Avenue in Highbridge for 5,800 sf. TFogo de Chão, the Brazilian steakhouse, signed a new lease in the Oculus mall at 3 World Trade Center in …
  
  
• February 2024 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the parent company of Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior and jewelry designer Tiffany & Co., is in negotiations to acquire 745 Fifth Avenue, a 35-story tower. LVMH is competing against other bidders for the property. SL Green acquired 2 Herald Square leasehold for next to nothing; it had completed a deal to acquire a 95% stake in the leasehold at 2 Herald Square: SL Green paid $7 million to settle the property’s $182.5 million mortgage. The City Comptroller is suing Lloyd Goldman’s development company over allegations that it failed to pay the wages required …
  
  
• February 2024 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: The defaulted loan on Blackstone's 1740 Broadway is for sale after a $430 million drop in value. The $308 million CMBS loan on 1740 Broadway is on the market for roughly $150 million. Albert Kalimian’s firm put the property at 200 West 67th Street up for sale. Kalimian had defaulted on the $194 million mortgage which matured in November. The 310-unit luxury property rental income covered 87% of borrowing costs. Rialto Capital is suing Metropole on behalf of the lenders for failing to make $215 million CMBS loan payments on 681 Fifth Avenue, a 12-story building since …
  
  
• January 2024 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office: Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison leased 765,000 sf at 1345 Sixth Avenue for 20-years. WeWork and the landlord agreed to modify its lease for a shorter term at a lower rent to keep its 300,000 SF lease at 1440 Broadway. HPS Investment Partners’ signed a renewal and expansion for 159,000 SF at 40 W. 57th Street. Verizon recently listed 143,000 square feet for sublease at 155 Delancey Street. Ralph Lauren signed an 11-year renewal for 133,000 SF headquarters at 650 Madison Avenue, shrinking its footprint by 39%. Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan signed a 132,000 SF lease at …
  
  
• January 2024 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: Gov. Kathy Hochul signed the LLC Transparency Act but made a critical change to keep information on limited liability companies out of public view. The owners behind these entities will have to disclose their names and business addresses to the state government, which will keep it confidential. The governor signed a bill that expands the definition of fraud in rent overcharge cases. Governor Hochul unveiled plans for more than 2,800 homes in Queens. The governor will tap industry to revamp 58 acres of underutilized land at Creedmoor Psychiatric Center. 1,633 homes will be for sale, as two-story homes …
  
  
• January 2024 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: Pakistan International Airlines Corporation is nearing an agreement to bring its Roosevelt Hotel to market in the first step towards a redevelopment. The hotel on the 43,000-square-foot site by Grand Central Terminal through the state-run. Rene Benko’s Signa forced to sell stake in Chrysler Building. An Austrian court is forcing a sale of Signa Holding’s stake in the landmark Midtown Manhattan property. Benko’s company is believed to hold a 50-percent stake in the 77-story office tower. Lender seeks to foreclose on Isaac Hager’s Trader Joe’s property. G4 alleges his firm owes $140 million on the Williamsburg building. …
  
  
• December 2023 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office: Large office owners such as Blackstone, Brookfield, and RXR have already handed lenders the keys to some office buildings, figuring they are worth less than their debt. A $670 million loan on RXR’s 230 Park Avenue also known as the Helmsley Building is set to mature on Dec. 8. The mortgage was sent to special servicing and the landlord is facing “imminent maturity default.” RXR is working to restructure the loan. Scott Rechler’s firm purchased the 35-story, 1.4 million-square-foot landmarked property for $1.2 billion in 2015. It took out a $785 million acquisition loan from American International Group for …
  
  
• December 2023 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: The U.S. Immigration Fund of a 22-acre megaproject that was supposed to deliver more than 3,000 units of housing in Brooklyn is at risk of losing control of several still-unbuilt development sites. to foreclose on six sites owned by Greenland USA. Steve Cohen details his Queens casino plan dba Metropolitan Park would be an 8 billion project near Citi Field and spread over 50 acres of parking lots surrounding Citi Field, home to the Mets. Hard Rock International is partnering with Cohen on the project. Cohen’s plan includes a hotel, music venue, food hall and 20 acres of …
  
  
• December 2023 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: 222 Broadway is for sale. The owner is hoping for a price between $150 million and $200 million. The office portion of the 780,000-square-foot building is only 31% occupied after Bank of America. WeWork also leased a large portion of the space, and the location is part of the company’s bankruptcy. The property is said to be a “blank canvas opportunity for an investor to either re-lease the building as office, or convert some or all of the building to residential,”eyeing a price of somewhere between $150 million and $200 million. Disney is looking to sell UWS …
  
  
• November 2023 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office: Office leasing in activity jumped 26% from the second quarter to the third. But much of that was upheld by two large leases and availability remained at record highs. Finding office tenants has been a slog for Manhattan landlords. Midtown and Midtown South have improved as “flight to quality” companies upgrading to better Class A space. Midtown South’s availability hit a new all-time high with an 18.6% jump. One of New York City’s prominent real estate law firms is going out of business, Stroock & Stroock & Lavan. Their demise is a blow to New York’s real estate industry. …
  
  
• November 2023 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: New York City building owners commercial janitorial workers’ union contract expires at year’s end. Wages and health benefits will play prominently into the labor fight. Hotel occupancy in Times Square and Midtown West hit 88%, a post-pandemic high. The average daily room rate is up more than 10% from last year. Almost a quarter of the $1.9 billion in closed hotel sales in Manhattan this year have come to Times Square. Industrial Space in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Staten Island and Queens had an asking rent of $26.02 per square foot in the third quarter. New York Community Bank …
  
  
• November 2023 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: CIM Group will hand the keys to 1440 Broadway back to its lender. It saw the $399 million loan backed by the Midtown building go to special servicing this month. Buildings Sold: Extell sold 1710 Broadway for $173 million. In 2017, Extell paid $268 million for it. Extell is working to get plans approved for a 54-story, 673-unit hotel to replace the six-story. Sherwood sells Times Square hotel for $165 million. Apollo Global Management and Newbond Holdings are buying the 317-key hotel at 2 Times Square. The 200,000-square-foot hotel has 317 rooms. The transaction would break down …
  
  
• October 2023 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: The Adams administration laid out a framework to change the area’s light manufacturing zoning to allow for higher density residential and commercial use. The rezoning is expected to create between 1,150 and 1,500 below market–rate apartments, depending on the options developers select under the Mandatory Inclusionary Housing law. NY City's plan to rezone a 13-block stretch of Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn would spur the construction of 4,000 apartments, up to 38 % affordable. The projects would have to deliver affordable units and other benefits required by the new zoning. Other rezonings in the works include a 46-block area …
  
  
• October 2023 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: US Masters Residential Property Fund is looking to sell its 479-property portfolio piecemeal of largely one- to four-unit properties for $858 million. Blackstone stopped making payments in March 2022 on the $308 million CMBS loan backing 1740 Broadway, a 26-story office tower a block from Carnegie Hall, and gave the keys to the lender. CWCapital was appointed and is now planning to sell the note for the 621,000 SF tower. Extell Development is now asking $195 million for the triplex down from $250 million. The price of the 17,500-square-foot triplex or $11,100 per square foot. A $240 …
  
  
• August 2023 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office: Landlords usually ask tenants to show proof that they are in good financial standing and can be expected to pay rent every month. Tenants are now asking landlords to open up their books and provide protection in case they go under. Tenants are taking a closer look at the capital stack of buildings and considering the exact implications of a landlord defaulting on their obligations. Distress in U.S. office real estate jumped to $24.8B at the end of the second quarter, up $6.7B from the previous three-month period. Office is now the most distressed commercial real estate asset type …
  
  
• August 2023 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: The value of commercial and multifamily construction declined by 31% year-over-year from January through June. 5 World Trade Center will be the first residential building at the World Trade Center. Gov. Kathy Hochul approved a deal to include 400 income-restricted apartments as part of a 1,200-unit tower. Margaritaville lenders go after El-Gamal and partners for $86 million debt after they triggered a bad boy guarantee by throwing the project into bankruptcy, and the investors are personally on the hook for $86 million in debt. El-Gamal and his partners, Flintlock Construction Services’ Andrew and Stephen Weiss, became personally liable …
  
  
• August 2023 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: In the first quarter, investors spent less than $500 million buying Manhattan office properties, down from $5 billion in the first quarter of last year. Värde Partners aims to force the sale of Public Hotel. Steve Witkoff and Ian Schrager appeared to have gotten a handle on the debt at their Public Hotel after falling behind on their mortgage. Witkoff and Schrager are facing a UCC foreclosure on their equity in the 367-room hotel at 215 Chrystie Street. The partners owe more than $86 million in mezzanine debt from Värde Partners. The sale is scheduled for Sept. …
  
  
• July 2023 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: Paramount Global, the parent company of CBS, is considering a sale of its broadcast center at 524 West 57th Street. Invesco is looking to sell its leasehold on 430 West 15th Street, a fully leased 100,000-square-foot converted parking garage, for $90 million, far less than the $150 million it paid Live Nation occupies all eight stories and 100,000 on a sublease it obtained from Palantir Technologies in 2017. Buildings Sold: Davean Holdings’ and Meadow Partners' sold a pair of Greenwich Village apartment buildings with 67 units to a European family for $50 million. Two walk ups at …
  
  
• July 2023 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: NYC office struggles no threat to tax revenue: Worst-case 40% value decline would decrease revenue up to 1.4% by 2027 The city would face a revenue shortfall of $323 million in fiscal year 2025 (which starts on July 1, 2024) if the value of office properties declines 40% from 2023 to 2029. By the time fiscal year 2027 rolls around, that shortfall would be projected to jump to $1.1 billion. That figure represents only 3% of the city’s property tax levy and 1.4% of its tax revenues. The city’s tax revenues may be slightly worse condition than suggested. …
  
  
• June 2023 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Hennepin County wrongfully pocketed the excess proceeds from the sale of Geraldine Tyler’s condo unit. Tyler owed the county $15,000, a sum that ballooned from $2,311 in unpaid property taxes. To settle the debt, the county sold her condo unit for $40,000 and kept all of it. The court agreed that this violated the Fifth Amendment’s takings clause, reversing the Eighth Circuit’s decision in the county’s favor. NYC’s lien sale, debt from overdue taxes, water bills and the like is sold to an investment trust that can foreclose on the property …
  
  
• June 2023 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: Premier Equities bought the hotel at 1141 Broadway in 2019, and is seeking around $60 million for the 10-story NoMad property. Three Nolita Veracity Equities are slated for a foreclosure auction as the firm struggles to repay a $41 million loan. 31 Prince Street, 46 Spring Street and 48 Spring Street are now more than 121 days delinquent. Appraised value has dropped from $66 million when the loan was issued in March 2018 to $49.5 million. All the properties are walk ups and have a combined 48 residential units, only six of which are rent-regulated and eight …
  
  
• May 2023 New York New Developments
• New Developments: The MTA launched eminent domain proceedings for nine sites in East Harlem. The MTA plans on demolishing existing buildings to make room for some heavy machinery to extend the subway from East 96th Street to East 125th Street. The staging ground at East 116th Street will ultimately become a subway entrance for the extension. A collapsed Lower Manhattan parking garage had open violations. The Manhattan DA is investigating the incident that killed one. The partially collapsed building at 57 Ann Street racked up dozens of violations for decades. Four of those violations remained open when the building, owned …
  
  
• May 2023 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: Flatiron Building auction set for May 23. The winning bidder will have to produce a $100K check. 300 Park Avenue, Tishman Speyer’s $485 million loan is in a special servicer after the landlord opted to get ahead of an upcoming maturity. The loan on the 770K SF, 25-story building, which was issued in 2013 by German American Capital Corp., is coming due in August. L&L; Holding and its partner are in default on the $92.5 million loan backing the office portion of the 68-story, mixed-use tower at 142 West 57th Street. The $50 million mezzanine B note, …
  
  
• April 2023 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: 115 Seventh Avenue could sell for half the amount when Argentic Investment Management took control of the seven-story building at Seventh Avenue and 17th Street, hoping to get around $30 million. Gregg Singer is fighting Madison Realty Capital’s attempt to foreclose on the old P.S. 64 site and put the entity into bankruptcy protection a day before a foreclosure auction. Giving Singer one last shot at selling the property or refinancing the debt on it. JDS Development and the retail piece of 9 DeKalb Ave will hold onto condos. JDS Development has listed the 398-unit rental apartments …
  
  
• March 2023 New York New Developments
• New Developments: Extell swaps office for residential at 180 East 125th Street. The 415,000-square-foot project is aiming for 543 apartments, pending the approval of a zoning bonus for locating a grocery store at the building as part of the city’s FRESH foods program. The building will also include 24,500 square feet of commercial space. Bally’s eyes casino bid at Trump’s Bronx golf course at Ferry Point in the Bronx. Bally’s would operate the casino on 10 acres and use the other seven acres for green space or another use, like housing for workers. The end goal for Bally’s would be …
  
  
• March 2023 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: Related Companies’ fund management arm and BentallGreenOak are ready to walk away from the Point LIC, a small campus of converted warehouses in Long Island City, that sit mostly vacant after six years. BrightSpire Capital is looking to sell the non-performing loans, and the borrowers have agreed to hand the keys to the Point over to whoever buys the debt through a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure. The mortgages on the two buildings total around $150 million. The two properties: a 130,000-square-foot former oil storage warehouse at 2100 49th Avenue, dubbed the Paragon Building, and a 220,000-square-foot building across …
  
  
• February 2023 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office: The amount of available office space has increased almost 70% since the onset of the pandemic to 91.4 million square feet. After 2.8 million square feet of negative net absorption in the fourth quarter, net absorption since the start of the pandemic now stands at negative 37.6 million square feet. Asking rents for Class A space in Manhattan averaged $81.51 per square foot in the fourth quarter, up slightly from a year ago. Net effective rents are down after factoring in concessions. Tenants in the TAMI are increasingly upgrading to newer spaces. While 37% of companies in those fields …
  
  
• February 2023 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: Mayor Adams proposes Manhattan rezoning of Midtown to allow conversions of offices to residential construction in areas that only permit manufacturing and office use. West 23rd to West 41st streets is zoned for manufacturing, which prevents ground-up residential development and conversions of vacant office space for residential use. Office conversions could lead to 20,000 new apartments but would require changes to the Multiple Dwelling Law, including lifting the cap on the city’s residential floor area ratio. Citadel is eyeing a 51-story, Norman Foster-deleased tower at 350 Park Avenue, where it will redevelop properties leased from Vornado Realty Trust …
  
  
• February 2023 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: Chetrit to pay off the floating-rate loan $481 million. The Chetrit Group is facing default on a $481 million loan, covering 43 properties that the developer is now looking to sell. APF Properties is looking to sell its plot at 24 West 57th Street, for north of $80 million. As a development site, the property holds about 140,000 square feet of buildable space as of right. Maverick sues Chetrit over unfinished Penn Station hotel. Lender alleged the developer neglected matured loans, didn’t complete the project. Maverick Real Estate Partners sued for the second time going after the …
  
  
• January 2023 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office: AECOM renewed its lease at 100 Park Avenue, but renewed for only 45,000 square feet from 108,000 square feet. Asking rent for the space was $65 per square foot. Crowell & Moring leases 71,000 sf at Brookfield's Two Manhattan West. GameChanger signed a 25,000-square-foot lease at 124 East 14th Street aka Zero Irving. The company will occupy the 17th and 18th floors. Asking rents started at $120 per square foot. Pandora takes 27,000 sf at 1540 Broadway. The asking rent on the 15-year lease at the former Bertelsmann Building was $82.00 per square foot. CompStak signed a five-year lease …
  
  
• January 2023 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: The Mayor and the Governor laid out initiatives to future-proof New York, including 40 proposals aimed at increasing the housing supply and making business districts more attractive. The city and state will push to increase mass transit options and housing around employment hubs to cut commute times. Other proposals include removing the cap on the residential floor area ratio as well as allowing accessory dwelling units. New York’s Emergency Rental Assistance Program will finally shutter Jan. 15. ERAP provided eviction protection despite running out of rent aid, resulting from a lawsuit settlement Non paying tenants to delay eviction …
  
  
• January 2023 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: Quarters into bankruptcy, the co-living firm’s flagship property in Williamsburg has hit the market. Developer David D. Dweck is looking to sell the 160-bedroom, 62,600-square-foot campus on North 6th Street between Bedford and Driggs Avenues for $65 million. Fred Ohebshalom is under pressure from Stillwater Asset Management who is looking to foreclose on the nine-story office building at 226 East 54th Street after purchasing the building’s debt. 180 Nassau Street is facing foreclosure after Pink Stone allegedly failed to service the debt 103-unit apartment building. Ezra Unger is once again facing foreclosure at 427 Marcy Avenue as …
  
  
• December 2022 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: Silverstein Properties, BedRock Real Estate Partners and Kaufman Astoria Studios have come to terms with the City Council for approval of a controversial megadevelopment in Queens. The $2 billion Innovation QNS will bring about 3,200 apartments to Astoria, 45% of them affordable. The agreement calls for 1,436 affordable units including 500 for households earning 30% of the area median income and 157 for homeless people. Related Companies and Sterling Equities will develop a 25,000-seat soccer stadium for the New York City Football Club at Citi Field and is expected to arrive by 2027 for the NYCFC squad. The …
  
  
• December 2022 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: Kushner has listed 18 buildings with more than 325 units in Greenwich and East Village for sale, about a third of the firm’s multifamily portfolio in Manhattan. One is a group of 11 buildings in the East Village with 197 units. There are seven buildings in the East Village and West Village with 129 units. An entire building is for sale for $50 million. The 38-unit co-op at 38 Gramercy Park North, keys to the park included, spans 21,400 square feet and comes with 9,750 square feet of additional development rights. Sale could result in luxury condo …
  
  
• November 2022 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office: Tenants leased 9.2 million square feet in the quarter, up 26% from the previous quarter and 28% from the same period last year. Financial services, insurance and real estate tenants were the top-leasing industries during the quarter, accounting for 47% of square footage leased. Year-to-date leasing volume stands at 24.2 million square feet, an approximately 50% climb from last year. Leasing volume this year is on track to outpace last year’s total by 29%. Manhattan’s availability rate dropped to 16.4%, its lowest level since March 2021. The market’s 4.7% decline in availability from 17.2% in the second quarter was …
  
  
• November 2022 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: Related Companies is planning a 1.3 million-square-foot office project at 514 West 36th Street. The property, also known as 517 West 35th Street, was at one time part of a 1.4 million-square-foot, mixed-use project. SL Green and Caesars Entertainment have teamed up to bring a proposed Caesars Palace to 1515 Broadway, even though they have encountered opposition. The DoubleTree’s rooms are among thousands that remain vacant as hotels that never reopened. 46 New York properties with more than 10,400 rooms still remain closed. Industrial real estate demand is cooling after leasing 150 million square feet of warehouse space …
  
  
• November 2022 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: Stefan Soloviev is negotiating to sell 9 West 57th Street and is finalizing an agreement to sell the prestigious office tower. The 50-story, 1.6 million-square-foot building, was last appraised in July 2016 at $3.4 billion, or over $2,000 per square foot. LoanCore Capital filed a lawsuit against a joint ownership venture at 111 East 59th Street, which includes Dune Real Estate Partners and Puma Construction Corporation. The lender alleged the owners defaulted on $193.4 million in loans and is calling for the forced sale of the retail and office property. Proceeds from a forced sale would go …
  
  
• October 2022 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office: September office occupancy numbers may represent a new normal. As more companies are settling into a wide range of work policies, from full-time, never or somewhere in between. The pandemic-induced drop in office use is projected to have a devastating effect on the market. The city’s office buildings will fall in value by 28%, or $49 billion. The stretch along Third Avenue from 42nd Street to 59th Street is becoming a stark example of the downside to the city’s ongoing flight to quality. The city’s office vacancy rate is at 19%, it is 29% on the 17-block corridor, nearly …
  
  
• October 2022 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: The Gateway tunnel project is to take three years longer and cost $2B more than originally budgeted. The completion of the tunnel is now expected in 2035 . The existing two-way tunnel, which will close for repairs when the new one opens, won’t be fixed until 2038. The tunnel, which is part of a larger Gateway project, is now estimated to cost $16.1 billion. The 4.5-mile rail project will carry travelers under the New Jersey Palisades, the Hudson River and Hudson Yards. New York City upped its demands on landlords to disclose retail vacancies in their buildings in …
  
  
• October 2022 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: Aman Group is looking to sell the hotel portion at the f Crown Building. One person familiar with the matter said the hotel could fetch $600 million. The deal would be structured with a manage-back clause, retaining Aman as operator of the property. UBS seeks $125M for UES apartment tower 408 East 92nd Street for somewhere between $120 million and $125 million, Developed in 2004, the building has an affordability agreement, set to expire in 2026, that subjects 20 percent of its 196 units to rent stabilization in exchange for the 421a property tax abatement. Madison Realty …
  
  
• September 2022 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Retail: Bed Bath & Beyond is closing hundreds of stores and laying off a large percentage of its workforce. About 150 of its lower-performing stores would be closed in the near future, marking a footprint reduction of about 16% of its 955 stores. Free People, an Urban Outfitters subsidiary, is responsible for more than $13 million in back and future rent at 58-60 Ninth Avenue. Mayor Eric Adams announced a crackdown on abandoned dining sheds. The mayor believes that sheds are dangerous or a haven for rats, and he wants to root out those who use the sheds for illegal …
  
  
• September 2022 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: Related Companies is looking to sell the Equinox Hotel, at 33 Hudson Yards. The 212-key property, which includes office and retail space, opened in 2019. The property includes office and retail space and opened in 2019. Pacific Oak Capital and Savanna have defaulted on their loan for 110 William Street in the Financial District. Cornell Realty Management owns a 15% stake in Churchill Real Estate’s Penn Plaza building at 257-263 West 34th Street filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Buildings Sold: SL Green, along with foreign investors, paid $445 million for the 337,000-square-foot Plaza District office tower at …
  
  
• August 2022 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: Manchin-Schumer deal closes real estate tax loophole Package would raise taxes on carried interest, including developers’ “promotes. The senators’ plan would raise taxes on carried interest by about $14 billion, presumably by treating it as ordinary income rather than as a capital gain. Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams came to an agreement over how the city will collect property taxes from the 18 million square feet of construction planned on sites surrounding the station. The city will continue to collect the property taxes it receives now on the development sites, increasing by 3% each year. It …
  
  
• August 2022 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: Steve Witkoff and Ian Schrager have defaulted on their Public Hotel on the Lower East Side. The developers defaulted on their $189 million mortgage backing the 367-room hotel at 215 Chrystie Street, and are now paying a 9% penalty interest rate. Their lender, Deutsche Bank, is looking to sell the non-performing loan. Aby Rosen has put the Church Missions House for sale at $135 million, or about $3,000 per square foot. It is a six-story, 45,000-square-foot office property located at 281 Park Avenue South. Thor Equities is still trying to sell a Lenox Hill townhouse after 10 …
  
  
• July 2022 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: The state advanced the $7 billion redesign of Penn Station, The state will begin accepting bids from architecture and engineering firms for the redesign of the station. Proposals are due in July and a winner will be selected in the fall. J-51 joins 421a in the graveyard of real estate benefits as The decades-old tax exemption program J-51, which incentivized landlords to renovate apartment buildings expired on June 29. Rent board approves first full-year, post-Covid hike of 3.25%. Landlords and tenants, both unhappy with vote, say reform is needed to the chagrin of both sides, the Rent Guidelines …
  
  
• July 2022 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: Industrial real estate investment volume rose by 31% year-over-year to $1.8 billion. This followed a record-setting fourth quarter of 2021, during which investment volume doubled year-over-year to $5.2 billion and nearly a third of the year’s transactions were completed. The tri-state area had a record $10.6 billion in industrial real estate deals last year, a 64% increase from the previous year. New York City had almost $3.6 billion in industrial real estate investment volume last year, with Queens experiencing a nearly 50% year-over-year increase to nearly $1.5 billion. RXR and the Blackstone Group are marketing 1330 Sixth …
  
  
• June 2022 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office: Tiffany & Co. trims HQ office lease to a 10-year extension for its office at 200 Fifth Avenue from 400,000 square feet to 287,000 square feet, lopping off almost a third of its footprint. Blackstone is considering either expanding at 345 Park Avenue or moving and renting 1.5 million square feet. HSBC grabs 265,000 sf at Tishman Speyer’s Spiral. HSBC is expected to move into Hudson Yards skyscraper by January 2024. Macquarie Group signed a 220,000 SF lease to be the first tenant at 660 Fifth Avenue. Wellington Management is planning 71,000 RSF at 799 Broadway. Empire BlueCross BlueShield …
  
  
• June 2022 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: 689 new building permits were filed in the first quarter, an increase of 69.3% from a year ago. The number of building filings represented the highest volume for a quarter since 2014. Roughly 23.3 million square feet is planned, 300% higher than the first quarter of 2021. The amount of residential units, slightly more than 20,000, is up more than 500% year-over-year. The planned square footage is down 25.6% from the fourth quarter and planned residential units were down by 4,000 units. Eric Adams said the DOB should “roll out the red carpet” for building professionals. The mayor, …
  
  
• June 2022 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: Vornado hopes to sell 40 Fulton Street for $130 million and $140 million. The REIT’s 1980s-era office property at 40 Fulton Street in the Financial District is for sale, a 29-story building. Oceanwide Holdings has lost control of a Manhattan development site where it planned to build a 1,500-foot skyscraper at 80 South Street. Buildings Sold: Host Hotels & Resorts sold the Sheraton New York Times Square Hotel, a 1,780-room hotel, located at 811 7th Avenue to MCR Investors for $323 million. RFR Holding and Penske Media Corporation finalized the $290 million purchase of 475 Fifth Avenue. …
  
  
• May 2022 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office: Chase rents 8.7 million square feet in the city. Chase is trying to sublease 700,000 square feet at 4 New York Plaza in the Financial District and 100,000 square feet at its Hudson Yards office, 5 Manhattan West. The national office vacancy rate is already 12.2%, the highest of the pandemic. It’s up from 9.6% at the end of 2019. About 243 million square feet of office leases are set to expire across the country in 2022. Lease expirations are projected to exceed 200 million square feet in each of the following three years as well. Tenants are negotiating …
  
  
• May 2022 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: Four Manhattan hotels sold that could reflect how far Hotel values have fallen. Sonesta International Hotels purchased the Benjamin, the Shelburne Hotel & Suites, the Gardens Suites Hotel and the Fifty Hotel & Suites from Denihan Hospitality Group. Google’s campus on Pier 57 in Chelsea is a 630,000-square-foot space that contains three buildings for 450 employees and a two-acre publicly accessible rooftop park, along with a food hall and an outdoor screening area. Blackstone’s agreed to buy American Campus Communities in a deal that values the student housing provider at $12.8 billion, including debt. ACC is the largest …
  
  
• May 2022 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: SL Green Realty has to sell its $120 million stake in Times Square’s Crowne Plaza hotel, after a judge ruled that investor Andrew Penson has the right to buy it. SL Green and Argent Ventures are fighting over control of the land underneath the 795-room hotel at 1601 Broadway, which is in default on its $330 million mortgage. Brookfield Asset Management and China Investment Corporation are selling One New York Plaza, their 50-story office building in the Financial District. Nightingale Properties is selling 300 Lafayette Street. Bids on the property, which features 63,000 square feet of office …
  
