Trump to Letterman: Downtown mosque project is “insensitive”

September 2nd, 2010    Posted in Real Estate News
The Donald paid a visit to "The Late Show with David Letterman" last night to talk about development at and around the site of the former Twin Towers. Naturally, much of the conversation focused on the proposed mosque nearby, which Trump has repeatedly denounced as "insensitive." He argued that from a public relations standpoint, the developers behind the project would be met with "good will" from the public if they agreed to move to an alternate location. His views were met with audience applause, but then, so was Letterman's -- that religious freedom is a "fundamental building block" of this country.

Pending home sales show some stability

September 2nd, 2010    Posted in Real Estate News
Despite the recent bleak housing news following the expiration of the first-time homebuyer tax credit, pending home sales are showing some stability, according to a National Association of Realtors report released today. The NAR's Pending Home Sales Index, which calculates the number of signed contracts nationwide, climbed 5.2 percent to 79.4 percent in July, compared to June. Still, July's index reading was 19.1 percent below the same month a year earlier, leading Lawrence Yun, NAR's chief economist, to believe that a full recovery may be a long way off. "The recovery looks to be a long process," Yun said. "For those who bought at or near the peak several years ago... it may take over a decade to fully recover lost equity." See Yun discuss the housing market above. TRD

More foreclosures means fewer voters: experts

September 2nd, 2010    Posted in Real Estate News While the home foreclosure crisis has had a heavy influence on the nation's economic recovery, industry experts have now turned their attention to how it might affect the political arena, according to the New York Times. Because voters must register a home address to vote, analysts are concerned that the growing number of people whose home situations are in limbo may result in a subsequent decline at the polls. Robert Brandon, president of the Fair Elections Legal Network, pointed out that the foreclosure crisis could ultimately disenfranchise many voters, while distracting those who could vote from getting out on election day. [more]

Ginsberg’s EV apartment rents in five hours

September 2nd, 2010    Posted in Real Estate News After just a short turn on the market, the East Village apartment that poet Allen Ginsberg once lived in has been snapped up, according to the Observer. The one-bedroom, walk-up apartment at 437 East 12th Street between Avenue A and First Avenue came online last week with an asking rent of $1,700 a month. The apartment was a hot ticket, according to listing agent Daniel Kramp of City Connections Realty. [more]

Agents skeptical about Tiger reports

September 2nd, 2010    Posted in Real Estate News Though Us Weekly first reported that golfer Tiger Woods had moved into an apartment downtown -- the Printing House condo at 421 Hudson Street, according to Curbed and the Daily News -- real estate insiders say it's either wishful thinking or a stunt pulled by a landlord to promote his building. "No way Tiger would live there,” a broker told The Post. If it really was Tiger who had been seen moving boxes into the building -- a run-down 1980s conversion with leaky ceilings -- maybe he was helping out a girlfriend, brokers told the Post. [more]

Brokers, websites battle to control listings

September 2nd, 2010    Posted in Real Estate News From the September issue: They say knowledge is power. That's especially true when it comes to New York City real estate. For years, the only access to apartments for sale in the city -- especially those in posh, highly selective co-ops -- was through real estate firms. Each company maintained a stockpile of listings, a valuable asset that in many ways determined its ability to be successful. Sharing this information meant giving up a competitive advantage. Today, vestiges of this mentality remain, despite the fact that listings are required to be shared electronically, and the vast majority of brokers agree that co-broking is the way to fetch the highest sale price possible for a property. Take, for example, the fact that Manhattan is one of the only real estate markets in the country without a conventional Multiple Listing Service. Yet with technology improving at warp speed, Manhattan is now seeing vast changes in -- and intense battles surrounding -- who controls real estate information. [more]

After two hot months, Manhattan apartment sales cool off in July

September 2nd, 2010    Posted in Real Estate News While Manhattan apartment closings jumped by more than 75 percent year-over-year in both May and June, that sales bump all but evaporated in July, according to PropertyShark.com. In the first month since the expiration of the federal homebuyer tax credit, which doled out $8,000 each to buyers who closed by June 30, apartment sales increased by just 1.9 percent over July 2009. A little over 1,000 apartments closed in the borough during the month, public records show. TRD [more]

City’s CMBS market least distressed in U.S.

September 2nd, 2010    Posted in Real Estate News New York City now has the lowest level of overall distressed CMBS loans in the nation after surpassing Seattle for the first-place spot, according to a new report from CoStar Group, which examined data from Investcap Advisors and QuantumRisk. As of the end of July, both New York and Seattle had a probability of default ratios of less than 2 percent. New York was also among the least stressed office markets in the nation, with a ratio also below 2 percent for that segment of the real estate market. TRD [more]

CNBC, Trulia debut new home traffic report

September 2nd, 2010    Posted in Real Estate News
Where are U.S. homebuyers most interested in purchasing properties today? A new real estate survey, commissioned jointly by CNBC and Trulia.com, aims to answer that question by measuring the number of Trulia user clicks on properties in major metropolitan areas. In August, Fort Lauderdale, Fla. saw the largest bump in traffic on the site, up 65 percent year-over-year. Meanwhile, suburbs surrounding Washington, D.C., like Bethesda and Silver Spring, Md., saw traffic drop by around one-third during the month. Check out the video above for more on the brand new survey and what it means for the future of the country’s housing market.

LMDC aims to rescue businesses suffering from public construction-related losses

September 2nd, 2010    Posted in Real Estate News The Lower Manhattan Development Corp. is expanding its aid program for small businesses plagued by public construction projects, the agency announced yesterday. According to the Tribeca Trib, the agency has upped the total amount of grant money it is making available to $6 million from $5 million and extended the program by five years, through 2015. Individual businesses can now receive up to $35,000 each through the program, up from $25,000 previously. [more]

Inside the Ohm with Darryl Strawberry, Hovnanian’s third-quarter loss worse than expected … and more

September 2nd, 2010    Posted in Real Estate News 1. Inside the Ohm with new resident Darryl Strawberry [Post]
2. CW Capital slams opponents on grammatical errors in new Stuy Town filing [NYO]
3. New Knicks player Amar'e Stoudemire checks out $29K-per-month unit at 141 Fifth Avenue [Post, 3rd item]
4. Hovnanian's third-quarter loss worse than expected [Bloomberg]
5. Twilight star Ashley Greene signs lease at 2 Cooper Square [Post, 1st item]
6. Hospitalized 104-year-old heiress gave nurse $2M in cash to buy homes [NYDN]
7. Meanwhile, her accountant has been making secret visits to her hospital bed in attempts to get her to sign legal documents [Post]
8. Yankee Austin Kearns rents two-bedroom apartment at 170 East End Avenue [Post, 2nd item]
9. PCB testing pushed at NYC schools [NYDN]
10. And under new disclosure law, schools also forced to disclose bedbug infestations to parents [NYDN]
11. Meanwhile, the bedbugs scare is affecting flea market sales [NYT]
12. Six-alarm fire erupts in the Bronx, injures 12 [Post]
13. Australian supermodel Abbey Lee apartment hunts in Williamsburg [Post, 4th item]

Top web stories

September 2nd, 2010    Posted in Real Estate News The top web stories from yesterday's The Real Deal blog:
1. $81.5M property hits market in Southampton
2. 6 questions for Citi Habitats head Gary Malin
3. Jeffrey Brooker, 25-year Harlem real estate veteran, dies

City signs 20-year lease at MetroTech

September 1st, 2010    Posted in Real Estate News The Department of Citywide Administrative Services has signed a lease for 81,800 square feet at 2 MetroTech Center in Downtown