  
• April 2022 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office: Developers have started office projects totaling 2.1 million square feet since the beginning of 2021, well below the 3.2 million square feet of office construction starts in 2019 and the 5.7 million square feet of office construction starts in 2020. There are 19 million square feet of office construction underway in Manhattan. Deliveries are expected to surpass supply in both 2022 and 2023, increasing the supply of office stock by 4%, after that, however, office deliveries will likely begin to fall off in 2024, a decline that may continue through 2027. Many office tenants appear to be ready to …
  
  
• April 2022 New York New Developments
• Major Developments A New York state bill would change disclosure rules for limited liability companies, requiring them to disclose “beneficial owners,” defined as those who have a membership interest in the LLC on the LLC’s annual tax returns, and that the Department of State assign each beneficial owner an identification number that would appear in a database along with the LLCs tied to that person. City Council Committee revealed an influx of filings for eviction and the moratorium was lifted, threatening to overwhelm legal aid providers. The flood of eviction cases could swamp the court system. Courts have turned to …
  
  
• April 2022 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: Sapir is selling 260 and 261 Madison Avenue for about $600 million. The two office properties span close to 1 million square feet and are approximately 80% leased. Simon Development and BPG, are selling the 43-story, 466-unit Alta+ complex at 29-22 Northern Boulevard in Queens. The building is 97% occupied. Blackstone Firm hands over keys to 1740 Broadway. Office property’s $308M loan transferred to special servicing. Bank Leumi is seeking to foreclose on a $120 million loan on Seaport Residences (aka One Seaport), a planned 60-story condo tower that has long been plagued by the building’s tilt: …
  
  
• March 2022 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office: Tech companies leased 76% more space year-over-year in the last three quarters of 2021. Santander Bank is relocating its headquarters to WeWork and subletting 160,000 square feet at 437 Madison Avenue. Hermès inked a lease at 550 Madison Avenue. The brand signed a three-floor, 71,757-square-foot lease relocating from 55 East 59th Street. Mutual of America Financial Group signed a lease for 252,000 square feet it already occupies. A year before the company brought in a joint venture partner to co-own the 766,000-square-foot property. First Service Residential took 48,000 square feet at the Midtown building across the ninth and 10th …
  
  
• March 2022 New York Buildings For Sale
• For Sale: GFP Real Estate is looking to sell an industrial property (Bushwick Place) on the border of East Williamsburg and Bushwick for $30 million. The decision was made after a noodle manufacturer renewed its lease for the 71,500-square foot Brooklyn building for 10 years. Properties Sold: An institutional owner sold 375 West Broadway for $130 million. The building houses a 10,000-square-foot Gucci store on the ground floor beneath 60,000 square feet of office space. Oaktree Capital Management sold a condominium building at 90 Greene Street for $39.4 million to Acadia Realty Trust. The building contains 11,200-square-foot with four full-floor …
  
  
• February 2022 New York New Developments
• Major Developments Tentative property Real Estate Tax assessments for rental buildings in New York City are up 8.6%. Rental buildings’ market value jumped by 11.7%, while the assessed value that owners are taxed on rose by 8.6%. Gov. Kathy Hochul proposed $2 billion in pandemic relief money that could fund the emergency rental assistance program. Extell Development received permits for a more than 541,000-square-foot, 1,350-key hotel tower at 740 Eighth Avenue in the Theater Subdistrict, an area exempt from the recently enacted requirement that developers must obtain a special permit for new hotels. Hakimian filed documents changing a 113,000-square-foot Midtown …
  
  
• February 2022 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: 24-09 Jackson Avenue in Long Island City, Queens, a long-stalled hotel development site in Long Island City, is up for sale. Toyoko Inn is aiming to get around $60 million for its property at 24-09 Jackson Avenue in the Court Square section of the Queens neighborhood. Watermark Capital is exploring a sale of the 226-key hotel at 125 West 26th Street, between Sixth and Seventh avenues. The investment firm has owned the building since 2013, when it purchased it from Magna Hospitality for $113 million. Oceanwide Holdings defaulted on its $175 million loan against 80 South Street, …
  
  
• January 2022 New York New Developments
• Market Overview: The Terminal 1 project at John F. Kennedy International Airport is ready to take off with a new $9.6 billion price. The terminal has been restructured, moving forward after a two-year delay. A consortium led by the Carlyle Group along with Johnson Loop Capital Infrastructure and Union Labor Life Insurance Company will finance the development, which is now expected to break ground in mid-2022. The latest cost estimate includes $7.2 billion for design and construction and $2.3 billion in “financing and other costs.” The new Terminal 1 will include 23 international gates across 2.4 million square feet, spanning …
  
  
• January 2022 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: All Year Holdings has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy with $1.6 billion in debt. The filing in Manhattan federal court came a day after the company discovered a $37.8 million confession of judgment was entered by Yoel Goldman, its troubled founder and sole owner, without the approval of All Year’s board. The company has $1.17 billion in assets, including 69 commercial units and 1,648 residential units. It has about $1.6 billion in outstanding debt, consisting of $800 million in bonds issued in Israel and about $760 million in property-level mortgage debt. Brookfield Asset Management is looking to …
  
  
• December 2021 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: 740 West End Avenue, a 14-story, 135,000-square-foot, pre-war apartment building, is owned by Wolk Properties. The property has six commercial units and 95 residential units, 57 of which are rent-stabilized, averaging approximately 1,000 square feet. Madison Capital and Lubert-Adler Partners are looking to sell the leasehold interest on 71 Fifth Avenue. The property could fetch as much as $150 million. 8 Spruce Street, a 76-story highrise, are seeking north of $850 million. Brookfield Property Partners and Nuveen. 5 East 59th Street, a nine-story, mixed-use building, is facing foreclosure by a Singaporean investment bank. PWM Property Management filed …
  
  
• November 2021 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office: The Durst Organization signed Venable LLP for a 15-year lease for nearly 158,000 square feet, at One Five One, formerly known as 4 Times Square. Prospective tenants are looking for 6.5 million square feet of office space up 64% from the first quarter of this year. Crédit Agricole’s 167,000-square-foot relocation within 1301 Sixth Avenue. BDO USA’s 143,000-square-foot lease at Tishman Speyer’s 200 Park Avenue. Interpublic Group of Companies 514,000 square feet at 100 West 33rd Street. Fried, Frank, Harris Shriver & Jacobson 400,000 square feet at 1 New York Plaza. City of New York 313,000 square feet at 60 …
  
  
• November 2021 New York New Developments
• Major Developments The City Planning Commission approved a high-profile proposal to rezone Soho and Noho to allow for more residential and ground-floor retail. The proposal covers 56 blocks in the neighborhoods, largely zoned for manufacturing use. Hotel developers in New York City may soon face a large obstacle to getting their projects approved. The City Planning Commission approved a zoning text amendment to require special permits for all new hotel construction, sending the proposal on to the City Council. Radson Development’s plans up for City Council review call for a 794,000 square-foot, mixed-use building at 495 Eleventh Avenue consisting of …
  
  
• November 2021 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: A CMBS trustee filed to foreclose on the loan on the defaulted loan secured by the 470 Broadway property citing $22.9 million in debt. The debt consists of $18 million in unpaid principal, $2.6 million in unpaid interest and $2.3 million in protective advances. Thor was delinquent on a $105 million loan at 597 Fifth Avenue, after missing payments in August and September 2020. PBC is seeking a buyer for its 865,000-square-foot building at 452 Fifth Avenue where HSBC’s New York office is located. The building is expected to go for at least $850 million, or $982 …
  
  
• October 2021 New York New Developments
• New Developments 2 World Trade Center is looking for an anchor tenant, which would be required for a construction loan. Norman Foster of Foster + Partners would serve as the architect on the project. Landlords are ready to fight over whether the city should regulate retail and office rents. The City Council’s Committee on Small Business is planning a hearing on a bill to create a rent guidelines board that would limit rent increases on small commercial spaces. The board would have jurisdiction over small retail and office spaces, up to 10,000 square feet, as well as manufacturing establishments up …
  
  
• October 2021 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: The retail condo at 808 Broadway and 104-110 Fourth Avenue is for sale, asking $15.95 million. Halloween Adventure has been operating from the building since 1996, but the store will close up shop after the sale. Three retail condominiums at 385 First Avenue are up for sale for $29 million. Rialto Capital is foreclosing on 33 West 46th Street, a 10-story office and retail building in the Diamond District. The property belongs to the estate of Jorge Justo Neuss, an Argentinian businessman who authorities said killed his wife and then himself late last year. Buildings Sold: Google …
  
  
• September 2021 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Retail: In January 2020, Fendi and Berluti inked leases at 595 Madison Avenue after Coach left. Hermes, Giorgio Armani and Brunello Cucinelli are also planting a flag in or increasing their footprints in the area. Toys ‘R’ Us is planning a large-scale comeback with the help of retailer Macy’s. Toys ‘R’ Us is set to bring more than 400 shops within Macy’s department stores, across the country, starting next year. Madison Avenue retail from 57th Street to 72nd Street is only seeing 71% of its 2019-foot traffic. Upper Fifth Avenue is at 92% of its 2019 levels. Soho foot traffic …
  
  
• September 2021 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: Edison Properties, which manages the storage provider, is working with Eastdil Secured to find a buyer. The company may be the largest market among Manhattan storage providers. The leasehold for 587 Fifth Avenue, a 10-story, mixed-use building between 47th and 48th Streets, is asking $36 million. Infinity Collective holds the ground lease. The building has 4,000 SF retail and 38,600 square feet of office space. It is 66% leased. The ground lease runs through August 2079, and annual payments rise in fixed steps from $655,000 today to $750,000 in 2036, then drops to $600,000 from 2041 on. …
  
  
• August 2021 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office: Landlords have reduced office rent. Average asking Manhattan office rent in the second quarter was $72.77 a foot, down 8.2% from a year ago, and down 0.6% from the first quarter. Leasing volume from April through June was 4.5 million square feet, which was up by 43% from the same period last year, but unchanged from the first quarter which was 45% lower than Manhattan’s five-year rolling average, 8.27 million square feet. There was a gradual tightening of subleasing availability as companies reduced the amount of space they had for sublease. Manhattan sublet availability shrank by 340,000 square feet …
  
  
• August 2021 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: Life science labs are being converted from offices. 20% of laboratory spaces being constructed are office conversions, but come with issues such as additional electricity and water, loading zones and specific interior spaces and some spaces require special ventilation. The warehouse boom is still going strong. From January through May, first-year base rents on industrial leases of a year or more rose by 9.7% year-over-year. Large warehouses have seen even sharper rent growth of 13.2% for leases of 500,000 square feet or more and 11.6% for those between 100,000 and 499,999. Nearly 100 million square feet of commercial …
  
  
• August 2021 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: A vacant Lower East Side lot is on the market for $2.49 million. The lot allows for the building of either 4,271 square feet or parking for six cars. Buildings Sold: Andrew Farkas purchased the Lexington Hotel for $185 million. The Midtown hotel had sold for $333.7 million a decade ago. It is set to reopen next month. The seller was DiamondRock Hospitality. SL Green acquired the fee interest in 461 Fifth Avenue, a 200,000-square-foot office building in Midtown South for $28.3 million. The seller, an affiliate of Karp Family Associates, was Lane Owner LLC. SL Green …
  
  
• July 2021 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office: In the depth of the pandemic last year, a majority of New York City office tenants facing lease expirations did not want to commit to a long-term deal. Instead, they opted for shorter extensions. The number of short-term renewals, a deal shorter than five years, was up 46% in 2020 compared to the year before. Almost 20% of Manhattan office space is up for rent, up to about 80 million square feet of space either unrented or for sublet. About a third of commercial leases are to expire in the next three years. Only a fifth of workers are …
  
  
• July 2021 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: Life sciences leasing in New York leased 257,000 square feet, far above the 156,000 square feet rented in all of 2020. The city will throw at least another $500 million into life sciences development, bringing total investment up to $1 billion and signaling more expansion to come. A group of banks led by Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs provided $3 billion in refinancing for SL Green’s One Vanderbilt. SL Green Realty Corp, the National Pension Service of Korea and Hines Interests own the 67-story skyscraper. The refinancing will pay off $1.75 billion in construction debt on the property. …
  
  
• July 2021 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: 14 Vesey Street, a rare historically vacant building, is for sale for an undisclosed amount in Downtown, Manhattan. A lot is available at 347 Lexington Avenue for sale to establish a hotel. The asking price is $10,000,000. It is 20 stories tall with 65 rooms. Two properties at 1984-90 3rd Avenue are for sale for $15,000,000. There are four retail units. Buildings Sold: Premier Equities acquired a 17,500-square-foot hotel building at 130 Duane Street for $18 million. The seller was Hersha Hospitality Management. Steven Schnall and Howard Lev sold an 8,300-square-foot, mixed-use building at 287 Bleecker Street …
  
  
• June 2021 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office: Companies that listed their offices for sublease are now pulling them off the market. At least 589,000 square feet of space that was offered for sublease has been delisted. Subleases now account for 30% of total vacant office space. 3.5 million square feet of office space was offered for sublease in the first quarter of the year, compared to 4 million square feet in the fourth quarter of 2020, and 4.6 million square feet in the third quarter of that year. Average asking rent was $72.97 a foot, down 0.4% from March and 8.3% from a year ago. Net …
  
  
• June 2021 New York New Developments
• New Developments The Gateway tunnel is back on track. Federal officials completed their environmental review of the $11.6 billion rail tunnel, giving the project the green light. The move comes after years of delays from the Trump administration. The plan calls for building a new rail tunnel beneath the Hudson River, which would connect New Jersey’s Bergen Palisades to New York’s Penn Station. The approval could potentially advance real estate acquisitions and other pre-construction activities. State lawmakers are seeking to give New York City more control over Cuomo’s Penn Station expansion and new development in the surrounding area. A recently …
  
  
• June 2021 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: A Williamsburg assemblage once slated for an office and retail development is on the market for $65 million. The parcel at 87 Wythe Avenue is a combination of a 37,000-square-foot renovated retail space and 22,400 square feet of vacant land, which could give way to a 53,000-square-foot building. Billionaire investor Ron Burkle and hotelier Andrew Zobler, the owners of the NoMad Hotelare, are facing a foreclosure on their equity in the hotel at 1170 Broadway. This is the second time that Burkle and Zobler have faced foreclosure on the property, which they control via a ground lease. …
  
  
• May 2021 New York New Developments
• New York New Developments Gov. Andrew Cuomo has signed a measure that expands commercial eviction and foreclosure protections for some small businesses until May. Saadia Group, Lord & Taylor’s new owner, has found a new headquarters at 275 Madison Avenue. The proposed development at 250 Water Street will look a bit different from what the developer originally envisioned. A revised design will shrink the project’s size by about 27%, from 757,000 square feet to 550,000 square feet. The tallest building will be reduced in height from 470 feet to 345 feet. The Down Town Association, lower Manhattan’s oldest social club …
  
  
• May 2021 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: The $19.5 million loan on the 72-key hotel at the Mave Hotel at 62 Madison Avenue has been sent to the special servicer. The loan is now more than 90 days past due. Buildings Sold: HFZ Capital Group and the Marble Collegiate Church have lost control of their NoMad joint venture. Mezzanine lender Vanbarton Group took control of the development site at Fifth Avenue and West 29th Street, where the church has stood since 1854, in a UCC foreclosure auction. 604 Fifth Avenue sold to the Japanese snack chain Minamoto Kitchoan for just under $45 million. The …
  
  
• April 2021 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office: As Covid vaccinations bring a return-to-office closer to fruition, more companies are expecting to reduce their real estate footprints. 21% of company executives expect to reduce their office space in the next 12 months, up by 3% points from the third quarter. Total office leasing was also 43% lower than the 2020 monthly average volume of 1.58 million square feet.in 2020. Nearly half of companies expect that employees will be back in offices by September. As of early March, just 10% of Manhattan office employees have returned to the workplace. Some believe the trend of working-from-home or work-from-anywhere is …
  
  
• April 2021 New York New Developments
• New York New Developments Gov. Andrew Cuomo has signed a measure that expands commercial eviction and foreclosure protections for some small businesses until May. Saadia Group, Lord & Taylor’s new owner, has found a new headquarters at 275 Madison Avenue. The proposed development at 250 Water Street will look a bit different from what the developer originally envisioned. A revised design will shrink the project’s size by about 27%, from 757,000 square feet to 550,000 square feet. The tallest building will be reduced in height from 470 feet to 345 feet. The Down Town Association, lower Manhattan’s oldest social club …
  
  
• April 2021 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: The Lower East Side building at 217 East Houston Street, home to the nightclub Mercury Lounge, is for sale. The mixed-use tenement building is listed for $7.5 million. Enterprise Asset Management is looking to sell the ground lease on its 20-story office building at 360 Park Avenue South. The 450,000-square-foot building will be completely vacant at the end of the year when the master lease on all of the building’s office space expires. Buildings Sold: The Kaufman Organization closed on a $34.5 million ground lease at the Haymarket Building. The organization signed a 99-year ground lease with …
  
  
• March 2021 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Manhattan Office: Office subleases increased to 29 million square feet, well over the 27 million square feet recorded during the financial crisis in 2009. The office availability rate rose for the eighth consecutive month to a record-high of 14.9%, up 0.6% points from the previous month of 4.9 points from a year ago. Leasing volume was 1.9 million square feet, but still 47% below the pre-pandemic monthly average. The average asking rent declined for the seventh consecutive month to $73.65 per square foot per year, the lowest average since April 2018. Only about 14-15% of employees were in their New …
  
  
• March 2021 New York New Developments
• New York New Developments New York’s moratorium on commercial evictions and foreclosures and a bill to replace it has hit a roadblock. The current ban from March 2020 moratorium on commercial evictions and foreclosures, which he has repeatedly extended. The latest extension, through a Jan. 23 executive order, prevents those actions from taking place until Feb. 22. But Cuomo has yet to take action on legislation that would make the ban semi-permanent. The state Senate proposed a bipartisan commission to review Cuomo’s orders, and Assembly Democrats have also called for the revocation of those powers. The rate of positive Covid …
  
  
• March 2021 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings Sold: SL Green Realty is unloading its stake in Midtown’s Tower 46. The real estate investment trust is in contract to sell its 25% interest in the commercial condominium units at 55 West 46th Street to a Brookfield Asset Management real estate fund for a gross valuation of $275 million, or $793 per square foot. DivcoWest is going to buy a Hudson Square building and has an exclusive agreement to buy Jamestown Properties’ 325 Hudson Street. Pricing for the 10-story, 225,000-square-foot building is north of $150 million. CBS Broadcasting, an entity owned by ViacomCBS, bought a site at 500 …
  
  
• February 2021 New York New Developments
• New York New Developments Real estate leaders in New York have admitted that there’s a long road ahead before things return to normal or a new normal. WeWork recently exited four locations in Midtown, Soho and the Meatpacking District. Knotel declared bankruptcy. Gov. Andrew Cuomo is pushing a plan to get employees back in office buildings and office landlords are on board. Cuomo announced that rapid testing would be used in state-designated orange zones to open office buildings, along with restaurants and theaters. He said that major commercial operators with space totaling more than 100 million square feet have already …
  
  
• January 2021 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Manhattan Office: Breather, the flexible office provider, is to close all of its locations, totaling more than 400 across the U.S., Canada and the U.K. Deutsche Bank could move up to half of its Manhattan employees to smaller U.S. hubs in the next five years, as it plans a major building downsize. The potential move could be another blow to Manhattan’s hobbled office real estate market. Deutsche is in the process of relocating from its 1.6-million-square-foot office at 60 Wall Street to a 1-million-square-foot building at Time Warner Center in Columbus Circle. The new location has workspaces for 4,200 people, …
  
  
• January 2021 New York New Developments
• New York New Developments Covid-19 vaccines are being distributed. A return to the office likely will not happen until early summer. It will take months for the vaccine rollout to become effective and for employees to reach herd immunity, meaning remote work will continue into the next year and office rents will continue to drop. Some companies are planning their return to the office in light of the vaccine news. In New York, 25 new tenants per week were searching for office space in the first two weeks of December, up from 20 per week in November. New York has …
  
  
• January 2021 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings For Sale: HFZ Capital Group is in danger of losing another project in its embattled development portfolio. Ziel Feldman’s firm is facing foreclosure on the mezzanine position at a NoMad development site where it plans to build a 600,000-square-foot office tower. HFZ’s site consists of eight parcels on the block between Fifth Avenue and Broadway between 29th and 30th Street, with another under contract. With additional air rights and a bonus for a public plaza, the assemblage has a total of 617,167 square feet of development rights. Buildings Sold: The Seidman Family sold a 12,590-square-foot mixed-use building at 128 …
  
  
• December 2020 New York New Developments
• New York New Developments The planned redevelopment of the Grand Hyatt Hotel could consist of a supertall tower rising more than 1,600 feet. The development at 109 East 42nd Street is tentatively called the Project Commodore. The proposed building would have 2.1 million square feet of office space, a 500-room hotel, around 10,000 square feet of open-air public space with 43,370 square feet of retail. Vornado Realty Trust has suspended its efforts to sell two office towers that it co-owns with the Trump Organization. They had been looking for a buyer for its 70% stake in the buildings, located at …
  
  
• November 2020 New York New Developments
• New York New Developments Tourism in NYC has fallen by 80% and nearly 9 in 10 office employees are still working remotely. The New York City Employees’ Retirement System ramped up its exposure only to see it underperform the stock market by $260 million and rack up at least $110 million in fees between 2016 and 2019. The pandemic has shaved $16 billion off projected construction spending in 2020 and 2021. The New York Building Congress estimates spending will reach $55.5 billion this year, down from the $65.9 billion previously forecasted. Next year, spending will be just about flat at …
  
  
• November 2020 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings For Sale: Four New York Plaza, a 22-story, 1.1-million-square-foot office building in the Financial District, is for sale. The current owners, Edge Fund Advisors and HSBC Alternative Investments, purchased the property in 2012 for $270 million and could sell it for $300 million. Brookfield Asset Management is looking to sell its life-sciences real estate portfolio for around $3 billion. The investment company is marketing the 2.3 million-square-foot portfolio. A 12-story building in New York’s Diamond District has hit the market for $113 million. The building at 576 Fifth Avenue contains both retail space on the lower levels and office …
  
  
• October 2020 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Manhattan Office: Manhattan’s office real estate market weakened in August, as leasing volume was down 21% from a year ago. Manhattan’s leasing volume was 1.3 million square feet in August, down by 20.7% from 1.64 million a year ago. The vacancy rate for Manhattan office hit a seven-year high, as sublease space and new construction came onto the market. Average asking rent was $78.01 in August, down by 2.5% from a year ago. Manhattan’s availability rate in August jumped by 0.8% points from July to 11.8%, the highest since 2013. The rate is 2.1% points higher than a year ago. …
  
  
• October 2020 New York New Developments
• New York New Developments Vacant office and retail space will have a domino effect on the city’s budget and economy. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority faces a $12 billion budget deficit by 2021. The low office numbers have also led to a projected $9 billion drop in sales tax and other revenues. About 24,000 New Yorkers have lost their lives to the coronavirus. The unemployment rate is 16% and just 10% of workers have returned to the office by September. Personal income tax revenue may drop by $2 billion this fiscal year. Only a third of hotel rooms are occupied, and …
  
  
• October 2020 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings For Sale: Korean lender Shinhan Investment wants to sell its $60 million mezzanine loan on the Public Hotel at 215 Chrystie Street in the Lower East Side. The 367-room hotel has been closed since late March. Cindat USA is looking to sell a preferred equity stake in a portfolio of seven Manhattan hotels it bought in 2016 as part of a joint-venture with Hersha Hospitality Trust. The company is eyeing pricing that would value the 1,087-room portfolio in the low-$400 million range. Buildings Sold: Highgate’s deal to purchase a $2.8 billion portfolio of hotels from Colony Capital will put …
  
  
• September 2020 New York New Developments
• New York New Developments The Metropolitan Transportation Authority plans to cut service by 40% if Washington does not send $12 billion in federal aid, crippling the city’s chances to come back from the pandemic. The timeline for the overhaul of John F. Kennedy International Airport will likely be pushed back years because of plummeting passenger demand. Passenger volume is down 85%, and officials warn that passenger numbers might not match last year’s level of nearly 62 million passengers until 2023. July was the slowest month of the year for large construction applications. The total size of the 10 biggest projects …
  
  
• August 2020 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Manhattan Office: Manhattan office leasing in the second quarter of 2020 totalled just 3.18 million square feet. That is 50% of the prior quarter and down 72% year-over-year. This is the slowest quarter for Manhattan office leasing since 2009. Office workers have been working from home during Covid. How many will remain at home after Covid has yet to be determined. Midtown saw 1.88 million square feet in leasing activity in the quarter, down 52% year-over-year. Midtown South leasing activity declined 87% year-over-year to just 640,000 square feet. Leasing activity downtown fell 73% year-over-year to 660,000 square feet. Manhattan’s Office …
  
  
• August 2020 New York New Developments
• New York New Developments 476 new building permits were filed in the three-month period from April through June, spanning 9,309 multi-family units. Nearly half of the footage is residential, just over one-third is commercial, and the rest is split between education and utilities. Amazon said it would increase its fulfillment center square footage by 50% in 2020, that is on top of the 15% increase it reported in 2019. NYC Health + Hospitals’ six administrative offices were consolidated at 50 Water Street and resulted in $200 million in cost savings . HHC signed a 25-year lease for 526,552 square feet. …
  
  
• July 2020 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Manhattan office leasing in the second quarter of 2020 totalled just 3.18 million square feet, ½ the previous quarter and down 72% from the previous year and the slowest quarter for office leasing since 2009. Manhattan’s overall availability increased 0.4% points to 10.6%, the highest since early 2015. Manhattan’s asking rent average slightly decreased. Subleases have remained constant. Office leasing activity in April (1.35 million square feet) and May (1.42 million), in June, it was remaining at 410,000 square feet . Midtown Office 1.88 million square feet in leasing activity in the quarter, down 52% year-over-year. The largest lease was …
  
  
• July 2020 New York New Developments
• New York New Developments WeWork is considering ditching its co-living business and is working with an adviser on options to hand over operations of its two communal living locations in New York City and outside Washington, D.C. Topshop shuttered its 608 Fifth Avenue store and Vornado Realty Trust has turned over control of the property at 608 Fifth Avenue to the Korein family, which owns the ground under the building. City Council members are fighting Mayor Bill de Blasio’s proposed cuts to the city’s capital budget, saying it will mean a loss of 21,000 affordable apartments over the next few …
  
  
• July 2020 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings For Sale: Residential Cooperatives / Condominiums In the past few years, developers have rushed to build scores of glitzy new projects, flooding the market and spoiling buyers for choice. There are now more than 15,000 unsold condos in the city. Of that 15,000 more than 15% or around 2,600 units is in just six buildings. Lenders are largely working with the building owners to give them time for the market to stabilize. Some of the inventory will be repositioned. In New York City, some developers are hoping to clear a glut of unsold units by offering bulk deals at …
  
  
• June 2020 New York New Developments
• New York New Developments Mayor Bill de Blasio signed into law a package of Covid-19 relief bills, including one that temporarily bars landlords from going after restaurants and store owners’ personal assets. Attempting to enforce such provisions constitutes harassment under the measure. New York state’s coronavirus foreclosure ban does not apply to mezzanine loans. The last observation deck at the Chrysler Building closed in 1945 and will now be getting a new one. RFR Realty received unanimous approval from the Landmarks Preservation Commission for the new deck on the terraces that frame the 61st floor of the 77-floor tower. They …
  
  
• June 2020 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings Sold: The volume of commercial real estate deals fell to the lowest level in a decade. Deal volume totaled $11 billion, a 71% year-over-year drop. The number of deals, meanwhile, has fallen an average of 36% since January, but saw a drop of 61% between March and April. Although some property types fared better than others, not one ended the month on a high note. Hotel sales descended to $5.1 billion, their lowest level since RCA started recording transactions. The office and industrial sectors performed the “best,” but each still notched a 60% drop in transactions. Shulamit Prager’s Opal …
  
  
• May 2020 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Manhattan Office Office Leasing in April was near zero with brokers unable to show, so the only deal done were started long ago. March was dead quiet and all showings stopped in Mid March. February leaving numbers showed a 41% drop in month-over-month leasing volume compared to January, across all three Manhattan sub-markets. Leasing volume for the quarter totaled 6.82 million square feet, the fewest since the third quarter of 2013. Office leasing in Manhattan ended the first quarter of 2020 on a low note, with the coronavirus pandemic putting a damper on all types of economic activity. Manhattan Retail: …
  
  
• May 2020 New York New Developments
• New York New Developments The number of new building filings in January and February dropped 28% and 23%, respectively, from a year ago. RFR Realty abandoned a deal to buy 900 Third Avenue for $400 million and a retail condo at 1600 Broadway in Times Square for more than $200 million. Extell’s controversial East Harlem development site is destined to become a low-rise office building. The developer began his assemblage in 2014 by purchasing the East 124th Street parcel for $39 million. The Empire State Development agency said real estate services must be conducted remotely for all transactions, “including but …
  
  
• April 2020 New York New Developments
• New York New Developments Gov. Andrew Cuomo barred all employees of non-essential businesses from reporting to work, and laid out what amounts to shelter-in-place rules for New Yorkers, though he avoided the phrase. The order exempts food businesses and others deemed essential. After saying he will halt all residential and commercial evictions for 90 days, Cuomo noted that landlords would have a hard time renting out vacant apartments anyway, and real estate agents can’t show apartments under the new workforce rules. About $20 billion in retail property loans are coming due, and it’s unclear how much of that debt will …
  
  
• April 2020 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: Four years after receiving approval to build a 26-story, 310-key hotel at 1150 Sixth Avenue, developer Morris Moinian has decided to sell the vacant site instead. The midblock site is between West 44th and West 45th streets. It is a great development site with approved plans to build a hotel there, which a new owner could use or not. Brookfield Property Partners and Blackstone Group are reportedly in talks about a possible sale of One Liberty Plaza, a 2.3 million-square-foot office tower in the Financial District. Barneys has put its downtown Manhattan property at 101 Seventh Avenue …
  
  
• March 2020 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: Cosi has filed for Chapter 11 for the second time in four years. The company has locations across the U.S. Modell’s Sporting Goods is renegotiating leases in more than 150 locations across 10 states. They sent letters to 19 landlords pleading with them to “dig deeper” so the retailer can avoid filing for bankruptcy. The latest proposal to expand Penn Station includes buying a full city block to the south for an entirely new terminal with eight tracks. The governor now has sights on West 30th and West 31st streets between Seventh and Eighth avenues for the “Empire …
  
  
• March 2020 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: 2 Grand Central Tower was built in the 1980s and is for sale. Rockwood Capital is the seller of the 44-story building. They are expecting to sell for $580 million or about $850/RSF. CBS is looking to sell 51 West 52nd Street for more than $1 billion for its nicknamed Black Rock. The broadcaster, which merged with Viacom late last year in a $25 billion deal, announced that the company would look to sell the building. Amazon has been in talks to acquire the Lord & Taylor building from WeWork. The deal could be valued close to …
  
  
• February 2020 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Total Manhattan office leasing activity was up 2.9% from last year, reaching 42.97 million square feet and up 28.4% above the ten-year average. Average asking rents dipped slightly to $78.75 at the end of the year, following a few large above-market deals. Midtown South had 16.41 million square feet in leasing activity, a 14.5% increase from 2019. With an overall average asking rent of $76.70. Midtown office leasing hit a new all-year high with 2,750,000 square feet in leases signed, up 58% year-over-year. Availability rate of 11.3%, with base rent average fell by nearly $2 to $87.003. Facebook’s 1.5 million-square-foot …
  
  
• February 2020 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings Sold: Savanna sold 434 Broadway for more than $103 million to Tokyo Trust Capital Co and MC Real Estate Partners. SL Green Realty bought 707 Eleventh Avenue with plans to attract tech tenants for $90 million. The six-story building had been owned by Kenneth Cole since 2004. Jeff Sutton and Joe Sitt have gone into contract to sell 530 Broadway for $400 million, to a partnership led by Michael Shvo’s firm. Wharton is the majority owner of the trio of 11-story buildings at 530-536 Broadway. Healthcare Trust of America bought a two-story medical office building located at 4337 Broadway …
  
  
• January 2020 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• The office leasing scene maintained momentum with just under 2.2 million square feet of deals in the ten largest leases. Facebook’s 1.5 million-square-foot lease at Hudson Yards accounted for more than half of that total. Facebook signed a lease at 30, 50 & 55 Hudson Yards for 1,500,000 square feet. The landlord is Related Companies. Dentsu Aegis Network signed a 15-year lease at 341 Ninth Avenue for 320,000 square feet. The landlord is Tishman Speyer. Morgan Stanley signed a new deal to expand its existing lease at 1 New York Plaza for 90,000 square feet. The landlord is Brookfield. New …
  
  
• January 2020 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: New York City’s hotel inventory includes 113 new developments to open in the next few years, with just over half located outside Manhattan. New York’s hotel inventory will reach 144,000 rooms by the end of 2021 up 65% from the 87,000 rooms the city had in 2010. Chang has filed plans for his biggest hotel yet. The 34-story, 974-room development at 150 West 48th Street. Michael Bloomberg is moving his presidential campaign headquarters from the Upper East Side to Times Square. The new headquarters are located at 229 West 43rd Street, 8th floor. New York City will end …
  
  
• January 2020 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings For Sale: Viacom is considering a sale of CBS’ 38-story Midtown headquarters. CBS occupies about a third of the 870,000-square-foot building at 51 West 52nd Street. Orda Management Corp. is looking to sell 225 and 233 Park Avenue South containing about 675,000-square-foot for as much as $800 million. Target signed a lease for a 33,000-square-foot store on 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. The store will be Target’s 10th small-format shop in Manhattan, and is slated to open in 2022. Buildings Sold: McDonald’s sold a three-story retail building containing 5,800-square-foot at 429 Seventh Avenue for $35 million. The …
  
  
• December 2019 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Market Overview: Office: Midtown saw 1,070,000 square feet in office leases signed, up 37% from the prior month but down 39% year-over-year. The availability rate rose to 11.5% with the average asking rent hitting a new high of $89.45. Midtown South leasing increased to 420,000 square feet up 27% from the prior month but down 9% year-over-year. The availability rate dropped to 9%, average asking rent down to $83.56 per square foot. Lower Manhattan saw leasing pick up with 260,000 square feet, up 62% from the month before and up 68% year-over-year. The availability rate dropped further to 11.8% and …
  
  
• December 2019 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: Tourism in New York City continues to rise but the Times Square submarket retail market has declined in retail pricing. Macy’s same store sales fell 3.9% at stores open for the last year. Target’s physical stores and online shop saw a 4.5% bump, with a 10% increase in clothing sales. The EB-5 program’s new federal regulations are in effect, and will double the minimum dollar amount that all foreign visa-seekers must put into development projects. Under the new regulations, investors must contribute $900,000 from the previous $500,000 for a project in a low employment zone. The investment amount …
  
  
• December 2019 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings For Sale: The M&M;’s store in Times Square is up for sale with an asking price of $200 million. Sherwood Equities put its 27,000-square-foot retail condo at the base of 1600 Broadway on the market. Buildings Sold: Shimizu Realty Development acquired the Albano building located at 305 East 46th street for $152 million. The seller was the Vanbarton Group. Vanbarton had owned the 16-story building since 2018, when the firm acquired it for $117 million. Unizo Holdings sold 685 Third Avenue to BentallGreenOak in the mid $400 million range. Abu Dhabi Investment Authority is selling its 40-story office building …
  
  
• November 2019 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office leasing volume from the top 10 leases was 820,500 square feet. With half of them coming from WeWork, who will be out of the market for a while if at all. Other big tenants include law firms, branding agencies and Knotel. Manhattan Retail: Retail leasing for gyms and restaurants were among the largest deals. The top was Ikea’s first Queens location. Manhattan Sales: Manhattan investment sales hit a two-year low with $995 million in deals recorded, 52% down from June and 59% below the 12-month average. The borough’s largest deal was Savanna’s $180 million buy of 360 Lexington Avenue …
  
  
• November 2019 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: Barneys has been sold to Authentic Brands Group and B. Riley for around $270 million. The new owners will likely shut Barneys’ locations, including its 275,000-square-foot flagship property at 660 Madison Avenue. IBM is looking for 500,000 square feet to consolidate its New York office space from multiple locations including a WeWork. IBM’s lease at WeWork’s 88 University runs through 2024. Vornado Realty Trust has encountered more retail challenges as Forever 21 filed for bankruptcy protection. However, Forever 21 may be able to keep its stores at 435 Seventh Avenue and 1540 Broadway open for a bit longer. …
  
  
• November 2019 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings For Sale: JPMorgan may sell 383 Madison Avenue. The consideration comes as the financial company weighs moving thousands of jobs outside of the New York area in an effort to lower costs ahead of a possible financial slowdown. Buildings Sold: Jeon America Inc. bought a five-story office building at 42 West 28th Street for $10.5 million from Uk Choi’s Legend Corp. The property is about 42,000 square feet. Savanna has gone into contract to sell 2417 Third Avenue the Bruckner building for $65 million to ZG Capital Partners. The deal works out to about $369 per square foot and …
  
  
• October 2019 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Market Overview: Leasing was slow last month with the top 10 leases comprising only of 464,100 versus last month total of 2.9 million square feet. The total is also down year-over-year. The top 10 office leasing deals of August 2018 totaled about 1.3 million square feet. EisnerAmper inked a 15-year lease for 125,000 square feet of space at 733 Third Avenue, The landlord is the Durst Organization. New York Times signed a 15-year lease for 57,846 square feet of space at 24-01 44th Road. The landlord is United Nations Federal Credit Union. WeWork firm inked a 15-year lease for 56,000 …
  
  
• October 2019 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings For Sale: Unizo Holdings Co. is selling two office buildings 40 West 25th Street and 685 Third Avenue. Blackstone subsidiary EQ Office put the 622,000-square-foot office building at 65 East 55th Street on the market. Asking more than $800 million. The land underneath Manhattan’s iconic Lipstick Building at 885 Third Avenue is for sale. Buildings Sold: A subsidiary of South Korean-based conglomerate Aju, bought 52 West 36th Street for $85.5 million and 30 West 31st Street for $51.2 million. Combined, the properties have 307 rooms. The seller was Chesapeake Lodging Trust. HUBB NYC purchased three commercial condo units at …
  
  
• September 2019 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Market Overview: Midtown office leasing continued to slow, totaling just under 1 million square feet, down 21% from the month before and 26% year-over-year. The availability rate stayed flat at 10.6% while average asking rent rose to $88.20. Leasing activity in Midtown South slowed with 610,000 square feet in leases signed, a 20% decline from last month. The availability rate ticked down to 10%, and the average asking rent fell to $83.12 per square foot. Lower Manhattan office leasing jumped to 890,000 square feet, nearly double the month prior, making the first half of 2019 the submarket’s strongest half-year since …
  
  
• September 2019 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: Signs of an escalating trade war between the U.S. and China caused real estate stocks to dip but then largely performed well compared to the overall market. Nuveen is joining Taconic Investment Partners on its $230 million purchase of a portion of ABC campus on the Upper West Side. The new owners plan to convert one of the properties, an office building at 125 West End Avenue, into space for life science tenants. No plans are clear for the other two properties: studio space at 320 West 66th Street and a property known as Lot 61. WeWork has …
  
  
• September 2019 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings Sold: A seven-story, 87-unit mixed-use building at 2785 Broadway traded for $22.6 million. The buyer was TriArch Real Estate Group. The sellers were five companies: Adama Holdings LLC, Crane Key Co. LLC, Noam Associates LLC, FLI Properties LLC and Israel Family Noam LLC. The Hospital for Special Surgery bought a six-story parking garage at 524 East 73rd Street for about $19.7 million. The seller was River Company LLC. The property is two blocks from the hospital’s main campus. JAM Real Estate Partners picked up a six-story, mixed-use walkup at 1685-1687 First Avenue for $13 million. The seller of the …
  
  
• August 2019 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Manhattan leasing activity which includes both renewals and new leases totaled 20.26 million square feet. The first half of 2019 saw 15% less activity than the second half of 2018, but this was still 12.2% above the five year average. Asking rents continued to rise to record highs, with an average of $77.82 across Manhattan and $84.51 in Midtown in large part to a boom in Downtown. Office leasing in Midtown South was flat year-over-year with 7.02 million square feet in total volume. TAMI tenants were on top here with 54% of total activity from WarnerMedia’s 1.3 million-square-foot sale-leaseback deal …
  
  
• August 2019 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: Several New York landlords have resisted leasing large chunks of their buildings to co-working tenants. One prominent owner is Empire State Realty Trust who will not lease to WeWork. The Durst Organization rejected WeWork’s offer to lease 12 floors at the World Trade Center in hopes that there were better offers. Oscar Health is doubling it spaced in Hudson Square and signed a sublease for the fourth floor at One Hudson Square, bringing its total presence to 160,000 square feet. The asking rent was around $80 per square foot. Barneys luxury fashion is reportedly weighing a second bankruptcy, …
  
  
• August 2019 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings Sold: Magnum Management and Real Estate Equities Corp sold the retail portion of 196 Orchard Street to the AR Global affiliate New York City REIT. The sale price is $88.75 million, which makes it the most expensive deal for a retail condo in more than two years. The price works out to more than $1,475 per square foot. The Hematian family is purchasing a Midtown-office building at 145 West 45th Street from Isaac Chetrit for $92 million. If it trades for that amount, it works out to over $1,000 a foot. An entity to Taube Management Realty picked up …
  
  
• July 2019 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: The top office leases made up more square footage than last month. The top 10 totaled 1.7 million square feet, up from 1.5 million square feet the previous month. EmblemHealth renewed its 15-year lease for 440,000 square feet of space at 55 Water Street. The landlord is the Retirement Systems of Alabama. New York City Human Resources Administration renewed its 10-year lease for 342,496 square feet of space at 250 Livingston Street. The Department of Environmental Protection will also occupy the entire eighth floor as part of the lease. The landlord is Clipper Equity. Colgate-Palmolive Company renewed its …
  
  
• July 2019 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings Sold: The land under the Dream Downtown hotel in Chelsea sold for $175 million. The buyer of the hotel and retail condominium units at 355 West 16th Street was Worth Capital Holdings 52 LLC, with Charles R. Holzer as managing member. VRV Corporation sold two adjacent, five-story mixed-use buildings at 213 and 215 First Avenue for $19.65 million. The corporation had owned the buildings, which have 28 apartments combined, for decades. The buyers were two limited liability companies that listed Abraham Sanieoff as manager. First Republic Bank loaned $11.3 million for the purchase. Entities tied to Sanieoff recently picked …
  
  
• June 2019 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: The City Council approved the new headquarters for JPMorgan, the first project to take advantage of New York’s Midtown East rezoning. JPMorgan will stay and rebuild its global headquarters at 1,400 feet and 70 stories tall, and will allow the company to consolidate employees who now work out of multiple different locations. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is moving ahead with plans to replace the bus terminal. The agency is moving forward with the formal environmental review process and released a document for public review. Blumenfeld Development Group has received a $235 million refinancing …
  
  
• June 2019 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings Sold: RFR Realty sold 345 Park Avenue South to Deerfield, a medical fund manager that oversees $8 billion in assets, who secured a five-year $525 million loan for the acquisition and a conversion of the building to a medical lab. The sale price for the 12 story building was not disclosed. Alduwaliya Asset Management is acquiring the 17-story, 142 West 36th Street and 10-story, 234 West 39th Street for $140 million. The buildings span 119,203 square feet and 91,943 square feet respectively, were sold by Tod Waterman and USAA, who paid $118 million for the properties in 2015. RXR’s …
  
  
• May 2019 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Manhattan Office: More than 9 million square feet has been leased to date this year, 20% increase year-over-year from 2018 to 9.07 million square feet. Asking rents reached record highs averaging $76.57 a square foot, up from $73.06 from Q1 2018. Downtown leasing volume of 2.56 million square feet was up 6.4% from the last quarter of 2018. This was in part due to the We Company’s 201,000 square foot lease at 199 Water Street. Midtown South leasing volume declined 17.1% for the first quarter of 2019, with 2.22 million square feet leased and was down 47.2% from December 2018. …
  
  
• May 2019 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: Financial services accounted for 39% of the leasing activity, of which 13% was leased by co-working companies. Coworking had accounted for 12% of leasing volume last year and 5% in 2017. TAMI followed with 16% of leasing volume in the first quarter. There were six Midtown deals over 100,000 square feet. Sumitomo’s 266,000 square foot renewal and expansion at 277 Park Avenue and the Bank of Montreal’s 215,000 square foot relocation to 151 West 42nd Street. Job growth in New York City increased by 1.8% with 68,700 jobs added by the private sector from 2018 to 2019. The …
  
  
• May 2019 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings For Sale: Marymount School of New York has listed its five-story, 12,300-square-foot townhouse at 2 East 82nd Street between Fifth and Madison avenues for $32 million. JPMorgan is looking to sell 195 Broadway for $800 million. The bank’s asset management arm owns a 95% stake in the 1.1 million-square-foot building through a partnership with L&L; Holding and Beacon Capital. JPMorgan Asset Management is considering bids ranging from a 49% stake to a sale of full ownership. If 195 Broadway sold for $800 million, the asset manager would be realizing roughly $730 a square foot. Buildings Sold: Savanna has a …
  
  
• April 2019 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Manhattan Office: Midtown office leasing totaled 1.60 million square feet in January. The availability rate was 10.8% up slightly and average asking rent rose more than $4 to $82.45 per square foot. Midtown South leasing totaled 550,000 square feet in January, 53% more than the same period last year. Availability rate rose to 10%, up slightly from December, with average asking rent to $82.25. Lower Manhattan office leasing totaled 910,000 square feet in January. Availability rate is 13.3%, and the average asking rent is $61.80 per square foot. Half of the leasing volume came from one deal, New York City …
  
  
• April 2019 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: Gyms and athletic wear retailers once again dominated the retail leasing scene last month in New York City, securing four of the top 10 biggest deals. The rest mostly comprised of restaurants. The biggest retail lease deals signed last month totaled 188,100 square feet, down 41,600 square feet from January’s total of 229,700 square feet. In February of 2018, the top 10 retail leases totaled 108,200 square feet. Hermès of Paris inked a lease for 40,000 square feet of space at 706 Madison Avenue for a new flagship location. The building’s landlord is Friedland Properties. Brooklyn Boulders signed …
  
  
• April 2019 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings For Sale: AEW Capital Management is looking to sell its boutique office building at 360 Lexington Avenue. The Boston-based investment firm put the 26-story building at the corner of Lexington and East 40th Street on the market with a price around $190 million A pair of office buildings in the Garment District is on the market with an asking price of $140 million, which span more than 200,000 square feet combined. The larger of the two buildings, 142 West 36th Street, is 17 stories tall on the block between Seventh Avenue and Broadway with a total of 119,203 square …
  
  
• March 2019 New York New Developments
• New York Major Developments Amazon has decided against coming to New York City. The company won’t build a new campus in Queens. Amazon was reconsidering its selection of New York, amid fierce political opposition. Much of the blowback sprung from the $3 billion state and city incentive offered to the company to come to the city. The company also indicated that it isn’t planning to reboot a search for another location, instead will focus on its new headquarters. The gallery space at Sotheby’s auction house is being upgraded and expanded at their headquarters on 1334 York Avenue for $55 million. …
  
  
• March 2019 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings For Sale: CIM Group is considering selling 246 Spring Street, the former Trump Soho Hotel. 77 East Third Street, the Hells Angels motorcycle gang is selling its clubhouse to a New York LLC known as East 3rd Street. 130 Bowery, the high-end events space Capitale, formerly the Bowery Savings Bank headquarters will be sold through auction and does not have an asking price. The building contains 32,000 square feet. The owners are open to selling it vacant so the space can be repurposed. China Oceanwide Holdings is putting 80 South Street on the market. The Beijing-based company purchased the …
  
  
• February 2019 New York New Developments
• The top 10 office lease deals totaled 2.65 million square feet, up more than 885,000 RSF more than the previous months top 10 leases. Deutsche Bank is set to take over 1.1 million square feet of office space at 10 Columbus Circle and will leave 60 Wall Street. Millennium Management signed a lease for 300,000 square feet of space at 399 Park Avenue, relocating from 666 Fifth Avenue. Asking rents are between $73 and $90 per square foot. WeWork signed a lease for 236,000 square feet of space across seven floors at 1440 Broadway, where it will have its own …
  
  
• February 2019 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings For Sale: GFP Real Estate and Northwind Group are looking for a new equity partner to buy 60- 80% of the equity in the property known as 7 Hanover Square which was the former Guardian Life headquarters in the Financial District. Anbang Insurance Group is looking to offload a $5.5 billion hotel portfolio including properties in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. SL Green Realty and its partners are soon going to put the 500,000-square-foot office building at 521 Fifth Avenue on the market. SL Green Realty is considering selling the Art Deco “News Building” at 220 East 42nd …
  
  
• January 2019 New York New Developments
• NYC Major Developments: Overall, November’s top office leases outpaced October’s top office leases. The 10 biggest deals signed last month totaled 1.8 million square feet, up 400,000 square feet from October’s total of 1.4 million square feet. The largest office lease in November was signed in Grand Central. Bloomberg LP renewed its 11-year lease for 468,000 square feet of space at 120 Park Avenue. Ralph Lauren expanded its lease for 350,000 square feet of space at 601 West 26th Street. RXR Realty refinanced the property with a $900 million loan from New York Community Bank. Peloton signed a lease for …
  
  
• January 2019 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings for Sale: Coca-Cola is looking to sell its building on Fifth Avenue. The soft drink maker has put the 18-story, 354,000-square-foot building it owns at the corner of 55th Street on the market. Coca-Cola, which inherited the building at 711 Fifth Avenue in 1983 with its purchase of Columbia Pictures “has determined that it does not need to retain its investment in the building to support its activities in New York. New York Buildings Sold: SJP Properties and longtime partner Prudential Financial bought the Midtown South office building at 470 Park Avenue South for $245 million. The …
  
  
• December 2018 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: After months of speculation, Amazon made its long-awaited HQ2 announcement. The Seattle-based company will divide its second headquarters between Crystal City in Virginia and Long Island City in New York. New York State plans to dole out $1.7 billion in tax credits and grants to Amazon for choosing Long Island City. This month’s top office leases accounted for more square footage than last month. The top 10 office lease deals last month totaled 1.9 million square feet, larger than September’s top 10 leases, which totaled 1.1 million square feet. City of New York signed the largest lease of …
  
  
• December 2018 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings For Sale: DNA Development is looking to sell 12 West 48th Street and wants to double what it paid in 2016. The building is a four-story, 31,000-square-foot property. DNA purchased it in 2016 from Extell Development for $37 million. The property was a parking garage. The garage was demolished and DNA is in the process of replacing it with a retail building with a glass facade. The project should be finished next year with around 11,000-square-foot on the ground floor and a basement storefront. Bank of America will aid Anbang Insurance Group to sell its $5.5 billion portfolio of …
  
  
• November 2018 New York New Developments
• New York Major Developments: L&L; Holding Company and Normandy Real Estate Partners are trying to upgrade the Terminal Stores warehouse in West Chelsea into a $1.8 billion property in four years. They plan to spend an additional $220 million to renovate the property which will need approvals from the city Landmarks Preservation Commission, call for the creation of 100,000 square feet of glass penthouse space on top of the building. The project’s setup is estimating rents of $135 per square foot for the penthouse office space. New York City hotel developers are about to lose nearly half of the land …
  
  
• November 2018 New York Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For Sale: Barnett’s Extell Development put the 600-unit building at 555 10th Avenue on the market with an asking price of $775 million. The owners of 417 Park Avenue are making another push to co-op the apartment building. 417 Park is a 13-story building that has fielded interest from a number of buyers in recent years, including a $250 million offer from Kushner Companies. Trinity Real Estate is looking to ground lease one of its Hudson Square development sites in a deal that could be worth $180 million or more. Trinity Church put the development site at the …
  
  
• October 2018 New York New Developments
• New York Major Developments: The number of extended-stay luxury hotel rooms are on the rise, increasing to 34% over the past five years. Occupancy rates are coming back higher than typical rooms at an encouraging 77%. Amazon 4-Star opened in Soho at 72 Spring Street and is similar to Amazon Books, but will sell a range of products, all of which must have a rating of at least 4 stars by Amazon customers. Women-only meeting space provider Luminary is opening its first location in NoMad. The company signed a 15,000-square-foot lease at 1204 Broadway. The 12-year deal spans the third …
  
  
• October 2018 New York Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings Sold: Icon Realty Management bought a four-story residential property in the East Village for $10.4 million. The property, at 21-23 Avenue, contains apartments and four commercial units. The seller is 21-23 Ave. B, LLC, which is controlled by Andrew Chang. Fong’s Great Empire Realty bought the Down Town Association building at 60 Pine Street in Manhattan for $28.3 million The company will lease the landmarked property back to the club. East Harlem Tutorial Program bought a church site in East Harlem for $15.2 million. The package includes St. Lucy’s Church and a School at 342-344 104th Street and …
  
  
• September 2018 New York New Developments
• New York Major Developments: Manhattan dominated the list of New York City’s top 10 largest real estate projects in July. Marx Development Group’s roughly 213,000-square-foot hotel and retail project at 450 11th Avenue in Hudson Yards. Covenant House is planning a 12-story, 60-unit building in Hudson Yards about 53,000 square feet. Its new project would replace a smaller eight-story youth homeless shelter currently on the site of 460 West 41st Street. 323 East 61st Street from the William Macklowe Company will span about 50,000 square feet and stand six stories and 74 feet tall. WeWork just signed a 258,344-square-foot lease …
  
  
• September 2018 New York Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings Sold: Invesco buying the office condo at 1745 Broadway from SL Green Realty and Ivanhoe Cambridge for an estimated $633 million (although in transfer documents the price was $596 million). 250 Water Street development site was bought by the Howard Hughes Corp for $183 million. 101 West 57th Street hotel was bought by the Hilton Grand Vacations for $174 million. Michael Shvo has purchased the office portion of 685 Fifth Avenue from General Growth Partners. Shvo has partnered with the Wings Group, BLG Capital and Deutsche Finance America to purchase floors five through 20 of the building for …
  
  
• August 2018 New York New Developments
• New York Major Developments: New York City’s hotel market had a better-than-expected first quarter in 2018, with revenue per available room growing 7.4%. Warehouse space is at its tightest level since the first dot-com boom, and it’s driving business. The second quarter saw availability fall to 7.2%, the lowest level since 2000, as demand continues to outpace supply. Hotel and condominium developer Lightstone Group plans to build a fourth Moxy Hotel in Manhattan at the site of a lighting store in the Bowery. Lightstone is in contract to acquire the building at 151 Bowery from Emmut Properties. Chinese insurers, conglomerates …
  
  
• August 2018 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings for sale: Brookfield Property Partners is in talks to buy a stake in the 1,400-unit Waterside Plaza complex in Kips Bay. The $600 million deal is not yet finalized and there’s no guarantee it will go through. The complex includes apartments, stores and space rented to the British International School of New York. The owner is Richard Ravitch. A six story building at 75 Warren Street is for sale for $12,950,000 or $1,199.07 SF. It has commercial space with 16-foot ceilings. 240 Fifth Avenue is a 5 story commercial building for sale with an asking price of …
  
  
• July 2018 New York New Developments
• New York Major Developments: The top 10 office lease deals totaled 2.4 million square feet, larger than last month’s top 10 leases, which totaled 1.9 million square feet. 1) Deutsche Bank signed a lease for 1,100,000 square feet of office space at 1 Columbus Circle. 2) Facebook signed a lease for 370,000 square feet of office space at 770 Broadway. 3) McKinsey & Co. signed a lease for 186,000 square feet of office space at 3 World Trade Center. 4) Blank Rome signed a lease for 138,000 square feet at 1271 Sixth Avenue. The firm is taking the 15th, 16th …
  
  
• July 2018 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings for sale: RXR and Walton Street want to sell 237 Park Avenue, with an unofficial price tag of around $1.4 billion. Host Hotels may sell some of its non-core hotels that could exceed $2 billion. Host owns multiple hotels in New York City, including the W Union Square and the New York Helmsley. It is close to selling the W to Westbrook Partners. A subsidiary of Blackstone Group, EQ Office, is putting one of its office buildings near Bryant Park on the block. The 22-story, 350,000-square-foot property is at 114 West 41st Street with an unofficial asking …
  
  
• June 2018 New York New Developments
• New York Major Developments: The top 10 office leases totaled 1.9 million square feet, much larger than the previous month’s top 10 leases, which totaled 996,000 square feet. Pfizer signed a lease for 800,000 square feet of office space at 66 Hudson Boulevard. Latham & Watkins signed a lease for the 25th through the 34th floors, totaling for 407,000 square feet at 1271 Sixth Avenue. Jet.com inked a lease for 200,000 square feet of warehouse space at 1055 Bronx River Avenue. The asking rent was $22.00 per square foot. McDermott Will & Emery signed a 20-year lease for around 106,000 …
  
  
• June 2018 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings for sale: An entity managed by hedge funder Mark Sonnino is selling 555 West 25th Streets office property for $52 million, four years after paying $27 million in an all-cash deal. The six-story loft building has just over 51,000 rentable square feet. The Church of Saint Monica, at 413 East 79th Street, plans to sell 102,170 square feet of development rights at 406 East 80th Street to 79 East Owner LLC, an entity tied to Extell Development for around $35.8 million. The deal comes with an option for Extell to purchase an additional 6,748 square feet of …
  
  
• May 2018 New York New Developments
• New York Major Developments: 666 Fifth Avenue announced that the tower lost $25 million in 2017, largely due to the debt service on the property outweighing its net income. Chinese developer Zhonghong Holdings has defaulted on more than $174 million debt, just one year after the company tried to buy a senior living facility chain. Brookdale Senior Living for $4 billion. Co-working companies have stepped up their game in New York City, increasingly competing with traditional commercial landlords for the same tenants. Sixteen co-working companies have leased 664,000 square feet in the city so far in 2018. Brookfield Property Partners …
  
  
• May 2018 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings for sale: SL Green Realty and partner Ivanhoe Cambridge are in contract to sell the office portion of 1745 Broadway for $633 million, or $939 per square foot. The buyer is an “institutional client of Invesco Real Estate.” The owners put the 685,000-square-foot office condo, which spans floors 2 through 26 in the 50-story building up for sale. Vornado Realty Trust said they had a “handshake” deal to sell the company’s 49.5% stake in 666 Fifth Avenue to the, Kushner Companies. It intends to retain its ownership in the building’s retail condominium, even if the deal to …
  
  
• April 2018 New York New Developments
• New York Major Developments: An Upper East Side retail site that has been vacant for more than two years will soon be Morton Williams. A curated version of the supermarket is coming to 1251 Third Avenue, the former site of a Talbot’s. The grocery store chain has taken 13,000 square feet across two floors, with an asking rent of $2 million per year. Chinese investment in the United States’ commercial real estate has plummeted by 55% last year, dropping from $16.2 billion in 2016 to $7.3 billion in 2017. Purplebricks, a London-based discount brokerage, received $177 million equity investment from …
  
  
• April 2018 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings for sale: Two sites in Staten Island spanning roughly 1.1 million square feet were hitting the market with an asking price of $23 million. The two parcels at 4482 Arthur Kill Road and 742 Sharrotts Road span 24.5 acres. The owner of sports apparel chain Modell’s is in talks to sell its Bronx warehouse for more than $100 million. The chain uses the nearly 300,000-square-foot warehouse on Marconi Street for storage and distribution. Modell’s is close to selling the two-story building, which sits on a 12-acre lot. Magnum Real Estate Group’s Ben Shaoul is in contract to …
  
  
• March 2018 New York New Developments
• New York Major Developments: The city is moving forward with plans to make way for 4.5 million square feet of development on Governors Island. The Trust for Governors Island held its first meeting to discuss rezoning part of the island for commercial real estate development. Beauty chain L’Occitane en Provence is relocating its Fifth Avenue store of 3,378-square-foot lease at 555 Fifth Avenue. The building had an asking retail rent of $1,100 per square foot. L’Occitane’s lease is expiring nearby at 610 Fifth Avenue. Facing high costs and lower than expected profits, retailers on some of Manhattan’s most expensive thoroughfares …
  
  
• March 2018 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings for sale: HNA Group will put $4 billion in U.S. properties on the market, including 245 Park Avenue, the Manhattan office tower it paid $2.2 billion for just last year. The Roe Corporation is looking to sell the 131,000-square-foot development site with approved plans for a 45-story condominium-and-hotel tower overlooking City Hall Park at 267 Broadway. Ares Management is looking to sell its 50% stake in a Greenwich Village office building at 799 Broadway that its partner Normandy Real Estate Partners is planning to demolish and replace with a ground-up, Class-A office building. The sale of the …
  
  
• February 2018 New York New Developments
• New York Major Developments: The supply of hotel rooms in the Financial District grew 10.7% last year, with another 1,917 rooms in the pipeline. Hotels continue to be built despite the softening of the overall hotel market. There are more hotel rooms slated to come online in 2018 than any year since, at least 2000. Developers have already delivered 26,193 rooms since 2013. Kushner Companies’ retail condominium at the old New York Times building could be facing challenges in the wake of Guy Fieri’s restaurant closing. Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar, a yet-to-be opened food hall run by celebrity chef …
  
  
• February 2018 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings for sale: Columbia Property Trust is looking to sell a nearly 400,000-square-foot Midtown building entirely leased to NYU Langone Medical Center. the 25-story property at 222 East 41st Street, which in 2016 saw one of the bigger long-term medical-use lease deals in recent years. Joseph P. Day Realty, which has owned the 100,000-square-foot property at 9 East 40th Street for around 50 years, is now looking to sell and could fetch between $65 million and $70 million. The 18-story building sits half a block from Bryant Park, between Fifth and Madison Avenues. JPMorgan Chase, Olmstead Properties and …
  
  
• January 2018 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office rents on Fifth Avenue are the second-most expensive in the country. Average asking rents on the Midtown stretch between 50th and 61st streets clocked in at $116.04 per square foot, and at the top end of the range reached $185 per square foot. Manhattan’s office-leasing market stood tall. Tenants flocked to get deals done, particularly in new buildings on the Far West Side and in Lower Manhattan, pushing leasing volumes ahead of last year’s figures. In fact, half of the year’s Top 10 most valuable office leases were inked at Hudson Yards and Manhattan West. The 10 biggest new …
  
  
• January 2018 New York New Developments
• Co-working is coming for two of the country’s leading office building owners. Blackstone Group-owned Equity Office and Houston-based Hineshave both released RFPs looking for partners to help them gain experience in the co-working business currently dominated by WeWork. Equity Office is particularly interested in figuring out how to make tenants more interested in their Howard Hughes office complex in Los Angeles, and the company expects responses to their RFP in the next few days. WeWork has lately been seeing explosive growth and is currently valued at $20 billion. The firm has launched a gym and elementary school in recent months …
  
  
• January 2018 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings For Sale: Chinese developer is looking to sell the 50-story, 492-key Holiday Inn Manhattan-Financial District. There is no official asking price for the hotel, which opened in 2014, but assumed to be north of $300 million for the property. RFR Realty has given up on developing condominiums at 67 Vestry Street, opting to sell the site to Elliott Aronson’s Iliad Realty Group for $55.5 million. New York Buildings Sold: Sunny K Realty paid $13.5 million for an 18-unit mixed-use building at 18 East 23rd Street. The Gramercy Park property includes 16 apartments and two commercial units, and …
  
  
• December 2017 New York New Developments
• New York Major Developments: Retailers south of 96th Street that pay more than $250,000 per year in rent also pay a tax on that rent. A new bill would raise the threshold to $500,000, meaning about 2,000 business would escape the tax. London-based rhubarb, a major hospitality company in England, plans to open new restaurants at 30 Hudson Yards and at the Hudson Yards Shops & Restaurants. The restaurant at the mall will contain 5,800 square feet on the fifth floor. At 30 Hudson Yards, rhubarb plans to open a 10,000-square-foot restaurant on the 92nd floor. Soho Properties, in partnership …
  
  
• December 2017 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings For Sale: Isaac Chetrit is looking to sell off a pair of office buildings. Chetrit and partner Sioni Group are asking around $190 million and $200 million for the properties at 15 West 47th Street and 22 West 48th Street. Brookfield Property Partners is looking to sell its 2.3 million-square-foot office tower at One Liberty Plaza in Lower Manhattan, which could trade for as much as $1.6 billion. Offers on the Park Lane Hotel were due, but no buyers showed up willing to pay the $1 billion the property was expected to obtain. The 47-story hotel overlooking …
  
  
• November 2017 New York New Developments
• New York Major Developments: New construction starts for nonresidential projects tripled to more than $3 billion due largely to massive undertakings at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center and the Moynihan Train Hall. The total dollar volume for nonresidential construction starts in New York City jumped to $3.66 billion, a 203% increase from $1.21 billion a year earlier. Most of the private air rights along the High Line are used. New York City is seeking to sell its own air rights to West Chelsea property owners for $500 per square foot. The Department of City Planning proposed a rule change …
  
  
• November 2017 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings For Sale: HSBC and Edge Fund Advisors put a 48% stake in the office portion of 1540 Broadway on the market, hoping to get around $445 million. Brookfield Property Partners is looking to sell its 2.3 million-square-foot office tower at One Liberty Plaza and could go for as much as $1.6 billion which works out to $695 per square foot. Brookfield is open to selling the entire tower or a partial stake. RFR Realty is looking to sell the 38,000-square-foot commercial condominium at the base of the Park Avenue Place of 60 East 55th Street, which RFR developed in …
  
  
• October 2017 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey seems to be leaning toward building a new bus terminal on the Eighth Avenue site, rather than expand to another location. The plan now is to build two new floors on top of the terminal that is already in place. Those levels would be for the buses while the three lower levels are being rebuilt. Barry Diller officially declared Pier 55 dead after years of legal disputes and around $40 million in pre-construction costs A startup wants to pay landlords $10,000 per month or more to install intelligent, electronic …
  
  
• October 2017 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings Sold: Gaw Capital Partners is looking to obtain a $170 million loan to make one of the largest single-asset New York City hotel deals of the year: the $340 million purchase of the Standard Hotel from Dune Capital Management and Greenfield Partners. Extell Development purchased a drug rehabilitation center building with seven-floors, 27,000-square-foot property at 500 West 57th Street that is entirely leased to substance-abuse treatment center ACI for $19 million. Charles Ekblom, a now-deceased landlord, bought it from Columbia University in the 1960s, and the building was placed in a family trust until the sale. A famous recording …
  
  
• September 2017 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings For Sale: Thor Equities has put the two-story, 50,000-square-foot retail condominium at 88 Greenwich Street, that is home to the 9/11 Tribute Center up for sale for $52 million. New York REIT is marketing 1440 Broadway, a 749,000-square-foot building. The real estate investment trust, which is in the process of selling its 4.4 million-square-foot portfolio as part of the comp. The Broadway property is expected to get $775 per square foot or $580 million. NYRT purchased the building in 2013 from Rockpoint Group and Monday Properties, paying $530 million. The majority owner of the Plaza Hotel is …
  
  
• September 2017 New York New Developments
• New York Major Developments: Brookfield Property Partners are in talks to become a partner in one of the largest redevelopment projects underway in New York City. Brookfield is negotiating to acquire a stake in the St. John’s Terminal site, which Westbrook Partners and Atlas Capital Partners are planning to transform into a five-tower, 1.7 million-square-foot mixed-use complex. The three-block-long site which consists of north, south and center sections would hold 1,586 rental apartments, offices, a hotel and around 400,000 square feet of retail space next to Hudson River Park’s Pier 40. Manhattan’s hotel market may be nearing the end of …
  
  
• August 2017 New York New Developments
• New York Major Developments: Starwood Mortgage Capital provided a $105 million loan for Aurora Capital Associates and William Gottlieb Real Estate’s Restoration Hardware project in the Meatpacking District. The 10-year loan retires a $60 million loan from Wells Fargo. Aurora and Gottlieb are building a 60,000-square-foot retail project at 9-19 Ninth Avenue, where Restoration Hardware signed a 15-year lease worth $250 million. Northern Manhattan’s commercial real estate market was sluggish. A total of 138 properties sold in 154 deals for a total dollar volume of $694 million uptown, down 64% year-over-year. The average price per buildable square foot at development …
  
  
• August 2017 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings For Sale: Centurion Realty is negotiating a plan with its partners to sell the boutique hotel Gansevoort Park Avenue NYC in NoMad at 420 Park Avenue South. New York Buildings Sold: The Kabbalah Centre International is in contract to acquire the Fine Arts Building in Midtown from a group of Greek hedge funders for about $60 million, or $1,000 per square foot. It is a seven-story, 58,000-square-foot property located at 232 East 59th Street. Thor Equities sold its Upper East Side commercial townhouse for $32 million. The 26-room at 36 East 61st Street sold at a 13% …
  
  
• July 2017 New York New Developments
• New York Major Developments: NYU Langone Medical Center is opening a 50,000-square-foot biotech co-working center at 180 Varick Street, a project that hopes to help compete with biotech hubs like Boston and San Francisco. NYU Langone invested $10 million over the last several years on upgrades at 180 Varick Street and is investing another $5 million. The state’s economic development arm Empire State Development is contributing another $2 million. New York City is the most expensive city in the world when renting flexible, short-term office space. The average monthly price to rent a workstation in flexible offices for one person …
  
  
• July 2017 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings Sold A two-story commercial building at the corner of East 149th Street and Cortland Avenue sold to Albert Babayev for $17.5 million. The 33,135-square-foot building at 356 West 149th Street is leased to a Rite Aid and located a block away from the Third Avenue and East 149th Street hub. New Empire Real Estate sold off a Hell’s Kitchen development site for $15 million to the Coram Deo Church. Zhao bought the vacant lot at 409 West 45th Street in 2014 for $5.3 million, and plans to build a seven-story boutique condominium building on the site. The …
  
  
• June 2017 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: Developer David Marx continues to put the pieces together for an upcoming Aloft hotel at 450 11th Avenue, refinancing the project with $67 million in loans. The de Blasio administration is finally moving forward with a proposal it announced 18 months ago to curtail the city’s emerging self-storage industry as part of City Hall’s plan to preserve middle-class jobs by regulating development in certain manufacturing zones. Several retail brands are on the lookout for large spaces in the borough, including discount clothier Primark. Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg donated $75 million towards the construction of the Shed, an arts …
  
  
• June 2017 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings Sold: Kobe Bussan, which operates a chain of supermarkets in Japan, sold two empty lots at 439-443 West 54th Street in Hell’s Kitchen. The buying entity is Yaus Special Clinton District LLC. WanXin Media purchased the Midtown office building and vacant lot at 7-15 West 44th Street for $68 million. WanXin plans to develop a boutique luxury hotel and Chinese cultural center which has 90,000 buildable square feet. If approved, the hotel will include 96 rooms and restaurant space in a 19-story building, seven stories taller and nearly 40,000 square feet larger than the existing building at …
  
  
• May 2017 New York New Developments
• New York Major Developments: The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is rethinking plans to move its Midtown bus terminal a block west and is now considering renovating the existing station. The bi-state agency ordered a study of its current bus terminal to assess the cost of revamping its existing facility. Officials have estimated that moving the terminal would cost $10 billion. Earlier this year the Port Authority dedicated $3.5 billion to creating a new terminal. The borough’s hoteliers saw revenue per available room dip to its lowest point of the current cycle, as the hotel market struggles …
  
  
• May 2017 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings For Sale: L&L; Holding Company and PGIM Real Estate are looking to sell three interconnected Chelsea office buildings. The firms own the buildings at 511-541 West 25th Street, between 10th and 11th avenues. They bought them from the Related Companies for $160 million in 2014. Sources said they are seeking about $200 million, or $1,000 per square foot, for the buildings. Billy Macklowe and Principal Real Estate Investors are looking to sell a Midtown office building at 311 West 43rd Street. The partnership purchased the 186,000-square-foot building in 2015 for $107 million from Atlas Capital. The 43rd …
  
  
• April 2017 New York New Developments
• New York Major Developments New York comes in as the 6th most expensive office market in the world. Two major developments are in the Gansevoort Market Historic District and are moving ahead. Restoration Hardware’s proposed development at 55 Gansevoort Street was approved. The project will bring a 14-room guesthouse. Restoration Hardware agreed to lower the height of a rooftop and to hide a planned windscreen behind a fiberglass cornice. Nearby, developers are working on turning five buildings between Washington Street and Ninth Avenue into an 111,000-square-foot commercial development. The interim head of the Metropolitan Museum of Art wants to slow …
  
  
• April 2017 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings For Sale: Ashkenazy Acquisition Corporation and DekaBank are looking to sell a newly redeveloped retail space at the base of 522 Fifth Avenue. The owners finished a $16 million renovation of the two vacant retail condominiums at the base of the 23-story, 380,000-square-foot office condo building. The two-floor retail condos together have 27,310 square feet, with about 10,850 square feet on the ground floor. The retail was valued at $277 million last year, when General Growth Properties sold its 10% stake to an unidentified investor. Ashkenazy, Germany-based DekaBank and Chicago-based real estate investment trust GGP jointly acquired …
  
  
• March 2017 New York New Developments
• New York Major Developments: The city is taking another attempt at rezoning the Garment District, a move that will likely rollback rules that require landlords to lease a portion of their building to the fashion industry. The possible rezoning is connected to the Mayor’s plans to build a new manufacturing campus in Brooklyn. The Bloomberg administration tried to rezone the Garment District in 2009, but stopped the plan due to opposition. In the fourth quarter of 2016, absorption rate was negative in all three Manhattan office submarkets: Downtown, Midtown, and Midtown South for a total net absorption of negative 277,988 …
  
  
• March 2017 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings for Sale: Three Riverside Boulevard parking garages encompassing more than 228,000 square feet and 995 parking spaces are asking $65 million, or $65,300 per space. The parking garages are at the base of five condominium buildings at 80, 100-120 and 220-240 Riverside Boulevard. Developer Steve Witkoff has a federal judge’s approval to sell the Park Lane Hotel as part of an agreement to oust Malaysian investor Jho Low. U.S. District Court Judge approved plans as part of a cooperation agreement reached after Low became entangled in a money-laundering scandal. The current plan is to sell the whole …
  
  
• February 2017 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: Jared Kushner sold his equity stake in 666 Fifth Avenue though the identity of the buyer and what they paid for remains unknown. Kushner paid $1.8 billion for 666 Fifth Avenue in 2007, he then sold off a major stake in the retail portion to Carlyle Group and Crown Acquisitions for $525 million. The Chinese Investment in foreign property increased by more than half last year. The U.S. received the bulk of those investments, totaling $14.3 billion. New York University signed a lease for 58,000 square feet at 180 Madison Avenue, and has committed to taking another 41,000 …
  
  
• February 2017 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings For Sale: Forest City Realty Trust is looking to sell its majority stake in a New York retail portfolio to fund manager Madison International Realty. The portfolio encompasses 15 properties and 2.65 million square feet, including 311,000 square feet of retail space at 234 West 42nd Street. MetLife and Beacon Capital Partners are looking to sell the former Goldman Sachs headquarters at 85 Broad Street. The building is a 1.1 million-square-foot building, which is 91% occupied, and valued at up to $700 million. Governor Cuomo wants to sell a 170,000-square-foot building used by the City University of New York …
  
  
• January 2017 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings For Sale: Premier Equities.">Premier Equities is in the process selling three NoMad buildings and a Lower East Side retail condominium unit in separate deals for a total of about $26 million. Premier paid Victor Group $12 million for 275 Fifth Avenue and $4.6 million for 2 East 30th Street. The developer is in contract to buy 273 Fifth Avenue for around $3.5 million. The lot at 2 East 30th Street currently houses a five-story, 5,719-square-foot mixed-use building. The five-story apartment building at 275 Fifth spans 9,269 square feet. The adjacent four-story commercial building at 273 Fifth Avenue is 8,060 …
  
  
• December 2016 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings For Sale: Brookfield Property Partners has put the 45-story office tower at 245 Park Avenue up for sale. Sources close with the 1.8 million-square-foot tower believe it is worth north of $2.1 billion, or more than $1,200 per square foot. Lightstone Group hopes to sell the retail space and garage at the base of the Marriott Moxy Hotel in the Garment District, which is under construction, for $64 million. The developer is looking to offload a 4,000-square-foot retail condo and 27,000-square-foot garage at the 16-story building at 485 Seventh Avenue. Buildings Sold: United American Land bought 65 Spring Street …
  
  
• November 2016 New York New Developments
• New York Major Developments: Construction spending in New York City is expected to soar to $127.5 billion by the end of 2018, showing that the building boom still has legs. Predictions that spending will reach $43.1 billion in 2016, a 26% increase from 2015’s construction spending in 2017 is projected to reach $42.1 billion and then $42.3 billion in 2018. Non-residential construction of $17 billion projected in 2016, a 27% increase from last year. Office construction accounts for 20 million square feet of new space will be added over the next five years, much of it in Hudson Yards. Tishman …
  
  
• November 2016 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings Sold: ABS Partners and Benenson Investment Company">ABS Partners and Benenson Investment Company paid $62.75 million for the office-and-retail building at 145-147 East 57th Street. The asking rent is $60 per square foot. The venture paid $17 million for 407 East 70th Street, a five-story medical building on the Upper East Side. ABS and Benenson 3 bought the fee at the AMC movie theater at 66 Third Avenue that has a ground lease through July 2037. Caspi Development and RWN Real Estate Partners bought a Tribeca art gallery for $19 million from a group of investors. The building …
  
  
• October 2016 New York New Developments
• Major Developments:The Related Companies is planning a 63-unit mixed-use building at 501 West 18th Street in Chelsea. The 10-story building will contain 97,800 square feet of residential space, along with 10,300 square feet of commercial space that will be divided across two retail units on the ground floor. Related bought the pair of parking lots which are adjacent to the IAC building in 2014 from investors Barry Haskell and Matthew Resnicoff. The $205 million price or $700 per square foot set a record for the neighborhood. The developer secured $125 million in financing for the purchase. Tishman Speyer filed plans …
  
  
• October 2016 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings For Sale Ashkenazy Acquisitions and Deka Immobilien put the New York Marriott East Side hotel on the market 17 months after buying it. The sellers are unlikely to get more than the $270 million they paid for the 525 Lexington Avenue property in 2015. The landmarked building spans 319,319 square feet and includes 655 hotel rooms and the 525LEX restaurant. Jona Rechnitz, the developer at the forefront of a probe into corruption at the New York Police Department, is looking to sell a Midtown development site for $26 million. JSR Capital bought the property at 238 Madison Avenue in …
  
  
• September 2016 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Manhattan Office New commercial leasing plummeted during the second quarter of this year, one of several signs that the city should brace for an increasingly sluggish economy. Leasing activity dropped 15.6% from the same time last year, with only 7 million square feet rented. This is the second consecutive decrease in leasing activity, following the first quarter’s 6% year-over-year drop. This quarter, most leasing activity occurred in Midtown with 4.4 million square feet where median rent was $79.18 per square foot, followed by Midtown South with 1.5 million square feet where rent averaged $76.45 per square foot. Midtown Manhattan has …
  
  
• September 2016 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: SL Green Realty says it has shaken a pesky lawsuit that threatened to stall the construction of its office building near Grand Central Terminal, One Vanderbilt. The REIT has settled a lawsuit filed by the owner of Grand Central, which alleged that the office landlord and the city rendered his 1.2 million square feet of air rights useless when it rezoned the area. The settlement was made possible, in part, by the recent sale of a stake in Grand Central to Michael Dell’s MSD Capital. In 2012, the Witkoff Group announced it would build a new hotel at …
  
  
• September 2016 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings For Sale: Kevin Maloney’s Property Markets Group is looking to sell a newly built and still empty rental tower in Long Island City. PMG built the 45-story, 391-unit tower at 23-01 42nd Road in partnership with Vector Group and toyed with the possibility of turning the units into condominiums, filing a $364.2 million condo plan. Leasing at the tower is set to begin next week, with average asking rents of $62 per square foot. Since the building’s condo plan was approved, a potential buyer could opt to sell the units instead of renting them out. PMG and partner Hakim …
  
  
• August 2016 New York New Developments
• Major Developments Hershey Company plans to open a new flagship store at the base of 20 Times Square, a location that will triple its current 2,200-square-foot space at Times Square. The new location will be a block away from the company’s rival, Mars Inc.’s M&M; World. Gary Barnett’s plans to raze 10 buildings on the block including 10 West 47th Street. Extell secured permits to demolish 10 West 47th and 2 West 47th, 3-13 West 46th Street, 562 and 564 Fifth Avenue. Extell bought 10 West 47th, a 72,000-square-foot office building for $74.4 million. L+M Development Partners and Hornig Capital …
  
  
• August 2016 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings For Sale: The Blackstone Group is shopping its 665,000-square-foot office tower at 1065 Sixth Avenue and hopes to get as much as $700 million. ABC Carpet & Home is shopping around its property at 880-888 Broadway, an office-and-retail condominium that could get upwards of $200 million, or over $2,600 per square foot. ABC has owned and fully occupied the six-story, 76,400-square-foot building since 1981. The property has a 20,600-square-foot retail condo and a 55,800-square-foot condo for office and manufacturing space. It is still not clear if ABC Carpet would vacate upon selling the building or make a sale-leaseback agreement. …
  
  
• July 2016: New York New Developments
• New Developments U.S. commercial real estate values continue to experience a slowdown in growth in 2016. Despite the slight uptick, property value appreciation has slowed significantly, after near-double-digit gains in each of the past few years. Cap rates have stopped declining. The City Council approved plans to rezone portions of the Financial District that will allow landlords to fill unused space with retail. 20 buildings along Water Street can fill in 110,000 square feet of pedestrian arcades. In exchange, the landlords are required to upgrade nearby plazas and any of the arcades larger than 7,500 square feet must go through …
  
  
• July 2016: New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings sold Harry Macklowe and Qatari investment bank QInvest closed on a deal to buy 432 Park Avenue's retail space for $411.1 million. CIM Group is developing the 1,396-foot condo tower in partnership with Macklowe the seller. The cube will include 6,600 square feet of retail space and will be connected to 20,000 square feet of retail space in the tower itself through a 30,000-square-foot underground concourse. Global Holdings is in contract to buy 1250 Broadway, an office tower owned by Jamestown and Murray Hill Properties, for $565 million. 1250 Broadway is a 39-story, 721,000-square-foot tower. The contract …
  
  
• June 2016: New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings sold RXR Realty">RXR Realty was near a $1.7 billion deal to acquire the 42-story office tower at 1285 Sixth Avenue and has finally closed, marking one of the city's biggest commercial transactions of the year. RXR financed the purchase with $1.2 billion in loans. AXA Financial, formerly owned both buildings, with 1285 Sixth Avenue owned through a joint venture between AXA and JPMorgan Asset Management. AXA put the adjacent properties up for sale last summer and was looking for as much as $4 billion for the two buildings combined. Caerus Group closed on its $38.2 million purchase …
  
  
• June 2016: New York New Developments
• New Developments Apple is in talks with 767 Fifth Avenue's owners to take all or part of FAO Schwarz' former 61,000-square-foot space. Apple is looking to take over the space permanently, but is balking at paying market-rate rent. Rates for retail spaces in that section of Fifth Avenue range from about $2,700 to $4,450 per square foot. Related Companies is to receive $88 million in financing from Deutsche Bank to fund 300 Lafayette Street in Soho. Related received a $69 million construction loan and a $19 million project loan to fund the seven-story, 80,000-square-foot office and retail development. The building …
  
  
• May 2016: New York New Developments
• New Developments General Growth Properties and Thor Equities' are planning to add five new floors of office space at 685 Fifth Avenue. The developers are planning to redistribute space from the lower floors to create five new floors of office space that will be added to the 20-story building, raising its height from 227 feet to 292 feet.Isaac Chetrit">Isaac Chetrit and Ray Yadidi are planning a mixed-use skyscraper of up to 80 stories in a block-long assemblage on Sixth Avenue between West 36th and 37th streets, consisting of two existing buildings and 235,000 square feet of adjacent air rights. They …
  
  
• May 2016: New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings sold Sierra Assets Group bought at 160 East 56th Street a Midtown office building for $18.7 million. The building has 42 units which are mostly office tenants with some retail and contain 51,900 square feet. David Associates, sued three of the property's managing members in October to fairly partition the proceeds from the sale, citing constant friction between the owners. The owners countersued, claiming they were owed income from the property that was never distributed.The Renatus Group bought two contiguous mixed-use buildings at 152-154 7th Avenue for $10.5 million from Michael Connolly. One of the building's three …
  
  
• April 2016: New York New Developments
• New Developments Bizzi& Partners, Michael Shvo and New Valley raised $175 million through the EB-5 program from the Chinese for their 91-story tower at 125 Greenwich Street. The developers were about halfway to reaching their goal through the EB-5 program.Vornado plans to combine its One Penn and Two Penn Plaza office buildings to form a 4.2 million-square-foot complex. New renderings for the combined building of one and two Penn plaza show a new glass facade and canopy over Seventh Avenue from Penn Station revealing a reorganized lower-level retail space.Banks are exercising more caution when it comes to financing commercial real …
  
  
• April 2016: New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings sold Jeff Sutton">Jeff Sutton purchased a four-story, mixed-use building along Bleecker Street in the West Village for $11 million, or $2,434 per square foot from Mark Perlgut. The 4,159-square-foot building at 275 Bleecker Street is home to David's Tea on the ground floor, and four apartments on the upper floors.Mack-Cali Realty Corp. is in contract to sell its interest in 125 Broad Street in the Financial District for $202 million. Recently, Mack- Cali Realty was looking to sell its commercial condominium at the 40-story, 1.3 million-square-foot tower. Mack-Cali bought the 525,000-square-foot condo, spanning the second through 16th …
  
  
• March 2016 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Manhattan office and retail leasing has been slow and the stock market is making companies nervous. Both office and retail leasing volume were down last month compared to the month-over-month and year-over- year figures. Office leasing activity was down about 1 million square feet from both December and January 2015. The retail market this year will be slow with some predicting a drop in tourism and others noticing that tenants are jittery over high rents. Manhattan retail leasing ended 2015 on a high note, even as availability rates crept up. But January's preliminary figures show a reversal of that leasing …
  
  
• March 2016: New York New Developments
• New Developments Joseph Beninati's Bauhouse Group filed Friday for Chapter 11 bankruptcy for the LLC entity that owns the 3 Sutton Place development site in Midtown. There is an upcoming foreclosure auction by Gamma's who holds more than $180 million in debt on the property at 426-432 East 58th Street. Bauhouse defaulted on nearly $129 million in loans last month that it had received from Gamma, led by Richard Kalikow, for its planned 68-story, Norman Foster-designed condo tower, also known as 3 Sutton Place. The $4 billion World Trade Center Transportation Hub is about to open. It will connect to …
  
  
• March 2016: New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings sold Gary Barnett's Extell Development made another deal with the Duell family, buying four adjacent commercial buildings on Sixth Avenue in the Flatiron District for a combined $50 million. The buildings collectively have about 63,500 buildable square feet. At 116 Seventh Avenue and 204 117th Street for $11 million. Extell also bought 502 Third Avenue, a rental property with ground-floor retail, from the family for another $11 million around the same time.Extell Development is in talks to buy a Greenwich Village commercial property with substantial development rights from the Duell family. 530 Sixth Avenue is an existing …
  
  
• February 2016 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• There are more large office blocks available in Midtown now than at any time, and landlords who do not want to watch their spaces linger will have to be creative. More than 80 blocks of 100,000-plus square feet of available space in Midtown has been identified, a 60% increase over the number of spaces available at the peak of 2007. Through the first 11 months of 2015, sovereign wealth funds spent more than $22.6 billion on real estate in the United States, up from about $9.8 billion in 2014. Demand for well-located commercial properties remains high in Manhattan. The hotel …
  
  
• February 2016: New York New Developments
• New Developments Water Street in the Financial District is a pedestrian wasteland. The BID aims to change that with a retail makeover. A re-zoning could make way for 167,357 square feet of new retail space, most of which would be built into existing arcade space on the ground floors of various buildings. It is essential to the revitalization of Lower Manhattan. The top 25 office tenants in Manhattan take up more than 56 million square feet of space, with JPMorgan Chase occupying 4.67 million square feet and Citigroup, occupying 4.49 million square feet. The City of New York occupies 7.22 …
  
  
• February 2016: New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings sold Billy Macklowe sold a majority stake in his 12-story office building at 156 William Street to LaSalle Investment Management for around $55 million. LaSalle closed on a majority interest in the 250,000-square-foot building December 31st, with William Macklowe Co. retaining a minority and managing stake in the property. Macklowe also sold two commercial condominium units at 156 William Street to an independent children's school for $27.2 million. The building is located a few blocks from the school's main campus at 241 Water Street. William Macklowe Co. acquired 156 William Street from private equity firm Capstone Equities …
  
  
• January 2016: New York Buildings For Sale
• New Developments Retail:Overseas retail Brands operate 39% of the stores on Fifth and Madison Avenues and in Soho. Of the 906 retailers, Soho is the most nationally-diverse area, with 24 countries represented. Fifth Avenue had 17 non-U.S. outlets and Madison Avenue had 13. Italianstores had the largest number of stores in those areas.Footlocker and Nike signed leases for large spaces on Broadway. Footlocker signed a $15 million deal to lease 36,000 square feet at 1460 Broadway and Nike signed a $16 million lease for 55,000 square feet at 529 Broadway.Gap signed two leases at 1514 Broadway, into two stores for …
  
  
• January 2016: New York New Developments
• New Developments Retail:Overseas retail Brands operate 39% of the stores on Fifth and Madison Avenues and in Soho. Of the 906 retailers, Soho is the most nationally-diverse area, with 24 countries represented. Fifth Avenue had 17 non-U.S. outlets and Madison Avenue had 13. Italianstores had the largest number of stores in those areas.Footlocker and Nike signed leases for large spaces on Broadway. Footlocker signed a $15 million deal to lease 36,000 square feet at 1460 Broadway and Nike signed a $16 million lease for 55,000 square feet at 529 Broadway.Gap signed two leases at 1514 Broadway, into two stores for …
  
  
• December 2015: New York New Developments
• New Developments AvalonBay Communities is planning a new 33-story, mixed-use residential tower at the site of the former American Bible Society located in Lincoln Square. The building will house 160 apartments. There will also be 34,000 square feet of retail space on the lower levels.Vornado Realty Trust lauded a third quarter that saw it sign seven Manhattan office leases at asking rents of over $100 per square foot. Vornado completed 43 office leasing deals totaling 509,000 square feet in the third quarter at an average starting rent of $79.80 per square foot. The total year-to-date leasing activity was nearly 1.7 …
  
  
• December 2015: New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings sold The Dermot Company is in contract to buy a Kips Bay apartment building from AvalonBay Communities for $175 million, part of its effort to transition into the luxury market. A majority of the 209 units in the building located at 377 East 33rd Street are occupied. The 23-story building consists of 185,549 square feet of residential space and 19,000 square feet of commercial space, which is currently leased by New York University.Forest City Enterprises has agreed to sell its development site at 625 Fulton Street in Downtown Brooklyn to Simon Dushinsky's Rabsky Group for $158 million. …
  
  
• November 2015: New York New Developments
• New Developments Developer Bo Jin Zhu filed permit applications for a nine-story hotel and a 16-story apartment building at 412 West 126th Street and 402 West 126th Street. The two buildings together will contain a total of 129,000 square feet of space. UBS is looking for 700,000 and 900,000 square feet in Midtown for its New York headquarters. The company is being forced to move by its current landlord.The Columbus Avenue retail corridor on the Upper West Side has gone from zero vacancies in a 15-block stretch along Columbus Avenue to 14. The spike in retail vacancies is due to …
  
  
• November 2015: New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings sold Condo developer Six Sigma is in contract to buy a six-story self-storage facility near the northern end of the High Line in Chelsea for $54 million at 517-523 West 29th Street. The seller is self-storage Nicholas Sprayregen. The six-story, 55,000-square-foot, warehouse is one of 14 facilities in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. The site is zoned for up to 74,000 buildable square feet. Vornado Realty Trust purchased 265 West 34th Street for $28.5 million. Vornado acquired the property from a group led by Manhattan attorney William Silverman. The deal gives the company three contiguous properties …
  
  
• October 2015: New York New Developments
• New Developments The Archdiocese of New York is backing a Midtown East rezoning that would allow St. Patrick's Cathedral to sell its unused air rights to developers. A committee studying the neighborhood's development potential proposed freeing up landmarked properties, like St. Patrick's, to sell air rights anywhere within the rezoned district.Anthony Bourdain is building at Pier 57 in the Meatpacking district, a restaurant complex with 155,000-square foot, 100 culinary stalls and is currently under construction and to be completed in 2016. The Bourdain Market will be the largest of the city's themed restaurant markets.The residents of a co-op building in …
  
  
• October 2015: New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings sold Jerry Gottesman, the chair of Edison Properties, just closed on the $43.1 million purchase of 45-47 West 27th Street in NoMad.Kamber Management closed on its $365 million purchase of Tower 45 from SL Green Realty. The sale price values the class-A, 460,000-square-foot office tower, located at 120 West 45th Street, at $830 per square foot. SL Green Realty agreed to sell two retail development sites, at 570 Fifth Avenue and 574 Fifth Avenue in Midtown, getting $125.4 million. SL Green bought the two sites from Extell Development in 2013 for a total of $78.7 million. Walter …
  
  
• September 2015: New York Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For Sale Unizo Holdings is buying Sherwood Equities and JPMorgan Chase's 370 Lexington Avenue office building for $247 million. 370 Lexington Avenue contains 311,000-square-foot.350 East 86th Street went into contract with Gary Barnett's Extell Development Company for $100 million. Innovo Property group and Artemis Real Estate Partners bought the 15,500-square-foot retail condo at 202 Canal Street for $44 million.Extell just acquired a 14-story office building at 10 West 47th Street for $74.4 million containing 72,000-square-foot building between Fifth and Sixth avenues. Gaia Real Estate is in contract to buy the rental conversion of a former St. Vincent's Midtown …
  
  
• September 2015: New York New Developments
• Sam Chang plans to build a 25-story, 175-key hotel on a Garment District development site. The hotelier filed a permit application to build a 60,000-square-foot hotel at 338 West 39th Street, near Ninth Avenue. He bought the 12-story factory building for $22.4 million.The Hakimian Organization is in the process of acquiring 16,000 square feet of air rights from the landmarked Helen Hayes Theatre. This would allow the company to build a 246-key hotel at 250 West 49th Street containing 96,000-square-foot hotel on the property. The plans call for a renovation of the existing eight-story, 58,000-square-foot building, and add another 16 …
  
  
• August 2015: New York New Developments
• Brookfield Property Partners paid $69 million to acquire Planned Parenthood's 72,500-square-foot space at Vectra Management Group's 424 West 33rd Street. Planned Parenthood had paid $34 million for the commercial condominium in 2012. Vectra still holds the title to the remaining 68,300 square feet in the 13-story building.Plans for a new Marriott hotel at 151 Maiden Lane in the Financial District have been done by Architect Peter Poon who is designing the new 33-story building. Fortis Property Group is developing the 271-room hotel project . The project also includes a taller, 52-story residential tower with 95 units. The developer bought the …
  
  
• August 2015: New York Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For Sale The Related Cos. is considering selling a stake in its 10 Hudson Yards office tower now that the building is almost fully leased. The developer is in discussions with Boston Consulting Group to take about 175,000 square feet at 10 Hudson Yards, which would boost the building to near full occupancy before its scheduled completion early next year. A stake sale would allow Related and equity partner Oxford Properties Group to capitalize on the building's value and provide funds to finance further construction at the 28-acre, $20 billion development. Ian Bruce Eichner is shopping around his …
  
  
• July 2015: New York New Developments
• New York University's campus expansion plans to expand the school by about 2 million square feet in Greenwich Village hasve been approved by Tthe New York State Court of Appeals.s gave an approval to New York University's campus expansion plans to expand the school by about 2 million square feet in Greenwich Village. Neighborhood activists sued to prevent the expansion, claiming it used land that was permanently designated for public park use. The plan will create new high rises on two blocks between West Third and Houston Streets and La Guardia Place and Mercer Street. FAO Schwarz is close to …
  
  
• July 2015: New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings sold Thor Equities sold a Midtown development site at 520 Fifth Avenue to Ceruzzi Properties and an unidentified Chinese partner for $275 million, after purchasing it for $150 million in 2011. Ceruzzi , a Fairfield, Conn.-based real estate investor, plans to follow through with Sitt's plans to develop for a 71-story residential, hotel and retail tower on the site. The plot has approximately 300,000 buildable square feet, between 43rd and 44th streets and has been vacant since two prewar buildings were demolished there when purchased the site. Real estate investor Arthur Shapolsky is in contract to buy …
  
  
• June 2015: New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings sold The Sapir Organization and CIM Group sold 11 Madison Avenue for $2.6 billion to SL Green. SL Green Realty Corp. agreed to pay $2.3 billion, and spend an additional $300 million for building improvement costs. 11 Madison contains a 2.2 million-square-foot building.Prodigy is buying a 12-story building at 331 Park Avenue South for $51 million, including air rights from nearby properties. Prodigy is paying $49 million to buy 114 East 25th Street, a 42,000-square-foot loft-style property.Crown Acquisitions and Oxford Properties Group bought the entire office and retail base of 641 Fifth Avenue (Olympic Tower), after paying …
  
  
• June 2015: New York New Developments
• Foot traffic on madison avenue has declined by 200,000 people over the last seven months when the Whitney closed in October. While many luxury retailers still maintain locations there, some of them are global brands that are simply there for the status and are actually losing money on the area rents.The City Council approved plans for One Vanderbilt, the 63-story, 1.6 million-square-foot office tower to be built next to Grand Central Station. The tower will be anchored by TD Bank, with 200,000 square feet. One Vanderbilt will deliver critically-needed, state-of-the-art Class A office space and dramatically upgrade Grand Central's overburdened …
  
  
• May 2015: New York New Developments
• New Developments China's largest publicly-traded developer is buying a majority stake in at 130 West 42nd Street, a 30-story office building for $125 million. Real estate funds are receiving more investment from pension funds, endowments and institutional investors. Madison Capital is buying a retail space encompassing at least 32,000 square feet at 549-555 and 557-559 Broadway in Soho for $400 million. Asking rent for the new ground-floor retail space will likely exceed $1,000 per square foot. Scholastic paid $25.5 million for the 10-story property at 557-559 Broadway in 2010, and $255 million for the 12-story property at 549-555 Broadway last …
  
  
• May 2015: New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings sold Eliot Spitzer's sale of the Crown Building for $1.78 billion to Jeff Sutton and General Growth Properties set an all-time price per-square-foot record. The deal, which closed last month, marks the highest price paid per square foot ever paid for an entire office building. At 390,000 square feet, the price breaks down to $4,564 per square foot.Extell Development and the Group.">Carlyle Group sold a portion of their Riverside Center project on the Far West Side for $410.8 million to James Linsley's GID Development Group. GID purchased 40 Riverside Boulevard, one of five buildings in the 8-acre …
  
  
• April 2015: New York New Developments
• New Developments The Howard Hughes Corp. has just struck a deal with Edison Properties that allows the former to build a large mixed-use building straddling the border of the South Street Seaport Historic District.Community Board 5 will look to decide whether or not to extend the Madison Square North Historic District. Currently, the borders of the district are 25th and 29th streets and Sixth and Madison avenues. Under a new proposal which is in front of the board now, the district would be extended north to 34th Street and from Broadway to Park Avenue South.New renderings of Citigroup's planned headquarters …
  
  
• April 2015: New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings sold Chinese insurance company Groups bought the Waldorf Astoria for nearly $2 billion. It was the largest ever Chinese investment in a single Manhattan property and that was negotiated chairman Wu Xiaohui to chairman Jonathan Gray head of real estate for Blackstone.Maddd Equities bought the school component of a 14-story Upper East Side building for $24.5 million. The school is located inside a 181,700-square-foot building at 1225-1239 Second Avenue, located between East 64th and 65th streets. The Grace Institute had owned the roughly 45,200-square-foot space since 1963.David Berley purchased 160-162 Lexington for $24.5 million from Lexington Landmark …
  
  
• March 2015: NYC New Developments
• Major Developments Manhattan Borough President and a City Council member have been talking to developers to find a new plan for the historic South Street Seaport site to prevent a 494-foot tower from being built.The city is looking to revamp a program where property owners can transfer unused air rights to others. -The requirements are so difficult that only 10 successful transfers have been made out of almost 1,000 landmarks.. Those transfers took place in Midtown or Lower Manhattan. The NY state's attorney general's office is closing a 36-story, illegal hotel owned by an affiliate group. The property at 49 …
  
  
• March 2015 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• The Lower Manhattan's commercial market had its best year on record since the financial crisis.Manhattan will have at least additional 9.5 million square feet of available office space on the market by 2018.Shopping on Lower Broadwayis blooming after years of neglect, as a resulting of new retailers coming to the area: Gap,Zara andUrban Outfitters. Nobu,will be moving to 195 Broadwayby 2017. Real estate investment trusts are among the most aggressive players in the New York market for trophy properties buying some of New York City's priciest properties, including the $778 million acquisition of 338 Greenwich Street, occupied by Citigroup, and …
  
  
• March 2015: New York Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For Sale General Growth Properties is putting an 85,000 square feet of fully-leased Noho office space up for sale located a 200 Lafayette Street.Just three years after paying $360 million for an office tower at 575 Lexington Avenue, Normandy Real Estate Partners is looking to sell.The Chetrit Group is seeking a buyer for its Hudson Yards development site, but in the interim, the firm is planning on spending $29 million to more than double the buildable square footage the property allows as-of-right.433 Fifth Avenue is for sale asking $30 million for a six-story Midtown commercial building. The 17,000-square-foot …
  
  
• February 2015: NYC New Developments
• Mitsui Fudosan started construction on 55 Hudson Yards. Its $1.4 billion office tower which is part of the 28-acre megaproject on Manhattan's West Side.Property Markets Group is planning to convert a four-story commercial building at 548 West 22nd Street into a 19-story residential development.Brookfield Office Properties said the total development cost for the first of its two Manhattan West office towers is more than $2 billion.A joint venture between Madison Equities, Building and Land Technology (BLT) and Joseph's Sitt Thor Equities received a $275 million construction loan to acquire and complete the gut renovation of 212 Fifth Avenue. BRP Corp. …
  
  
• February 2015: New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings for Sale A Times Square hotel is hitting the market for. The Comfort Inn Times Square South at 305 West 39th Street is for sale asking $35 million. The property was built in 2007, and has a 93% occupancy rate. Rooms are about $180 per night. The price per room is based is about $448,718.A Court Square development site offering more than 167,000 buildable square feet is on the market for $41.5 million. The site is 11,145 square feet. The properties are located at 23-10 45th Avenue, 45-03 23rd Street; 45-05 23rd Street; 45-07 23rd Street; 45-09 …
  
  
• January 2015: New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings sold Jeff Sutton and General Growth Properties are buying the Crown Building at Fifth Avenue and 57th Street for $1.75 billion. The price works out to $4,490 per square foot, which sets a new world record for the price of an entire office building. The nearly 400,000-square-foot tower includes roughly 50,000 square feet of valuable retail space with retail tenants including: Bulgari , Mikimoto, Bank of America and Piaget. Broad Street Development purchased two Noho apartment buildings for a combined $178.5 million. The properties are located at 298 and 304 Mulberry Street. The buildings house 182 apartments, …
  
  
• January 2015: NYC New Developments
• New Developments A new building by Cape Advisors at 535 Greenwich Street would have 26 floors and 116 condo units, on an L-shaped lot. The 57,500-square-foot warehouse site with 42,500-square-feet of buildable air rights. Kaled Management filed plans for a 10-story apartment building at 711 West End Avenue, also known as 306 West 95th Street. Alchemy Properties unveiled plans for a new 24-story tower in NoMad at 846-850 Sixth Avenue. It will contain 52 residences totaling 105,973 square feet or 2,000 square each condo. The tower will rise 316 feet and have a 3,100 square feet retail space. Demolition permits …
  
  
• December 2014: NYC New Building Developments
• New Developments The prices of U.S. commercial buildings are higher than the peak in 2007. Since January 2010, the Moody's/RCA Commercial Property Price Indices has seen a climb of 40 percent.The Bronx borough president's South Bronx waterfront redevelopment project looks to be moving forward.A Movie theater chain is on the search for eight retail spaces in New York City and on Long Island to either lease to buy.Prior to constructing 55 Hudson Yards the 1.3 million square feet office development, the developer Related will have to pay up to $180 million to buy the building bonuses that help in the …
  
  
• December 2014 NYC Buildings purchased & For to purchase
• New York Buildings sold The developer who is turning Verizon's former downtown headquarters into luxury condominiums has bought the building's 40,000-square-foot retail space for $40 million.A Developer acquired a three-story Upper West Side commercial building located at 2307 Broadway for $25.9 million. The 9,900-square-foot property, between West 83rd and 84th streets, is home to a Duane Reade store on the ground floor. There are offices on the upper floors.A Financial services firm acquired a 16-story office building at 21 Penn Plaza in Midtown from Savanna and the Feil Organization for an undisclosed price.A Canadian property investor and Chicago-based Callahan Capital …
  
  
• November 2014: NYC New Building Developments
• New Developments The average Manhattan commercial building sale was smaller year-over-year, though the number of sales so far is on pace to break a 2007 record high. Manhattan saw 328 commercial deals worth $30 billion through September. That marks a 47 percent jump from the 223 sales worth $30.2 billion recorded for all of last year. In 2007, there were 346 deals valued at roughly $48.5 billion.The 40,000-square-foot retail component at TF Cornerstone's 22-story office building in Midtown East is being marketed. The retail space spans several floors and sits at the base of the 164,000-square-foot building at East 60th …
  
  
• November 2014 NYC Buildings purchased & For to purchase
• New York Buildings sold Two properties in Midtown East were just sold for $18 million. A five-building development site at 134-142 Bowery sold for $45.3 million.A Midtown East-based real estate investment firm bought 66 Pearl Street for $30.1 million.Emmes Asset Management is selling a Midtown South office building at 158 West 27th Street for a sizable profit. The 118,000-square-foot building is in contract for $82.5 million.New York University bought a 151,000-square-foot building in Noho for $157 million, with plans to convert it into a temporary space for athletic facilities.Ashkenazy Acquisition Corporation bought a pair of adjacent retail buildings a block …
  
  
• October 2014 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings sold San Francisco-based Carmel Partners officially completed the purchase of a downtown development site for $171 million. The transaction also includes development rights.Potential buyers are in early discussions interested in buying the Diamond Center of America, a 16-story office tower that is being marketed as a potential redevelopment site. The building, located at 36-42 West 47th Street, is home to some of the top jewelry merchants in the world, but the property has a number of leases set to expire and is seen as a potential site for anything from new commercial development to residential or hospitality …
  
  
• October 2014: NYC New Building Developments
• New Developments Microsoft's Stores move to Fifth Avenue is official. The software and video game company confirmed that it will open a flagship at 677 Fifth Avenue as part of a continued expansion of the company's retail presence. Microsoft will occupy 8,700-square-foot across two-floors at the Fifth Avenue location..The boutique fitness scene seems to be pushing out many mid-tier players, snapping up a growing number of leases and paying good rents for commercial landlords.New York City's tech firms are bumping into a new problem: a lack of open office space. Many of these companies rent offices in the city's old …
  
  
• September 2014: Manhattan New Developments
• New Developments The city approved Gregg Singer's plan to convert a former Alphabet City public school into a college dormitory. The landmarked building aka P.S. 64 is locateded at 605 East 9th Street. The Department of Buildings approved Singer's plan exam for the conversion.The city's last Office Depot will shut its doors near Times Square at the end of the year. Manhattan building owners keep building even taller buildings. The trick is to bring record height skyscrapers with the minimum of big chunks of useless hidden space. The Bank of America tower at 1111 Avenue of the Americas, which is …
  
  
• September 2014: New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings sold A Greenwich, Conn.-based real estate investor group purchased the leasehold interest at the Midtown Extended-Stay Marriott at 144 East 48th Street from AEW Capital Management for $89.6 million. Barclays gave a $57 million loan.The single-room-occupancy Camden Hotel, which the 24th Precinct on the Upper West Side once ranked as the area's second most dangerous building, has sold for $15 million.A Real estate developer purchased the Quad Cinema in Greenwich Village and will embark on a renovation that will see the independent theater redone as a repertory house.Normandy Real Estate Partners is purchasing a 50 percent stake …
  
  
• August 2014 New York Buildings Purchased & For Sale
• New York Buildings sold A Hong Kong-based Investment firm, bought SpringHill Suites by Marriott in Midtown for $82 million. Hidrock Realty sold the 173-room, Gene Kaufman-designed property at 25 West 37th Street for $82 million. The hotel opened last year.Madison Realty Capital has teamed with RWN Real Estate Partners to purchase a pair of buildings along Frederick Douglas Boulevard in Harlem for about $30 million.Real estate investment firm KUB Capital is in contract to acquire a one-story Soho baby stroller store and adjacent parking lot for a sum of $50 million.A White Plains, N.Y.-based real estate investment trust is in …
  
  
• August 2014:NYC New Developments
• New Developments The large retirement investment firm is the buyer in a $365 million deal to acquire the leased fee interest in 2 Herald Square.Wharton Properties received a $95 million construction loan to develop a six-story, 33,000-square-foot Harlem retail building to be anchored by Whole Foods. Natixis Real Estate Capital provided a three-year, interest-only loan that comes with two options to extend it for a 12-month period. The site at 100 West 125th Street, near Lenox Avenue, will hold Whole Foods as well as Olive Garden, TD Bank, Burlington Coat Factory and American Eagle. All leases are for 20 years; …
  
  
• July 2014: New York New Developments
• A Private Upper East Side girls' school sent a letter to parents saying the school has been reviewing 20 sites that would accommodate the school's 700 students. The K through 12th grade school has operated out of a 12-story brick building at 610 East 83rd Street since 1929.The Bauhouse Group has recently secured a $35 million construction loan from Doral Bank to finance its condominium-and-retail project in Chelsea. The developers acquired a 35,000-square-foot, six-story warehouse at 515 West 29th Street for $24.4 million, and {dynamic_word3} three additional parcels of air rights for a total of $6 million. Permits have been …
  
  
• July 2014: NYC Building Sold & For Sale
• {dynamic_word1} Buildings {dynamic_word3} A development firm bought a pair of Financial District buildings from the Century 21 department store company for $46 million.The San Francisco-based investment and building firm inked a contract to buy a development site at 112-118 Fulton Street in Lower Manhattan from the Lightstone Group for more than $170 million.375 West Broadway may be {dynamic_word3} for $125 million. It {dynamic_word3} for $81 million last year.Michael Shvo is in contract to buy 22 Thames Street, or 125 Greenwich Street, from Fisher Brothers and Steven Witkoff for around $180 million.A New York-based asset firm is nearing a deal to …
  
  
• June 2014 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings For Sale The Rubin Museum of Art is looking to sell a Chelsea development site that delivers more than 70,000 buildable square feet of space. The site, which is now a seven-story building, is expected to go for $60 million. The site at 115 Seventh Avenue near West 17th Street is most valuable as a condominium-and-retail project. Thus, the current structure would have to be demolished.A local investment company that has for decades owned a building which houses a drug abuse treatment facility has put the property on the market. Many in the industry think the property …
  
  
• June 2014 New York New Developments
• Major Developments The South Bronx has had very few lodging destinations since the luxury Concourse Plaza Hotel at 161st Street and Grand Concourse closed in 1974. But now, with the opening of the luxury boutique Opera House Hotel at 436 East 149th Street last summer and the Umbrella Hotel looking to open 681 Elton Avenue this fall, the area’s hotel industry seems to be on the rebound.The Mayor’s administration has suggested rezoning a five-block stretch around Grand Central Terminal to allow for the construction of SL Green’s planned 65-story tower project at 1 Vanderbilt. De Blasio’s plan looks to partly …
  
  
• May 2014 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings For Sale A West Side’s Hudson Yards development site, nearby parcel could sell more than $100 million. A nonprofit organization is selling a landmarked church for $50 million. The Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies, the owner of the Church Missions House at 281 Park Avenue South, is looking to sell the century-old building to fund its services, including advocacy and management assistance for more than 200 churches and social-service groups. An affiliate of Walter & Samuels is looking to sell an Upper West Side parking garage site, which is being marketed as a potential redevelopment into condominiums. The 7,700-square-foot …
  
  
• May 2014 New York New Developments
• Major Developments Duane Reade recently vacated a location next to department store H&M; and is now on the market. The unofficial asking rent for the property is nearly $8 million per year. Commune Hotels & Resorts, a San Francisco-based joint partnership between Thompson Hotels and Joie De Vivre Hotels, has plans to develop two more hotels in Manhattan. One will operate under the Thompson Hotel brand, while the other will have a different hotel brand. The properties, for which Commune has already inked deals, are looking to open in 2016. The lineup for Westfield Group’s central shopping hall within the …
  
  
• May 2014 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• With Manhattan retail rents skyrocketing retailers such as Rizzoli Bookstore and J&R; Music and Computer World have shuttered. Retail tenants are increasingly turning to hybrid models to be profitable. Despite being one of the wealthiest places in the nation and a shopping mecca for 50 million plus tourists, Manhattan still has more vacant retail space than anyone can count. This is caused by Landlord seeking higher rents than tenants can profitably operate. The two emerging centers for tech office tenants in the city are the Manhattan corridor spanning 14th Street through 42nd Street, and Downtown Brooklyn. Tech firms are looking …
  
  
• April 2014 New York Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For Sale New York Foundling is asking $47.5 million for a four-story Greenwich Village building it bought for $3 million about 12 years ago. The 14,540-square-foot property at 27 Christopher Street, near Waverly Place, has served as a nursing school and parochial school. The space currently houses the Vincent J. Fontana Center for Child Protection, an organization that offers training to child-care workers.A 20,000-square-foot, multi-level retail space at the base of building at 95 Madison Avenue is for sale.Hiro Real Estate and Goldman Sachs’ landmarked tower at 150 East 42nd Street, also known as the Socony-Mobil Building, is …
  
  
• April 2014 New York New Developments
• New Developments The planned performing-arts center at the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan has stiff competition for funds. The $469 million dollar project now sits in limbo while the new Mayor, Bill de Blasio, comes to a decision about the future of the planned center.The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey board of commissioners are fighting over subsidies for 3 World Trade Center, the 80-story, $2.3 billion tower in the Financial District. The project is currently stalled. Developer Larry Silverstein and Port Authority’s Vice Chair are pushing for the subsidies that they said would allow for construction …
  
  
• March 2014 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings sold The ELO Organization, a developer that owns the site of gentlemen’s club Rick’s Cabaret, has acquired a 12-story Garment District office building for $29.6 million from the Eretz Group. The 44,300-square-foot property at 39-41 West 38th Street. Asking rents were an average $38 per square foot at the property, International buyers purchased $5.5 billion worth of Manhattan office towers last year, from China, Canada and the United Arab Emirates. Last year’s sales were twice as much as the previous record of $3 billion in 2007. Fosun from China bought One Chase Manhattan Plaza, for over $700 …
  
  
• March 2014 New York New Developments
• New Developments 68 Charlton Street Extell Development has submitted plans for a 22-story residential building in Hudson Square that would include the neighborhood its first affordable housing.Flushing Commons. Architect Perkins Eastman announced the master plan. Phase one will have 150 residential units and 220,000 square feet of office space, along with 1,600 parking spaces. Phase two will have 450 residential units and 280,000 square feet of commercial space, a 62,000-square-foot YMCA and an additional 15,000 square feet for community facilities. There will also be A 1.5-acre town square, built around a central fountain plaza.Phase one is aiming for an April …
  
  
• February 2014 New York New Developments
• New Developments A Brooklyn fashion networking company away is moving into Manhattan. Manufacture NYC, a program that gives budding designers access to industrial sewing machines and design software, conducted an exhaustive search for a budget-friendly spot in Brooklyn before finally giving up and settling on a space in Manhattan’s Garment District. 7-Eleven is trying to gain acceptance in Manhattan. Since entering Manhattan in 2011 the number of locations has quadrupled from eight to 37 stores.Hospitals are increasingly opening full-service walk-in clinics in an effort to reduce inpatient costs. As a result, outpatient medical facilities are cropping up throughout the city. …
  
  
• February 2014 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Chinese Real estate investors were the largest investors in New York City in the world Increased availability of debt and an uptick in office rents drove demand for large Manhattan office towers in 2013. The top 10 priciest building sales of the year included nine office buildings — a threefold increase over the three office towers that cracked the top 10 list in 2012. Sales volume for all New York City properties could reach a record $63 billion this year, soaring 68 percent from last year. The dollar volume of New York City investment property trades is up 35 percent …
  
  
• January 2014 NYC Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For Sale The Rhinelander Children’s Center at 350 East 88th, an Upper East Side townhouse owned by the nonprofit Children’s Aid Society, is for sale, asking $20 million. The four-story, 15,405-square-foot site is 50 feet wide. School programs have included preschool, summer camp and after-school care. Verizon is selling a former telephone-exchange building on West 36th Street near Seventh Avenue as a potential hotel site.Bank of New York Mellon is looking to downsize, and is considering a sale of its 52 story headquarters at 1 Wall Street. Chinese Christian Herald Crusades has put their building at 48 Allen …
  
  
• January 2014: New York New Developments
• NYC New Developments Brookfield Property Partners has increased its cash offer to buy Brookfield Office Properties to roughly $5.1 billion. Brookfield Office's board plans to recommend to shareholders to accept this new offer. In place of cash, shareholders can receive one limited partnership unit under the offer. In September, Brookfield Property's offer was valued at $5 billion. Hotel developer Zelig Weiss is planning a new 183-room hotel to Wythe Avenue in Williamsburg. The 150,000-square-foot building will be located at 55 Wythe Avenue. Citibank signed a lease worth more than $1 billion to renew its 2.7 million-square-foot lease in a two-building …
  
  
• December 2013 NYC Buildings For Sale
• New York City Buildings For Sale Jeff Greene has switched tactics in Hudson Square. Rather than build a 140,000-square-foot condominium project at 100 Vandam Street, he has decided to sell the parcel for $150 million, or three times what he paid for last year. The move follows a contentious rezoning of the area that will allow for bigger residential developments. India-based Sahara Group is trying to unload the iconic Plaza Hotel along with the Dream Downtown Hotel in Manhattan and Grosvenor House in London, and has received a $1.6 billion offer from a Middle Eastern group for the luxury hotel …
  
  
• December 2013: New York City New Developments
• New York City New Developments The state Public Authorities Control Board gave unanimous approval to the Empire State Development Corporation's $225 million National Urban League complex in Harlem. The project will include a civil rights museum, affordable housing and commercial space. Construction at 125th Street site will begin after the expiration of tenants' leases in 2015. The businesses currently occupying the site can apply for a low-interest loan for relocation services. However, lawsuits may still delay the complex.The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is looking to increase revenue by increasing the number of retail stores at subway stations and converting small spaces …
  
  
• November 2013 New York Buildings for Sale
• NYC Buildings For Sale A West 39th Street development site that could support a 60-room limited-service hotel has hit the market. The site at 335 West 39th Street, located between Eighth and Ninth avenues, will allow for a 44,437 square-foot-building by combining its current zoning entitlement with extra air-rights acquired through the city’s Hudson Yards district improvement bonus.A firm founded by former executives from SL Green Realty and Broadway Real Estate Partners is looking to unload a 12-story Chelsea office building that could fetch as much as $90 million , or almost double the purchase price paid during the real …
  
  
• November 2013: NY New Developments
• NY New Developments Harlem's rapid development and emergence as a viable tourist and business destination has suddenly led to a spike in the demand for hotels in the area, so much so that the neighborhood is now short of about 1,500 hotel rooms. Even future growth in the hotel industry will not be able to meet demand. Although two hotels are in the works with a 210-room property near the old Victoria Theater on 125th Street and a 230-room property near Columbia University's West Harlem expansion. The Landmarks Preservation Commission has recently voted in favor of the Nordstrom tower cantilever, …
  
  
• October 2013 NYC Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For Sale The ground lease for the Time Hotel, the 192-room boutique Theater District property formerly owned by hotelier Vikram Chatwal, is to hit the foreclosure auction block. Discussions between Hampshire Hotels and special servicer have collapsed.The owner of three adjacent parcels at the corner of 42nd Street and Ninth Avenue near Times Square has put the site on the market, expecting offers of about $2 million per year in triple net rent, meaning the tenant pays taxes and other expenses.Millennium Partners, a developer of luxury mixed-use properties, is seeking a buyer for the 335,000-square foot Ritz-Carlton Hotel …
  
  
• October 2013: NYC New Developments
• NYC New Developments Ace Hotel is converting a 10-story building at 225 Bowery into a hotel, despite earlier plans to turn it into apartments. The Lower East Side building’s owner, the Salvation Army Chinese Community Center, will close within the year. Ace is serving as a silent partner and developer on this and the Jarmulowsky Bank project at 52 Canal Street. That development, from DLJ Real Estate Capital Partners, is slated to be a 12-story, 105-unit hotel, and will be operated by Ace under a different name.Fairway Market is coming to the World Trade Center neighborhood. The market just signed …
  
  
• September 2013: NYC Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For Sale Developer Centaur Properties has paid $45 million to acquire a West Chelsea site with close to 110,000 square feet of unused air-rights.A developer known for converting old buildings into condominiums has paid $27 million for the former Ridley Department Story on the Lower East Side.Westwood’s company purchased a five-story townhouse for $13.5 million to plant the designer’s New York City flagship. The 12,000 square-foot townhouse at 14 East 55th Street, next to the St. Regis Hotel, will hold the corporate headquarters as well as a Vivienne Westwood retail store and showroom.Northwood Investors paid $150 million for …
  
  
• September 2013: Manhattan New Developments
• Manhattan New Developments Architect Santiago Calatrava has been chosen to design the newGreek Orthodox Archdiocese Church of St. Nicholas at 130 Liberty Street. It will sit just south of the site of the World Trade Center Transportation Hub that the architect also designed..Sheldon Solow clock is running out at his long-dormant, six-acre lot between East 38th and East 41st streets on First Avenue. Mr. Solo could lose his permits and public approvals for a $4 billion project if he does not build a foundation for the office building or one of several apartment towers by this November.The battle to secure …
  
  
• August 2013: New York Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For Sale A 20,083-square-foot residential development site at 505-511 West 43rd Street is for sale. The site is asking about $300 per buildable square foot, or nearly $50 million.The site, located between 10th and 11th Avenues, can accommodate 160,664 square feet of zoning floor area and 190 residential units but is complicated by its location above an active Amtrak rail line. As a result, potential development will require two special permits, to be obtained through the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure.LCOR, a national investment, management and development company, is quietly shopping around its leasehold in a 17-story, …
  
  
• August 2013: New York New Developments
• New York New Developments Brookfield Office Properties has begun construction of a bridge 120,000 square feet for its Manhattan West project. Brookfield will be the first platform on Amtrak rail yards between ninth and 12th avenues. Time Warner has agreed in principle to move in 80-story skyscraper related companies planned for yards at the 10th Avenue and West 33rd Street, capping weeks of speculation on the movement of the media company in Hudson Yards, IMG Worldwide extend its lease at 304 Park Avenue South. And will now occupy 72,080 square feet. The lease also increased its initial term of 10 …
  
  
• July 2013: New York City Buildings For sale
• New York Buildings sold Abe Talass' Eretz Group will pay about $210 million for a Midtown office tower belonging to Westbrook Partners and the Moinian Group. The 300,000-square-foot 295 Madison Avenue is part of a portfolio that Westbrook was marketing in April that is expected to get about $1 billion. The deal is expected to close in September. The $1.3 billion sale of 650 Madison Avenue, which entered into a contract, Crown Acquisitions and Highgate Holdings, see value in the property's retail component. Carey Watermark Investors announced the company's acquisition of the 226-room Holiday Inn Manhattan 6th Avenue, at 125 …
  
  
• July 2013: New York City New Developments
• New York City New Developments Internet radio provider Pandora Media has slated a 52,450-square-foot lease at 125 Park Avenue. Warner Music Group is looking at a 225,000-square-foot space at 7 West 34th Street. Warner currently has space at 75 Rockefeller Center, and faces a deadline with its lease expiring next year. Still, the company is also looking over options to move elsewhere.Planet Fitness gym has inked two Manhattan leases in a city expansion effort. The largest contiguous block of class A office space in Midtown will soon come available at 1221 Sixth Avenue. About 537,000 square feet of space will …
  
  
• June 2013: NYC Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For Sale Hines is selling off two Midtown office properties at 499 Park Avenue and 425 Lexington Avenue for a combined price of more than $1 billion. JPMorgan Asset Management will pay $750 million for 425 Lexington.Quinlan Development Group will pay $4 million for air-rights from God’s Love We Deliver and intends to build a 14-story residential condominium project. The charity wants to sell the development rights to raise funds for a $26 million expansion at 166 Sixth Avenue, at Spring Street.Verizon is planning on selling or leasing around half the space inside its 31-story headquarters. The company …
  
  
• June 2013 New York City New Developments
• NY New Developments The Federal Department of Transportation will give New York $185 million to help build a rail tunnel under the Related Companies’ Hudson Yards project that will allow for high-speed train service between Manhattan and Newark, N.JTwo recent Plaza District office leases have broken new price records, being the most expensive office leases since 2008. Hedge fund Ruane, Cunniff & Goldfarb and the Brazil-based Banco Itaú will pay just under $200 per square foot for space at 9 West 57th Street and the GM Building.The Lower East Side is getting a new 12-story, 44,000-square-foot, 38-unit residential building at …
  
  
• May 2013 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Retail rentson West 34th Street are now $1,000 a square foot. Swatch Group just signed a 10-year deal for 1,800 square feet at 112 West 34th Street, where the asking rent was $1,000 per square foot.The Chelsea/Meatpacking area of Midtown South had the lowest availability of office space of any of Manhattan’s 19 submarkets. 6.9 % of space was vacant in the first quarter of 2013, a drop from 9 % in the previous quarter.There are anumber of class A office buildings are for sale in Manhattan. This could be a sign of a real estate bubble. The total dollar …
  
  
• May 2013: NYC New Developments
• NYC New Developments Waterman Interests has signed a new 75-year deal with Benenson Capital Partners for the master lease at 400 Park Avenue. The Benenson family has owned the East 54th Street site since 1971. In 2010, Waterman along with some institutional investors paid $35 million to RFR Realty for the leasehold on the 270,000-square-foot property. At the time, the leasehold had 17 years remaining. Manhattan hotels have been popping up especially in the area around 29th Street. . Now there are nearly a dozen hotels clustered on and around 29th Street, including the trendy Ace Hotel, which opened in …
  
  
• April 2013 NYC Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For Sale Harbor Group International is planning to sell its property at 1412 Broadway in Times Square South for about $250 million. Harbor Group purchased the 420,000-square-foot office building for $150 million in 2010. Harbor upgraded the building’s lobby, elevator cabs and base façade, as well as upgrading a small retail annex at 1420 Broadway, which is also part of the property. United Cerebral Palsy has put its East 23rd Street building on the block. Located at 122-130 East 23rd Street, the 60,000-square-foot building is being marketed as a development site. The sales price is expected to be …
  
  
• April 2013: Manhattan New Developments
• Manhattan New DevelopmentsThe Hudson Yards area is shaping up to be something of an office-{dynamic_word2} battleground, with the Moinian Group, Extell Development, the Related Companies and Brookfield Office Properties hunting for office tenants. Moinian's proposed 1.8 milllion-square-foot 3 Hudson Boulevard. Related's under-construction, 1.7 million-square-foot Coach building at 10th Avenue and 30th Street; and Brookfield's planned Manhattan West, which could bring 5.4 million square feet of office and residential space to Ninth Avenue. Extell has also proposed a 1.7 million-square-foot tower in the area dubbed 1 Hudson Yards. Peebles Corporation will pay $160 million for 346 Broadway, a 13-story building. Peebles …
  
  
• March 2013 New York Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For Sale The nearly 41,600-square-foot Colonial Revival U.S. Post Office location at 217 West 18th Street between Seventh and Eighth avenues is for sale.The SUNY board of trustees voted to close the Cobble Hill-based Long Island College Hospital. The sale of the 200,000-square-foot building, which could be converted into a residential development, may bring up to $500 million.Lehman Brothers is looking to sell its 90 percent stake in 425 Park Avenue. The 31-story, 567,340-square-foot building, located in Midtown East, is to be demolished and replaced with a 650,000-square-foot Norman Foster-designed office tower being developed by L&L Holdings, which …
  
  
• March 2013: New York New Developments
• New York New Developments Acadia Realty Trust has defended its stance on hiring non-union workers for its City Point megaproject and responded to a trade group's accusation that the development exploits the community and wastes taxpayer dollars. They believe that City Point will generate thousands of jobs and enhance Downtown Brooklyn's quality of life. Acadia is committed to maximizing local and minority contracting and employment as they create a LEED-certified development with the affordable housing, retail and entertainment options that the neighborhood well deserves.A trio of Russian entrepreneurs is redeveloping a three-acre sports complex, slated to be the largest in …
  
  
• February 2013 NYC Buildings For Sale
• Buildings For Sale In one of the largest land deals in years, Sheldon Solow has reached an agreement with a consortium led by JDS Development Group to sell a parcel of land overlooking the East River for roughly $200 million. The full-block piece of land is zoned for residential use, and there are intentions to build a 37-story tower and a 47-story tower on the site, with a total of more than 830 units. The deal is being financed primarily by a $125 million loan from UBS. The parcel being sold is the smaller of two plots totaling nine acres …
  
  
• February 2013: New York City New Developments
• The Federal Emergency Management Agency gave New Yorkers whose homes were devastated by Hurricane Sandy a 30-day extension on applications for home repairs. The Transitional Sheltering Assistance program, which has helped New Yorkers continue living in participating hotels and motels, will also be extended. Governor Cuomo requested that FEMA grant extensions. Alexander McQueen plans to decamp to 747 Madison Avenue. The designer will lease a double-height 3,300-square-foot space owned by Jeff Sutton, paying $1,300 per square foot during the 15-year lease. Fashion label Escada previously took up a portion of the retail space. Before that, Valentino occupied the space during …
  
  
• January 2013 Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Major Trends Rising anxiety over the so-called fiscal cliff caused construction employment in New York to fall 5.2 percent year-over-year. The prospect of federal tax increases, combined with spending cuts, has made contractors anxious, and resulted in 16,100 fewer construction jobs in New York, year-over-year — bringing the number of construction jobs statewide down to 292,200. The City Planning Commission approved Durst Fetner Residential’s 625 West 57th Street, a 753-unit development at the Hudson River. The striking pyramid design, by Bjarke Ingles Group, includes a central terrace that is almost the size of a football field. Two Trees Management’s new …
  
  
• January 2013 Manhattan Buildings For Sale
• The Lehman Art House has undergone a price cut from $65 million to $49.9 million. The asking price still makes the art house New York's most expensive office property on a price-per-square-foot basis Sony has finally been able to line up bidders for its 550 Madison Avenue building. The potential buyers include the Rockefeller Group, Mitsui Fudosan America, Vornado Realty Trust, Boston Properties, as well as teams of pension funds and some high net worth individuals. New York's largest office tower is getting ready to reopen, after being shuttered by Hurricane Sandy for nearly a month and damaged by a …
  
  
• January 2013 NY New Developments
• NY New Developments Starchitect Norman Foster’s plans for the renovation of the New York Public Library flagship on Fifth Avenue were revealed, with features including a multi-level atrium, Bryant Park views and a teen center. Project construction will kick off this summer and will be completed in 2018. A long-stalled Midtown construction site has started construction again on a residential project at 325 Lexington Avenue. Permits for construction were renewed in July 2011. The new plans call for a ground floor restaurant and bar, 103 apartments with two full-floor penthouses, a club room and a fitness center. Construction may have …
  
  
• December 2012 New York Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For Sale Grocery,real estate,private equity tycoon Ron Burkle has flipped his Meatpacking District property that he owns a majority interest in the building, which houses such retailers as Scoop boutique for close to $100 million to Joe Sitt of Thor Equities. Burkle bought the brick loft building at 430 West 14th Street for $65 million last year.Invesco is preparing to bring the Brill Building, at 1619 Broadway, on the market early next year. The 11-story building, on the corner of West 49th Street, totals 177,000 square feet and is best known for its musical history; the building served …
  
  
• December 2012 New York New Developments
• New Developments 13 new hotels in the pipeline for the Lower East Side, tripling the number of hotel rooms in the neighborhood over the next few years. Four new hotels are scheduled to open, boosting the existing inventory by approximately 30 percent. Six other projects in various stages of construction and four of which are on a two-block strip along upper Orchard Street will add another 900 rooms. And three other recent proposals, a 130-room boutique hotel in the landmarked Jarmulowsky Bank building on Canal Street, a 376 room hotel/condo combination building on Chrystie Street and a Broome Street project …
  
  
• November 2012 NYC City Office and Retail Market Report
• The office vacancy rate in Midtown jumped to its highest level since late 2010 as big blocks of space hit the market and {dynamic_word2} activity remained slow. Midtown saw its vacancy rate jump by 0.7 points in the third quarter, compared to the previous quarter to 10.5 percent. It was the highest figure since the fourth quarter of 2010, when the vacancy rate was 10.6 percent.More than $5 billion are now available for {dynamic_word4} including two buildings, 11 Madison Avenue and 825 Eighth Avenue that are expected to fetch more than $1 billion each. If either sells before Dec. 31, …
  
  
• November 2012 New York Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For Sale A Flatiron District office building will hit the foreclosure auction block next month with an outstanding lien of close to $41 million, following the issuance of a foreclosure judgment against the property in September. The building, at 119 West 25th Street, had been owned by Brooklyn-based investors Miriam and Michael Chan before it was placed in receivership. The duo purchased the building for $34 million via an LLC in 2006. The 11-story building, which totals 113,000 square feet and has 15,000 square feet of retail, will hit the block November 17.A parking lot in the Chelsea …
  
  
• November 2012 New York New Developments
• New Developments The Chrysler Building just got a little greener. The Owner has received a LEED gold certification for the 1.2 million-square-foot office tower. Tishman spent two years updating the building’s energy, waste, water and maintenance systems. The upgrades include new plumbing fixtures that will cut the property’s water consumption by 64 percent; a waste-management policy that will ensure 81 percent of the building’s waste is recycled; and a 21 percent reduction in energy usage. The city’s plan to sell of three historic but outdated office buildings in Lower Manhattan, all of which would likely become luxury housing or hotels, …
  
  
• October 2012 New York Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For Sale SL Green Realty is looking to sell its 575,000-square-foot building at 120 West 45th Street, known as Tower 45, for a price of $270 million or more.Morgan Stanley’s Prime Property Fund has put its New York Marriott East Side on the block for $350 million. The hotel has 646 rooms and is located at 525 Lexington Avenue and 49th Street. The 2.3 million-square-foot office tower at 11 Madison Park is hitting the market with a sales price of $1.5 billion. Sapir bought the building in 2003 for $675 million; in 2010 CIM Group purchased a 49 …
  
  
• October 2012 New York New Developments
• New Developments The re-zoning of Midtown is to affect the area from Lexington to Fifth avenues and East 39th to East 57th streets. Developers can buy additional air rights from the city. Within a smaller Grand Central Sub district developers can buy from owners of landmarked properties that are under built. Argent Ventures controls nearly all of those air rights through its ownership of the Grand Central terminal. The record sale price was about $6,000 a square foot in 2008 in residential, and has now reached more than $10,000 a square foot. The very-rich have finally unleashed the liquidity that …
  
  
• September 2012 New York Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For Sale A Coney Island development site ready for a 22-story building is hitting the market for $14 million.The property is located at 271 Seabreeze Avenue, near the Atlantic Ocean and adjacent to the Coney Island boardwalk and Seaside Park. It is zoned for residential, hotel or senior living use, and plans drawn up by owners American Development Group would sustain up to 153 apartments, or 183 extended-stay hotel rooms, and 102 parking spaces.A troubled 12-story commercial loft building Noho is scheduled for auction next month, after CW Capital foreclosed on the mortgage and sold the debt to …
  
  
• September 2012 New York New Developments
• New Developments The Related Companies has won wage-cutting agreements with some four dozen construction unions in its efforts to save money at the $15 billion development of Hudson Yards. The developer, one of the most outspoken for the need to cut construction costs during contract negotiations with unions last year, got the groups to agree to cut wages and benefit packages by 10 percent to ensure they would be commissioned to work the massive construction project expected to carry on for the next decade. The deal is not yet final.With public support, the Kingsbridge Armory ice rink plan may appear …
  
  
• August 2012 New York Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For Sale One of the city’s oldest non-profit organizations has put its Gramercy Park headquarters on the block. The Xavier Society for the Blind will sell the 16,000-square-foot building at 154 East 23rd Street, starting with an asking price of $13 million. The organization is downsizing drastically because its services which provide large print and braille books and periodicals are no longer needed due to technological advances. Milstein is selling all but two of his 32 Emigrant Bank branches. Apple Bank is buying all of the branches, and their $3.2 billion in assets, except for the one at …
  
  
• July 2012 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale Vantage Properties and Area Property Partners have unloaded the Savoy Park apartment complex in Harlem for more than $210 million, satisfying the outstanding balance on the senior mortgage. Larry Silverstein is cutting his losses and moving on from Lexington Avenue. His Silverstein Properties and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System have entered contract to sell the 35-story office building at 575 Lexington Avenue for about $360 million to Normandy Real Estate Partners and New York Life Insurance. The deal is worth $10 million less than the agreement the owners nearly struck with Rockrose Development, before Henry Elghanayan …
  
  
• July 2012 New York New Developments
• Major Developments While details are sparse, Bowery Boogie is well underway on the 65,000-square-foot building, which has been covered in scaffolding for weeks. The renovation is being carried out by Lower East Side architecture firm Studio Castellano. The city’s Economic Development Corporation wants proposals from developers who would like to build and maintain underutilized industrial plots in three New York City boroughs. These include 95,000 square feet at 2399 Watson Avenue in the Bronx’s Zerega section, 80,000 square feet in East New York, Brooklyn, 53,000 square feet in Sunset Park, Brooklyn and 40,000 square feet in Queens’ College Point Corporate …
  
  
• June 2012 New York Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For Sale Forest City Ratner is looking to find an investor to take as much as a 49 percent stake in 8 Spruce Street, the tallest residential building in New York. The 76-story, 903-unit Frank Gehry-designed building is now 80 percent occupied.Thor Equities is seeking $45 million for the three-story, 15,525-square-foot building, at 446 West 14th Street, between Washington Street and 10th Avenue that it bought for $23.4 million in 2007.Vornado Realty Trust is marketing its stakes in three New York City-area malls, as the investment trust looks to exit the sector. Vornado wants to unload a 32.4 …
  
  
• June 2012 New York New Developments
• Major Developments A judge has rejected a bid by an investment partner at the Domino Sugar Factory to block its partner from recapitalizing the proposed $1.5 billion project. Express has signed for a flagship space in Times Square, believed to be at 1552 Broadway.The first retail stores at the World Trade Center site could open for business by March 2015. Westfield, which has a 50 percent stake in the WTC site’s retail space, said the first retailers will be announced in the first half of next year. The openings would come more than 13 years after the destruction of the …
  
  
• May 2012 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings sold Jamestown Properties purchased 325 Hudson Street the expected price to be about $500 per square foot, or around $120 million.Hidrock Realty purchased the vacant lot at 133 Greenwich Street for $27.9 million in a joint venture with Robert Finvarb Companies, and will develop a hotel there. The joint venture will develop a 28-floor, 300-room hotel at an estimated cost of $70 million. The new inn, between West and Washington streets in Lower Manhattan, should be open for business in early 2015. A group of parcels known as the Bedford portfolio, along Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, has …
  
  
• May 2012 New York New Developments
• New Developments Morgan Stanley just signed a lease for almost 1.2 million square feet of space at Brookfield Office Properties Inc.'s 1 New York Plaza in lower Manhattan. The bank, which currently occupies about 816,000 square feet at the building, will expand by an additional 337,000 square feet. The agreement is the largest office lease for a single building in New York since 2008. Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s push to modernize Midtown East office buildings has become a legacy issue as the mayor’s reign whines to a close. Bloomberg wants to re-zone the area bounded by Third and Fifth avenues and …
  
  
• May 2012: Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• {dynamic_word1} Commercial Real Estate Overview There were several large new subleases coming on the market, such as: Dewey & LeBoeuf, the massive law firm that is considering filing for bankruptcy, is looking to sublease up to 160,000 square feet of the firm's space at 1301 Sixth Avenue. Pfizer recently put 274,000 square feet at 150 East 42nd Street up for sublet and JPMorgan & Chase is looking to unload 50,000 feet at 277 Park Avenue. In the interim Citigroup and Societe Generale have recently shed a combined 172,000 square feet and Nomura has cut 200,000 square feet from the 900,000 …
  
  
• April 2012 New York New Developments
• New Developments A joint venture partnership including New York Ace Hotel owner and GFI Capital Resources Group Gross’ GB Lodging is set to puchase the Temple Court building, a nine-story city landmark at 5 Beekman Street formerly owned by the Chetrit Group and Bonjour Capital.Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed a bill to declare a formal state of emergency in New York City with regard to housing, allowing him to extend rent regulations for another three year even thought there is a Supreme Court challenge The mayor cited a citywide residential vacancy rate of 3.5 percent. Legally, rent regulations must be terminated …
  
  
• April 2012 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings soldLloyd Goldman closed on the retail component of glassy condominium tower Yves Chelsea at 166 West 18th Street. He paid $6.6 million for the space, which is currently the headquarters of brokerage Core NYC. It was asking $7 million.Graves Hospitality and KSK Construction announced today that they completed the sale of the Hotel Williamsburg to King & Grove Hotels for $33 million. King & Grove, the Manhattan-based boutique hotel chain backed by the Chetrit Group paid $520,000 per key at the 64-room hotel.Cayre family’s Midtown Equities closed on the property and will bring a Whole Foods to …
  
  
• March 2012 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings sold SL Green has closed on its acquisition of a 37-story, 390,000-square-foot Midtown office building at 10 East 53rd Street for $252.5 million, or about $647 per square foot, and has sold a 45 percent interest in the building to Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. Canada Pension Plan paid an equity investment of $57.4 million before closing costs.Silverstone Property Group, along with equity partner RWN Real Estate Partners, plan a $12 million repositioning of the Murray Hill apartment building they acquired for $53 million The 17-story, 128-unit building at 247 East 28th Street, was purchased from Samson …
  
  
• March 2012 New York New Developments
• New Developments There are thousands of acres of rooftop space in New York City where growing farm operations are looking to expand. Groups such as Gotham Greens, Brooklyn Grange and BrightFarms are looking for elevated space where they can grow crops to sell to local restaurants and supermarketsSheldon Solow outdueled his West 57th Street rival and acquired an office building on the block at a near record price. Solow, bid $120 million for 12 West 57th Street to beat out One57 developer Gary Barnett, president of Extell Development, for the 12-story property. The price works out to more than $1,400 …
  
  
• February 2012 New York New Developments
• New York Major Developments The 226-room Courtyard Marriott on East 92nd Street may close this spring, in the wake of two years of legal battles, including a lawsuit against Marriott International. It is scheduled to lay off 59 employees by March 30. Having already ceded some of its demand to recent upstart office markets like Midtown South and downtown Manhattan, Midtown East is the subject of a Department of City Planning review intending to probe whether it needs to incentivize commercial property upgrades in the area Midtown East has more than 70 million square feet of office space, 13 Fortune …
  
  
• February 2012 New York Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For Sale The Sapir Organization, the developer of Manhattan's Trump Soho, is planning to put the hotel and its unsold condominium units on the auction block. The auction will likely take place later in the spring.Aby Rosen's RFR Holding is in contract to buy back the debt for far less than the $144.2 million face value at the Midtown development site at 610 Lexington Avenue.Although the vacant property, where Rosen sought to build the Shangri-La Hotel, New York, is in contract to RFR Holding. Several more properties in the William Gottlieb estate have hit the sales market, encouraging …
  
  
• January 2012: Manhattan City New Developments
• Manhattan New Developments Cornell University, in partnership with Technion-Israel Institute of Technology will build a 2 million-square-foot applied science and engineering campus on Roosevelt Island. Atlantic Philanthropies a charitable organization founded by billionaire Charles Feeney made the $350 million gift to go towards the creation of Cornell University's 2 million-square-foot applied science and engineering campus on Roosevelt Island. Feeney, who made billions of dollars through co-founding the Duty Free Shoppers Group, graduated from Cornell's School of Hotel Management in 1956, and has been consistently making donations to his alma mater.Brooklyn politicians were still hoping on another phrase the mayor uttered …
  
  
• December 2011 New York Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For Sale A Times Square Hotel, the 47-room Hotel 41 at 206 West 41st Street, will be auctioned Dec. 5, after lender Crane, A.G., a 50 percent owner of the hotel, filed to foreclose on developer Benjamin Soleimani's interest in the property. The 11,562-square-foot Hotel 41 building, on a side street just below Times Square, was purchased by Soleiman's 206 West 41st Street Hotel Associates in 2008 and underwent a complete transformation by architect Andrew Pollack and Soleimani with ultra-modern interiors. ATCO is selling the Atlas Terminals, an industrial park adjacent to the Atlas Park mall it developed …
  
  
• December 2011 New York New Developments
• New Developments Local 32BJ, the union representing more than 22,000 commercial building workers in New York City, voted to authorize their bargaining committee to call a strike if necessary. The union has been in contract talks with the Realty Advisory Board on Labor Relations, since November 15th. The union opposes the landlords' proposal to establish a different wage and benefit structure for new hires, which they claim will create a two-tier system designed to push out workers with seniority. If negotiations fail by 12:01 am on Jan. 1, 2012, the union could strikeThe Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ, which …
  
  
• November 2011 New York New Developments
• New Developments The Chelsea Art Museum located at 556 West 22nd Street is about to be replaced by Hewlett-Packard, which has special plans for the building. HP signed a 10-year lease for the entire 34,500 feet inside the three-story museum building at 556 West 22nd Street near 11th Avenue.. Drastic job and spending cuts are in the cards for 2013 for the New York City construction industry, according to a report released today by the New York Building Congress entitled "New York City Construction Outlook 2011-2013." Construction spending is expected to total $27.7 billion this year.The average number of construction …
  
  
• October 2011 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings sold TIAA-CREF purchased the 280,000-square-foot office building 475 Fifth Avenue from Barclays Capital Real Estate for $144 million or about $514 per square foot. A joint venture of real estate developer Joseph Moinian and Westbrook Capital acquired 475 Fifth Avenue, located at 41st Street, in 2007 for $160 million, but lender Barclays took the property back in 2009 through a deed in lieu of foreclosure.Stonehenge Partners has closed on the 93-unit apartment building at 1143 Second Avenue and 60th Street. Stonehenge paid KFJ Realty $47 million for the six-story building, which includes 15,000 square feet of retail …
  
  
• October 2011 New York New Developments
• New Developments Time Warner is evaluating its plan to possibly move out of the Time Warner Center and consolidate its operations at new headquarters elsewhere to save costs. Time Warner moved to Columbus Circle in 2004, where it had partnered with Related Companies to build the building that is its company headquarters now. Many of its leases, including ones for more than 2 million square feet of space in Midtown, will expire as soon as 2017 and 2018. Since not many buildings could hold all of Time Warner's 6,000 employees in the city, possible alternative options would be Hudson Yards, …
  
  
• September 2011 New York Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For Sale The Apthorp JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo are two of the banks among the final candidates that bid for parts of $9.65 billion in U.S. property loans owned by Anglo Irish Bank. The lenders are interested in acquiring pieces of the $4.52 billion of performing loans. Investor groups led by private-equity firms Blackstone Group, together with Deutsche Bank, and Lone Star Funds also submitted offers for parts of the portfolio, which includes $5.13 billion of subperforming and non-performing debt. Anglo Irish aims to sell off its loans after it was seized by the Irish government in …
  
  
• September 2011 New York New Developments
• Major NYC Developments The London-based Children's Investment Fund inked its first New York City real estate investment this month, providing $250 million in first mortgages for Macklowe Properties' condominium conversion of the luxury apartment building 737 Park Avenue in Lenox Hill. The fund, makes investments in a wide range of industries globally, and gives a portion of its profits to children's charities around the world. "It is the first direct real estate investment we have made in New York," New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is hindering federal efforts to negotiate a foreclosure settlement with Wall Street banks on …
  
  
• August 2011 New York Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For Sale 397-401 East 8th Street a development site is on the market for $5.2 million, EV Grieve. Chang's McSam Hotel Group purchased the 4,324-square-foot vacant lot, at 397-401 East 8th Street, for $4.9 million site. Chang appears to be in the midst of a selling spree -- he recently unloaded stalled hotel project sites in the Financial District and in Union Square, as well as his new Holiday Inn Express at 126 Water Street. A month after merging with EBSCO Publishing, library reference publisher H.W. Wilson has decided to market its former headquarters and nearby land holdings …
  
  
• July 2011 New York New Developments
• New Developments Governor Andrew Cuomo, signed a statewide property tax cap legislation, caps property tax increases at 2 percent, or the rate of inflation, whichever is less. Only a 60 percent vote in local communities override Cuomo's legislation. "We are beginning a new era in which New York will no longer be the tax capital of the nation," Cuomo said Community activists opposing the Rudin family's proposed takeover of the St. Vincent's Hospital campus in Greenwich Village dropped their court appeal without ever appearing before a judge.New York led a second consecutive month of U.S. housing price gains. Nationwide home …
  
  
• July 2011 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• New York City saw almost no job growth in May. The revised gain for May was 10,200 jobs, putting the year-to-date gain at 42,300, up from 38,900 jobs a month earlier. The flat result should be viewed only a small "bump in the road" to recovery rather than a negative shift in momentum. The biggest losses, 2,800 jobs, were in health services. The real estate and hotel sectors added zero jobs.Stephen Ross' Related Companies is currently in talks with nine prospective tenants for its Hudson Yards development, each seeking more than one million square feet of space. Ross said he'll …
  
  
• July 2011 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings sold Newly landmarked 70 Pine sells for $205M to Nathan Berman's Metro Loft Management, or $186 per square foot,. Metro signed on to buy the 1.1 million-square-foot tower, the fifth tallest in the city at 66 stories, from Kumho Investment Bank of South Korea. Kumho previously purchased the building, along with 72/74 Wall Street, from AIG for $150 million.. The Henry T. Sloane mansion at 18 East 68th Street, between Madison and Fifth avenues, sold at auction yesterday to its only bidder -- Alexander Rovt, a Ukrainian-born billionaire fertilizer magnate -- for $40 million, the amount in …
  
  
• June 2011 New York New Developments
• New Developments Companies such as Boston Properties and Vornado Realty Trust are in negotiations with potential tenants and may even proceed with construction without securing leases. Boston Properties may be the first to break ground by the end of 2011. The company is finalizing negotiations to anchor a 1 million-square-foot tower at Eighth Avenue and 55th StreetRelated Companies CEO Stephen Ross said he was confident about attracting tenants for the first phase of the development, which will include four million square feet of office space. "I think we're going to surprise people," he said. "We're talking to nine tenants at …
  
  
• June 2011 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings sold Private real estate management firm ING Clarion Partners bought the 42-unit rental building at 44 Berry Street in Williamsburg for $27 million. The 54,000-square-foot, six-story former quinine factory building was developed by Cayuga Capital Management. The fully-leased building includes six retail spaces on the ground floor. The sale of GLC Group's 16-story condominium building in Clinton Hill has closed, a real estate investment group from New York City and Northern California paid $21 million for the Karl Fischer-designed tower, , when 35 to 40 percent of the 49 units at 163 Washington Avenue were in contract …
  
  
• May 2011 New York New Developments
• Major Developments Mall of America developer Triple Five has reached a deal with lenders and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's administration to reboot and expand the stalled Xanadu complex in the Meadowlands,. The checkered, 2.4 million-square-foot complex, originally envisioned as a retail and entertainment destination that would rejuvenate East Rutherford, has sat incomplete along the New Jersey Turnpike for years, sapping up $1.9 billion in the process and developing a reputation as the poster child for failed boom-time real estate projects.Real estate investment firms Savanna and Monday Properties are launching a $30 million capital improvement for a 20-story, 260,000-square-foot commercial …
  
  
• May 2011 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• The Manhattan office vacancy rate increased in the first quarter of 2011 even as employment in the professional sector rose at the fastest rate since 2000. There were 11,500 new office workers in the first three months of this year. The first-quarter vacancy rate rose even as employment moved up because, large blocks of space being added to the market from tenants who signed relocation deals last year, and because many firms have excess space for their new hires.New York City office rentals got more expensive in the first quarter of 2011, even as vacancy and absorption rates remained mostly …
  
  
• May 2011 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings sold Joseph Sitt's Thor Equities and developer Joseph Moinian have completed the long awaited deal to buy out Goldman Sachs at 245 Fifth Avenue for $162 million. The property, near 28th Street, had been up for sale since January, when Moinian and his previous venture partner, Goldman Sachs Whitehall Funds, decided to put the building up for sale through Eastdil Secured. The property was originally purchased for $190 million, or $620 a square foot, at the height of the market in 2007.RXR Realty purchased the Starrett-Leigh building at 601 West 26th Street for $900 million from Shorenstein …
  
  
• April 2011 New York New Developments
• Major Trends Bruce Ratner wants to construct the world's tallest prefabricated structure at the Atlantic Yards site in Brooklyn, according to the New York Times. The 34-story proposed tower would include 400 affordable apartment units, fulfilling a promise Ratner made when he took over the site. The annual rate of building permits issued for new privately-owned U.S. housing units fell by another 8.2 percent in February to a record-low 517,000, according to the latest data from the Commerce Department, backing up analysts' predictions that a sustained recovery in the housing market is still elusive. The permitting rate, which is indicative …
  
  
• April 2011 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Manhattan's office leasing market is on pace for its best year ever after February brought some 3 million square feet worth of deals,. That's far above the nine-year monthly average of 1.9 million square feet of office leases. The banner month also comes on the heels of a busy January, when 2.6 million square feet were snapped up in Manhattan office lease transactionsManhattan townhouses see 2010 sales uptickBoth the single-family and multi-family Manhattan townhouse markets showed signs of improvement last year, according to the Corcoran Group, which released its first annual Townhouse Report today. In the single-family market, the number …
  
  
• April 2011 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings sold Host Hotels & Resorts closed on the $313.5 million sale of the New York Helmsley Hotel, which will be reflagged under the Westin Hotels & Resorts brand in mid-2012 after an extensive renovation. Host Hotels, will renovate the hotel, at 212 East 42nd Street, with a complete overhaul of its 775 guest rooms as well as a meeting space upgrade.Dune Real Estate Partners has agreed to pay $190 million for Anglo Irish Bank's mortgage loan on the embattled Mark Hotel on the Upper East Side. The note, which had a face value of around $300 million, …
  
  
• March 2011 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York City Buildings sold Russian composer Igor Krutoy and his wife, Olga, signed a contract signing for a Plaza Hotel condominium for upwards of $40 million. If the sale closes, it will be the second-priciest residential sale in the city since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, behind the Duke Semans Mansion, which sold for $44 million last year. For their money, the Krutoys will get around 6,000 square feet with views of Central Park, a combination of at least two renovated units, that was not officially on the market.The 14-room duplex at 778 Park Avenue that Brooke Astor once …
  
  
• March 2011 New York New Developments
• Major Trends The laws that cap rent increases on 1 million city apartments expire in June, and landlord groups, tenant advocates and politicians all agree that they should be extended. Last time the laws were up for a renewal, in 2003, Senate Republicans threatened to let them expire and ended up forcing the Democrats to accept a simple renewal. Now the Democrats think they have a better chance of getting a good deal for tenants. The real estate industry is desperate to renew a tax break known as 421-a, which spurs new apartment building development, and Sheldon Silver believes developers …
  
  
• February 2011 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York City Buildings sold Brack Capital Real Estate USA has sold the retail portion of its residential development at 15 Union Square West in New York City to the State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio, or STRS, for $57.88 million. The retail space consists of four retail stores on the first, mezzanine and cellar floors of the building, totaling 14,494 square feet. Three of the spaces are currently leased : one to HSBC Bank, one to Lululemon Athletica, and another to Sketchers.Real estate investment trust SL Green has acquired the remaining ownership interest in 521 Fifth Avenue, a 39-story …
  
  
• February 2011 New York New Developments
• New Developments Three years after the Related Cos. began developing its 26-acre Hudson Yards project, the company is now trying to find a tenant willing to commit to occupying at least 600,000 square feet of office space. To land its key tenant, Related is offering either to construct a building and sell it to that company or to provide a big break on the rent. The 12 million-square-foot space, bordered by the High Line and the Hudson River, will run from 10th to 12th avenues and from West 30th to 33rd streets. The $15 billion project is expected to take …
  
  
• January 2011 New York New Developments
• New Developments Columbia University may be moving forward with plans for a $6.3 billion expansion after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal by local businesses whose properties may be subject to eminent domain. The justices refused to question findings by a state development agency and said that the area is blighted and that the expansion has a legitimate public purpose. Several years back, retail giant Walmart tried to open stores in Queens and Staten Island, but backed off after fierce community opposition. Now the discount chain store is trying again to break into the New York City market, since …
  
  
• January 2011 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York City Buildings sold Google paid $1.77 billion in cash for its new office at 111 Eighth Avenue. Google will occupy 550,000 square feet in the 2.9 million-square-foot Chelsea building, located between 15th and 16th streets. Google's ability to pay cash helped it succeed in the purchase. MCR Development has acquired a portfolio of 10 Marriott and Hilton hotels for $164 million, marking one of the largest hotel deals in the country so far this year. The collection of mostly extended-stay hotels, include 1,100 rooms across New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania. The seller, developer Briad Group, held …
  
  
• December 2010 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York City Buildings sold Developer Continuum Company is to put $40 million into the troubled One Madison Park residential development and finish up the project, after reaching a deal with the developer and creditors. The deal, which is contingent upon bankruptcy court approval, would fund the costs of a proposed restructuring on a loan from lender iStar. The lender gained control of the building in April, after asserting that the builder had failed to pay it $12 million in interest between October 2009 and February 2010, and owed upwards of $200 million. Larry Gluck's Stellar Management purchased the 374-unit …
  
  
• December 2010 New York New Developments
• New Developments Manhattan condominium prices climbed 9.4 percent in August, compared to the same month a year earlier. Transactions borough-wide increased 12.8 percent during that time, as well. Despite this recovery from 2009, activity and pricing are still a far away from pre-crash levels. This year, through August 31, has posted the second-lowest transaction count. A final hearing was held for the public to weigh in on Riverside Center, the proposed complex that Extell Development wants to build on the Upper West Side. The city council subcommittee on zoning and franchises heard more than four hours of testimony on the …
  
  
• November 2010 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York City Buildings soldJRK Hotel Group has sold the 193-room Hotel Roger Williams, at 131 Madison Avenue, to LaSalle Hotel Properties. LaSalle acquired the hotel's leasehold interest for $90 million, along with around $4.5 million in other costs which closed recently. JRK, who acquired the property on the corner of 31st Street in 2003, will retain management of the hotel. Embattled developer Kent Swig lost ownership of 5 Hanover Square after Manhattan-based real estate firm Savanna bought the discounted mortgage on the 325,000-square-foot building. Savanna paid $51.5 million in cash to Capital One Bank, a 14 percent discount from …
  
  
• November 2010 New York New Developments
• Major Developments Despite a slight rise in the vacancy rate, which rose .5 points to 9.3 percent on top of the decline in asking rents. To illustrate the demand can be seen by a new retailer trying to elbow into the high-traffic area, an existing store agreed to relinquish its space after its lease was bought out.New York City had $4.74 billion worth of delinquent commercial property loans as of Oct. 1, down 0.6 percent from one month ago, when there was $4.77 billion outstanding. The decline can be largely accounted for by Joseph Moinian's 1775 Broadway which had been …
  
  
• October 2010 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Overall asking rent for Manhattan office space climbed slightly to $47.73 per square foot in August, up from $47.57 per square foot in July. The vacancy rate in Manhattan also showed modest improvement, dropping gradually month-over-month to 13.4 percent, from 13.7 percent. Compared to August 2009, vacancy was down .5 percent. Of all the boroughs prime office neighborhoods, the Downtown market struggled the most showing its slowest leasing momentum since September 2009, as the vacancy rate remained steady at 14.3 percent. Midtown, however, showed promise: 10.55 million square feet has been leased so far this year, up 56 percent from …
  
  
• October 2010 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York City Buildings sold SL Green, the largest commercial office landlord in New York, agreed to sell 19 West 44th Street in Manhattan to Deka Immobilien for $123.2 million. SL Green will continue to manage and lease the building as part of the sale agreement with Deka. SL Green originally bought the 292,000-square-foot Class B property in 2004 for $67 million. Since the acquisition, SL Green has renovated the lobby, windows and heating and cooling systems, and raised occupancy to 99 percent, compared to 86 percent in 2004. SL Green Realty is expected to gain $66 million profit on …
  
  
• October 2010 New York New Developments
• Major Developments The number of retail condominiums for sale in the city is on the rise, with this year's supply already up 30 percent as developers have adjusted to the new economic landscape. Next year, there will be more going through the pipeline once the foreclosures and loans are settled. While an influx of new retail space coming on the market could test the recovery as pent-up demand diminishes, things are, so far, looking good for developers. The first phase of the Second Avenue Subway is running two years behind schedule and is set to run $420 million over budget. …
  
  
• September 2010 New York New Developments
• New Developments A deal with Silverstein Properties over how to pay for two towers was approved by the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey. The plan calls for the restoration of the east side of the site to at least street level and the completion of the WTC Transportation Hub. The funding needed for the project is now projected to be between $1.1 billion to $1.3 billion.A crucial City Council subcommittee and committee voted in favor of an office tower at 15 Penn Plaza proposed by developer Vornado Realty Trust. Although opposition to the 1,216-foot-tall tower stemmed from …
  
  
• August 2010 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York City Buildings sold An investment fund affiliated with residential and commercial property owner Stonehenge Partners closed on the $67.34 million purchase of the former St. Vincent's Hospital residential building at 555 Sixth Avenue in Greenwich Village. Investors in the purchase include an entity called SITQ, which is a subsidiary of Canadian investment fund Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, and another Canadian institutional investor. Stonehenge won the 180,000-square-foot building in an auction which followed the bankruptcy of the hospital in April. Hotel owners Richard Born and Ira Drukier, principals with BD Hotels, led a partnership that bought …
  
  
• August 2010 New York New Developments
• New Developments Community Board 7 voted to disapprove Extell's plans for an eight-acre Riverside Center project, unless the developer agrees to build according to some modifications. The plan for the new development that would span 59th to 61st street and West End Avenue to the edge of the West Side Highway includes five skyscrapers, at least 2,500 apartments, 210,000 square feet of retail, a hotel, a movie theater, an underground automobile service center, a new K-8 school and three acres of open space. The Alex is facing an $81.7 million foreclosure suit after Anglo Irish Bank sold the note on …
  
  
• July 2010 New York New Developments
• New York Developments The closure of St. Vincent's Hospital in Greenwich Village dominated the news, neighborhood institution succumbing to financial troubles. Despite the credit crunch, New York-area hospitals are finding ways to fund major expansion projects. Through the support of philanthropists, often from the real estate sector, there's funding to build state-of-the-art health care institutions, keeping New York a world leader in health care. The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey yesterday approved an agreement with the city, under which the city will reimburse the agency up to $44 million for building underground foundations and infrastructure for a …
  
  
• June 2010 New York New Developments
• New Developments New York University may enter the public approval process for its new Silver Towers site, the crown jewel of its wildly controversial 2031 expansion plan. The biggest hurdle for the school will be gaining approval from the Landmarks Preservation Commission, which will have final say on whether NYU can build on the landmark Bleecker Street site. The proposed building will be a "slender pinwheel tower," and is rumored to be planned for a 40-story structure. New York University dropped in on Community Board 3's zoning committee meeting and had little to say about how its 6 million-square-foot expansion …
  
  
• May 2010 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York City Buildings sold The retail space at 40 Mercer, the Jean Nouvel-designed condo, has sold for $41.9 million. The space at 465 Broadway contains 9,400 square feet of space at the ground level. SL Green is buying Hines Interests' 600 Lexington Avenue for almost $180 million, or $700 a square foot. The 282,000-square-foot office tower is one of three major city properties of its kind that had been attracting attention from investors while on the market despite the sector's slump. The others are 340 Madison Avenue and 125 Park Avenue. The acquisition for the city's largest landlord follows …
  
  
• May 2010 New York New Developments
• New Developments Of the many players featured in the high-stakes drama unfolding at Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, David Tepper, who has bought more than $800 million worth of controlling bonds at the property over the last 18 months, is proving to be one of the most volatile and polarizing. Tepper took legal action to guide the distressed property to his liking. But his attitude toward Stuyvesant Town, one of the biggest commercial-deals-gone-sour, is one of optimism. Tepper sees an opportunity for bankruptcy and restructuring, a move he believes would save millions. The city's Economic Development Corp. issued two …
  
  
• April 2010 New York New Developments
• New Developments The number of small- to mid-size medical and bio-pharmacy companies in the city has quadrupled to 120 from 2002, due to the city's recruitment and the accessibility of academic centers in the area. The Upper East Side girls' prep school has cancelled its expansion into the nearby apartment building. The Brearley School, at 610 East 83rd Street, had been angling to buy half the building at 85 East End Avenue, for use as additional teaching space but has fallen through. Extended Stay Hotels may accept a $905 million investment offer from Starwood Capital Group and associated investors in …
  
  
• March 2010 New York New Developments
• Major Developments Affordable housing programs throughout the city are facing trouble unloading units. The city has been praised across the country for its efforts to provide affordable housing to lower- and middle-income households but, while the low-income rentals continue to thrive, the ownership program is struggling, which could be seen as good since it ultimately means less foreclosures.Larry Silverstein believes his commitment to the World Trade Center redevelopment project can be measured not only by his enthusiasm, but also by his own cash. The developer recently proposed several different financing options to the Port Authority of New York & New …
  
  
• February 2010 New York New Developments
• New Developments The year-end review of Manhattan commercial real estate casts doubt on 2010's outlook. Commercial property sales volume was weak through the end of 2009, with projections suggesting that the total volume for the year was just $5.7 billion, a decline from $23.6 billion in 2008 and $62.8 billion in 2007.Manhattan commercial property sales volume remained slow through the end of 2009. Total commercial property sales for the year were just $5.5 billion, down from the peak level of $62.8 billion in 2007, and less than a third of the total sales made in 2008. There is pent-up energy …
  
  
• January 2010 New York New Developments
• New Developments Mort Zuckerman, chairman and CEO of Boston Properties, discussed his outlook on commercial real estate and whether the national recovery is on its way. While he was somewhat pessimistic about the industry as a whole, there are some pockets of the country that are moving toward stabilization. The industry in general is in a fairly weakened condition. In the major cities the commercial real estate is doing reasonably well but in the minor cities they are having more difficulty.Hudson River Park, the five-mile waterfront band stretching from Battery Park to 59th Street, is short on cash and may …
  
  
• January 2010 New York Buildings For Sale
• Manhattan Buildings sold SL Green recently purchased the construction loan on Harry Macklowe's 510 Madison Avenue, a major step toward taking control of the new 350,000-square-foot office tower. The $185 million in outstanding debt was purchased from Union Labor Life Insurance for $170 million. Now, SL Green will have to fund $30 million in unfinished work, plus foot a $30 to $40 million bill for a reserve for tenant improvement allowances and brokers' commissions. The building's only tenants so far are investment firm Jay Goldman and watch retailer Tourneau, both of which are embroiled in battles to renege on their …
  
  
• December 2009 New York Buildings For Sale
• Manhattan Buildings sold The Volkswagen Group of America has purchased the 265,000-square-foot Potamkin General Motors building at 798-804 11th Avenue between 55th and 56th streets. The space was purchased for $84 million with plans to renovate through a $41 million investment, and will be used as the flagship Manhattan dealership for Audi and Volkswagen. The 24,700-square-foot retail space in the St. Regis New York was sold to a three-way partnership of property managers for $117 million. GFC Fifth Avenue is comprised of Crown Acquisitions, Goldman Properties and the Feil Organization, and they bought the property, located at 2 East 55th …
  
  
• December 2009 New York New Developments
• New Developments Commercial lenders did not throw out all of their standards in the recent cycle of easy credit. When developer Aby Rosen structured his $133 million loan for the acquisition and development of the Shangri-La hotel at 614 Lexington Avenue in 2007, the mortgage document included a personal guaranty to cover losses in the event of a default. Similarly, when Kent Swig negotiated $49 million in loans with Lehman Brothers Holdings to develop a hotel and condo project at 45 Broad Street in the Financial District in 2006 and 2007, the bank demanded a similar guaranty in the mortgage …
  
  
• November 2009 New York Buildings For Sale
• Manhattan Buildings sold Midtown Equities and Israeli holding company IDB Group announced their acquisition of HSBC Bank USA's New York headquarters at 452 Fifth Avenue, between 39th and 40th streets. This was the first time Midtown Equities had teamed up with IDB, and are now working on six or seven projects in New York City, where they will be either buying buildings or buying first mortgage notes from banks. At 452 Fifth Avenue, two parties are considering signing a lease on the top 18 floors that will be vacant in 2011. HSBC will continue to occupy the remaining 11 floors …
  
  
• November 2009 New York New Developments
• Major NYC Developments 11 Times Square, the city's largest office tower, remains entirely unleased more than two years after breaking ground in 2007. Some give the owner little chance of holding on to the 1 million-square-foot building without a significant debt restructuring. They cite the current weak economy, the 25 percent decline in rents, and the cost of the building, a pricey $1,100 per square foot as the reason. There are currently no signed leases for the 40-story glass commercial tower stationed across from the Port Authority terminal, which is three-quarters completed.JPMorgan Chase may hold onto its 60-story office property …
  
  
• October 2009 New York New Developments
• Major Developments Stalled construction projects are not having much of a psychological impact on the city. Despite an increasing number of delayed projects, including 250 West 55th Street, 99 Church Street and Solow's First Avenue project, any psychological effects are likely to be short-lived, because the projects will be completed eventually. Large banks are only about halfway done with their commercial real estate losses. The U.S. commercial real estate losses could reach 10 or 15 percent of loans in this cycle. Banks with retail and office loans face the highest risk.The Plaza hotel is on tough times. The building's lower …
  
  
• September 2009 New York New Developments
• New Developments New building permits issued in the first five months of 2009 showed a year-over-year drop in all five boroughs for the second year in a row. Citywide, permits were down 48.5 percent from the same period last year to 720, and were down 69 percent from the first half of 2007, when the building boom was still in full force. Of the five boroughs, Manhattan saw the biggest drop from last year, with 18 building permits filed between January and May, or 72.3 percent fewer than in the same period of 2008. This number was off 71.9 percent …
  
  
• August 2009 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• This year, leasing activity in Manhattan will likely be the weakest in decades. Expectation is this is going to be the worst year since keeping records on this in the 1980. There has only been 5.9 million square feet leased in Manhattan through July 1, and expects leasing for the year to be worse than the most recent low of 14 million square feet in 1991. Available office space rose to 41.2 million square feet, the highest level in the past four and a half years. The availability rate reached 11.5 percent, up from 10.5 percent at the end of …
  
  
• August 2009 New York New Developments
• New Developments After many years of construction on Fulton Street, small business owners are now able to apply for grants from the city to improve storefronts that have been obstructed or damaged by the construction. The Fulton Nassau Crossroads Program, funded by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, offers free design, engineering and construction management, along with $275,000 for construction, to buildings located on Fulton and Nassau streets.Law firm Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe may sign a lease for 220,000 square feet at 51 West 52nd Street. They will take the space previously occupied by UBS and Cushman & Wakefield. Cushman will …
  
  
• July 2009 New York New Developments
• New Developments The Federal Reserve has few deals for the start of its program to aid the commercial real estate market. Today is the first monthly deadline for investors to apply for loans to buy new commercial mortgage-backed securities through the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility. The Fed will start accepting investor requests for loans to purchase older CMBS.James Abadie, head of New York operations for construction firm Bovis Lend Lease, has resigned amid investigations of the company for alleged overbilling and bribery. Bovis is working on the September 11th Memorial and the demolition of the Deutsche Bank building.Global real …
  
  
• June 2009 New York New Developments
• New Developments Developers of a Jean Nouvel-designed skyscraper adjacent to the Museum of Modern Art have applied to build a tower seven stories taller than the original proposal unveiled two years ago was 75 stories tall. The building has been controversial, with Community Board 5 criticizing its height and bulk in a resolution in March 2008. The mixed-use project from Houston-based international developer Hines Interests will have 100 hotel rooms and 120 condominium units on the upper floors, and also include a 60,000-square-foot expansion of MoMa's galleries on the second to the fifth floors. The amount of space for the …
  
  
• May 2009 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Of Midtown's 222 million square feet of office space, 30 million square feet is available. New commercial buildings, such as 11 Times Square and 510 Madison Avenue scheduled to open in a year, will add to the glut of vacant office space. Major financial firms continue to unload massive amounts of space onto the market. Citigroup is offering 300,000 square feet in Midtown for sublease from properties such as 485 Lexington Avenue. There is a near standstill in leasing activity and building sales in New York. Income producing property sales are not taking heavy reductions while sales of vacant spaces …
  
  
• May 2009 New York New Developments
• New Developments Hyatt Hotel & Resorts is opening two new hotels in the next year under its new brand name called Andaz. One hotel is scheduled to open across from Bryant Park on 41st Street and Fifth Avenue next year, and the second, at 75 Wall Street, is to open in September. The 41st Street hotel will offer time-share units on the top floors, and the downtown hotel, converted from the former JP Morgan Chase building, will have 253 rooms, with condo units on the 18th through 42nd floors.Hotel Developer Sam Chang filed plans for a 225-key Hyatt Place hotel …
  
  
• April 2009 New York Buildings For Sale
• Manhattan Buildings sold Real estate investor Robert Gans bought the closed Scores West building at 533-535 West 27th Street for $9.58 million. The 10,000-square-foot venue closed when its license was revoked. The asking price for the building, between 10th and 11th avenues, was to be around $40 million.The New York Times Company and W. P. Carey & Co., an investment management company, entered into a $225 million sale-leaseback transaction for space at the Times' Manhattan headquarters. The sale-leaseback involves 750,000 square feet over 21 floors of the 52-story building on Eighth Avenue between 40th and 41st streets. The lease extends …
  
  
• April 2009 New York New Developments
• New Developments New York City Department of Parks & Recreation officials showed its plans for parks around the new Yankee Stadium, which was built on land within the footprint of two parks that residents want replaced. The parks department plans to a park with a track and athletic field, plus two stories of parking, in the area. The department will also build tennis courts and parkland. The old Yankee Stadium will become Heritage Field Park by spring 2011.Stellar Management's president is in negotiations to settle a lawsuit against Landesbank Baden, Deutsche Hypo and State Street Bank after they allegedly cut …
  
  
• March 2009 New York New Developments
• The New York State Appellate Division ruled in favor of the Atlantic Yards project today in a lawsuit that challenged the project's environmental review process. Mayor Michael Bloomberg released a statement in support of the project, saying it will "create thousands of jobs and generate badly needed tax revenue." Bloomberg said the court's approval is a big step towards the start of construction for the delayed project.Proskauer Rose backed out of taking space at Mort Zuckerman's 250 West 55th Street, and now is in talks to move in again. Zuckerman put the 1 million-square-foot project on hold when the law …
  
  
• February 2009 New York Buildings For Sale
• Manhattan Buildings soldZar Property bought an eight-story commercial building in Soho for $12.65 million. The building, at 64-68 Wooster Street, between Broome and Spring streets, is occupied by the Ohio Theatre company. The Rockefeller Group has sold its land lease at 1627 Broadway to United American Land for $26 million. Tenants include Duane Reade and the Snapple Theater. United American Land said it is evaluating options because the air rights would allow about 120,000 additional square feet to be built at the location. The property no longer fit into the company's long-term plans. New York Buildings For SaleDeutsche Bank is …
  
  
• February 2009 New York New Developments
• New Developments Lehman Brothers filed suit to begin foreclosure proceedings on Kent Swig's 45 Broad Street. Swig had been planning to build a 62-story Nobu Hotel and Residences on the property, with 77 luxury condos, 128 hotel rooms and 13,000 square feet of retail. Trump Marina Hotel Casino Trump Entertainment Resorts has struck a deal with lenders and note holders had until Jan. 21 to try negotiating a restructuring of its debt. Trump had delayed paying a $53.1 million bond interest payment that was due in December, and the 30-day grace period expired. The Atlantic City, N.J.-based company had hoped …
  
  
• January 2009 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• New York Commercial Real Estate Overview Vacancy rates continued to rise and leasing activity and asking rents fell in November across Manhattan's three main office markets, Overall leasing activity in Manhattan fell to 1.01 million square feet in November from 1.44 million square feet in October, while the vacancy rate rose to 6.9 percent from 6.6 percent between the two months. The average asking rent declined to $68.53 per square foot from $69.10 per square foot. The steepest decline in activity was in Midtown South, where leasing activity dropped 67 percent between October and November, to 130,000 square feet from …
  
  
• January 2009 New York New Developments
• New Developments Lenders are going into bankruptcy and the sales market is disappearing, causing developers all over New York to face choices about how to ride out this down cycle.Over $400 billion in mortgages on commercial properties, including office towers and shopping malls, are to come due by the end of 2009. Even if these properties are performing well, they could go into foreclosure if mortgage holders are unable to pay off the loans. The commercial real estate market has shifted from property sales toward the purchase and sale of debt, where the loan, rather than the actual real estate, …
  
  
• December 2008 New York New Developments
• New DevelopmentsRecently, banks have begun lending to one another, signifying a slight thaw in credit markets. Yet, the commercial real estate market still seems limited in its ability to get financing. This inability to line up financing has scuttled some major building and lease sales in the past few months, one such example is 17 State Street in the Financial District.About 150,000 jobs have been cut at major financial institutions, and more layoffs may be on the way. Some firms may shed an additional 5 percent of jobs this year if the market doesn't turn around. Citibank has cut 22,000 …
  
  
• December 2008 New York Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For SaleThe site of the former Drake Hotel on Park Avenue between 56th and 57th streets has six bidders, down from more than 20 bidders, including Larry Silverstein, the Related Companies and Apollo Real Estate Partners. Macklowe Properties has been assembling the site over the last decade, but now is facing foreclosure on the property. At the height of the market, the land, which can support up to 600,000 square feet, could have been purchased for $1,300 a buildable foot, but now will probably sell for less than half of that price.Real estate firm George Comfort & Sons …
  
  
• November 2008 New York New Developments
• New DevelopmentsIn the last few days, banks have begun lending to one another, signifying a thaw in credit markets that have been frozen for weeks. But despite those promising signs, a chill still seems to be pervading the commercial real estate market. The inability to line up financing has scuttled some major building and lease sales in the past few months, one such example is 17 State Street in the Financial District.With Lehman Brothers locked in bankruptcy, many real estate firms do not have financing to complete construction, meet lease obligations or pay vendors to complete sales, raising the prospect …
  
  
• November 2008 New York Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For Sale236 Second Avenue, an East Village 12,366-square-foot building, formerly housing Gateway Schools is on the market, along with an adjacent townhouse. It is located at 15th Street has seven floors contains nine classrooms, a gym, multi-purpose room, art room, library, offices and a courtyard.1540 Broadway may be for sale as the remaining Harry Macklowe's Midtown portfolio moves into the final phase.Bossert Hotel Developer RAL Companies walked from its agreement to purchase the former Bossert Hotel, located at 98 Montague Street, for $92 million from the Watchtower Group. The property will return to the market soon, probably with …
  
  
• October 2008 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Real estate executives are expecting an additional 20 million square feet of surplus office to hit the market as Wall Street employees lose their jobs in addition to the announced Bank of America's takeover of Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy and an unsure future for American International Group. That may lead rents, which have already declined 10 to 15 percent, to decrease.The market has been showing a decline in taking rents, the bottom line after price negotiations and accounting for concessions, the summer months may have brought the first of a surge in owners their published asking rents is slowly …
  
  
• October 2008 New York New Developments
• New DevelopmentsThe Bush administration proposed granting the Treasury Department the ability to buy up to $700 billion in distressed mortgage-related assets from private firms. The proposal would raise the national debt ceiling to $11.3 trillion. The government also put together a plan that makes investment banks Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley holding companies, giving them access to Federal Reserve Bank of New York funds and putting them under stricter regulations. Boutique firms, like Lazard and Evercore Partners, are seizing clients and staff from fallen rivals. Nationwide, financial companies have announced 103,000 layoffs this year. Democrats proposed taxpayers could receive an …
  
  
• October 2008 New York Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For SaleThe sale of Harry Macklowe's Drake Hotel site on Park Avenue could bring in a record price between $900 and $1,000 per buildable foot for the project between 56th and 57th streets. It was reported that Macklowe's lender Deutsche Bank AG brought a suit against the developer for defaulting on $482 million lent for the purchase of the site to build a hotel, retail and condominium. Three of American International Group's buildings in the city could be put up for sale to raise money and repay the company's $85 billion federal loan. AIG's headquarters at 70 Pine …
  
  
• September 2008 New York Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For SaleNew York Buildings soldLehman Brothers Holdings Inc. is negotiating to sell its $40 billion portfolio of commercial real estate. A group led by Boston Properties finalized the purchase of Harry Macklowe's Two Grand Central Tower buying it for $237 million and the assumption of $190 million in mortgage debt. Real estate firms rich in cash have snatched up the most high-profile office towers on the market in Manhattan this year, while highly-leveraged players have been sidelined. Shorenstein Properties bought two of the seven office buildings that Harry Macklowe needed to unload, the Park Avenue Tower at 65 …
  
  
• August 2008 New York New Developments
• New DevelopmentsOffice availability rises along with asking rents. Manhattan commercial rents increased in the year's first half even as the available for leasing increased. Average asking rents increased to $71.35 per square foot in June up from $63.46 per square foot in June, 2007. Despite an increase in leasing activity in the second quarter, the total for the first half of the year was 10.47 million square feet, a decline of about 1.5 million square feet from the same period in 2007. Some commercial landlords are raising the rents higher than ever before. L&L; Holding Company is asking for a …
  
  
• August 2008 New York Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For SaleStarrett City's bidders have been narrowed down to four finalists. Bids for the 46-tower Brooklyn complex were between $600 million and $1 billion, and government officials and Starrett City Associates are expected to choose the new owner by Sept. 1. Starrett City's 140 acres near Jamaica Bay in Brooklyn have retail space, a power plant, a sports center, office space, parking garages and vacant land.Large LeasesBurberry is in negotiation for offices at 444 Madison Avenue, for 68,448 square feet. The asking rent is around $85 per square foot. Burberry is also planning a ground-floor retail store.The world's …
  
  
• July 2008 New York New Developments
• New DevelopmentsThe city has reached a deal with a developer that will bring schools to a mixed-use development planned for Midtown East. With financing from New York City Educational Construction Fund, the World Wide Group will build a new elementary school and a new high school that would replace the High School for Art and Design. In exchange, the city will lease the developer a 1.5-acre site at East 57th Street and Second Avenue. World Wide plans to build 200,000 square feet of retail and 488,000 square feet of residential space. Mayor Michael Bloomberg unveiled a plan to rejuvenate the …
  
  
• May 2008 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• The State Department of Labor has doubled the possible job cuts on Wall Street than the previous estimates. Predictions indicate that Wall Street will lay off 36,000 employees - one fifth of its entire work force, compared to the 20,000 that the city's Independent Budget Office predicted in March. The bleaker outlook will put a damper on the city's economy, and hurt Manhattan's commercial leasing market in the coming year. If all the layoffs occur, Manhattan will have up to 9 million square feet of office space, direct and sublease on the market.If that does, in fact, get reintroduced to …
  
  
• May 2008 New York Buildings For Sale
• 650 Madison Avenue, a 27-story, 600,000 RSF office building, was sold to Ashkenazy Acquisition Corp. for $695 million. 1250 Broadway, a 39-story, 670,000 RSF office building, was sold to Murray Hill Properties for $310 million. 100 Fifth Avenue, a 19-story, 240,000 RSF office building, was sold to Rock New York (100-104 Fifth Avenue) LLC for $152 million. 100-104 Fifth Avenue, a 20-story, 270,000 RSF office building, was sold to Rock Investments for $150 million. 370 Canal Street, a 20-story hotel, 360 rooms total, was sold to Magna Hospitality Group for $83 million. 8 Gramercy Park South and 141 East 33rd …
  
  
• March 2008 New York New Developments
• New DevelopmentsThe amount of leased in the fourth quarter of 2007 was 34.5 % lower than the amount of leased in the fourth quarter of 2006. Average asking rents fell by 45 cents to $61.46 per square foot in the fourth quarter, down from $61.91 per square foot in the third quarter.In 2007, the office market in Downtown Manhattan had a lower overall vacancy rate than the Midtown market for the first time since 2001. The year-end report showed that Downtown had a 7.6 percent vacancy rate last year, compared to a 7.7 percent rate in Midtown. Downtown saw 412,108 …
  
  
• February 2008 New York New Developments
• New DevelopmentsNew York City's office market has gained on the world's two most expensive cities, London and Hong Kong. London vaulted over Hong Kong to become the world's priciest office market with rent for Class A hitting $265 per square foot. The peak rate in New York City's Midtown reached $225 per square foot. The next most expensive U.S. office markets were San Francisco, with a rate of $110 per square foot; Boston, with a rate of $90 per square foot; and Manhattan's Downtown, with a rate of $65 per square foot. Steven Witkoff, Developer, pulled bid to develop Pier …
  
  
• February 2008 New York Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For SaleGM building Sale. The sale for the GM building could be in doubt as buyers are scared away by the pending lawsuit from Sheldon Solow. Developer Harry Macklowe is trying to sell the General Motors Building to pay off massive debts that are soon due. People wait to see who might try to buy the 50-story tower. Sheldon Solow, Larry Silverstein, Vornado CEO Steven Roth, and Tishman Speyer CEO Jerry Speyer. Bidding is expected to begin at $3.5 billion, and the property might not even sell. A recapitalization could be all that happens in the end. A …
  
  
• January 2008 New York New Developments
• New DevelopmentsNew Construction BrooklynAt 75 Flatbush Avenue, a permit to build a 21-story, 108-unit new Flatiron has been issued. The 150,000-square-foot building, which is going up Extension will be 262 feet tall.Developers of the Domino Sugar Refinery, a historic landmark, will be part of an ambitious $1.2 billion, 10-year residential development project.Major Market News Columbia Expansion Approved. The City Council voted to rezone a 35-acre section of Harlem, allowing Columbia University's $7 billion expansion. Columbia plans to expand onto 17 of the rezoned acres, bounded by Broadway, Riverside Drive, West 129th Street and West 133rd Street.The Federal Reserve's proposal to …
  
  
• December 2007 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Demand for Manhattan office space exceeds the pace of new construction. As a result office vacancy rates continue to decline and rental rates continue their upward climb. New DevelopmentsThe Federal government has approved $1.3 billion for the Second Avenue subway's first phase. The first phase is expected to cost more than $4 billion and is scheduled to open in 2014. A new television transmission may make unnecessary the 408-foot spire planned to broadcast tower on of roof the Freedom Tower. If not built, the tower will be reduced from its symbolic 1,776 feet to 1,368 feet tall, the height of …
  
  
• December 2007 New York Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For SaleShorenstein Co. is reportedly negotiating to buy the Citigroup tower at 388 and 390 Greenwich Street. Citi will lease back part of the building for 15 years.Phillip Morris parent Altria Group is selling 120 Park Avenue, at the corner of 42nd Street, for $525 million to Global Holdings Inc. or $816/RSF.New York Buildings sold
  
  
• November 2007 New York New Developments
• New DevelopmentsNew York City Building LeasesGoogle leased 130,000 RSF at 75 Ninth Avenue (Chelsea Market).Ann Taylor Stores Corporation leased 100,000 RSF at 1372 Broadway.National Financial Partners leased 99,485 RSF at 340 Madison Avenue.Bank Leumi leased 55,253 RSF at 420 Lexington Avenue.Monitor Company leased 51,062 RSF at 140 Broadway.Niche Media leased 45,000 RSF at 100 Church Street.The Regus Group leased 35,000 RSF at 260 Madison Avenue.MD Sass leased 33,739 RSF at 1185 Sixth Avenue.Junior Gallery Ltd. leased 30,906 RSF at 463 Seventh Avenue.New York Marine and General Insurance Company leased 30,165 RSF at 919 Third Avenue.Poten & Partners leased 29,411 RSF …
  
  
• October 2007 New York Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For Sale10 East Village, mixed-use buildings, are on the market with an asking price of about $160 million. The buildings are located at 141, 145, 147, 151, 157 and 156 Second Avenue; 24 St. Mark's Place; 111 East Seventh Street; 213 East Fourth Street; and 244 East 21st Street.440 Ninth Avenue a 339,000 SF building class B building with leases rolling over in 2012.1177 Sixth Avenue is reportedly for sale by Paramount Group for at least $1 billion.New York Buildings soldAmerica Online announced that it leased 152,000 square feet at 770 Broadway.Niche media publishing rented 45,000 RSF at …
  
  
• September 2007 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Tightening credit may mean the end of the acquisition frenzy and trouble for buyers of recent deals who have not locked in long term financing.Summerset Partners who last month announced it was acquiring 450 Park Avenue for $1,589/RSF. Now, the firm is struggling to close the $510 million deal, because of the rising cost of debt and requirements for more equity. The same is true for all developers such as Macklow who recently completed the $7 billion acquisition of several Manhattan skyscrapers from the The Blackstone Group and an Israeli investment group, who just bought the Lipstick Building at 885 …
  
  
• July 2007 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• New York City New Construction:Sitt of Thor Equities scaling back plans for Coney Island from 2 billion to 1.5 billion. Sitt has already spent $120 million buying up land. Dropped 40 story tower. Rental apartment and condominiums and making project less dense.New York City Buildings Leases:Davis Polk renewed and expanded lease to 650,000 sf at 450 Lexington Avenue.MTV Networks Entertainment Group leases 400,000 sf at 345 Hudson Street.Limited Brands renewed lease of 125,000 sf at 400 Lafayette Street.BBDO renewed lease of 41,000 sf at 1375 Broadway.Choice Logistics leases 34,000 sf at 1 Whitehall Street.NaviSite Corporation leases 33,000 sf at 395 …
  
  
• July 2007 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings sold 60 Wall Street, a 47-story, 1.6 million sf office building, was sold to Paramount Group for $1 , 200 million. Harlem portfolio, 4,000 residential units, was sold to Urban American Management; City Investment Fund for $940 million. 885 Third Avenue (Lipstick Building), a 587,000 sf office building, was sold to Metropolitan Real Estate Investors for $607 million. 229 West 43rd Street (New York Times Building), a 746,000 sf office building, was sold to Africa Israel Investments for $525 million. Brooklyn and Queens portfolio of 2,000 residential units was sold for $250 million. 1328 Broadway (2 Herald …
  
  
• May 2007 New York Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For SaleNew York City New Construction:Mayor Bloomberg released a two decade plus report on a greener greater New York Create housing by constructing decks over rail yards, rail lines and congested highways, cleanup of 7,600 acres of brownfields, adapt unused hospitals schools and other outdated municipal sites.Meryl Lynch reported in talks for the new office tower where the Hotel Pennsylvania is now.JP Morgan chase looking to build a 1.3 Million sf office building near group zero on the former deutsch bank building site.Empire State building getting a $400 million renovation.New York Buildings sold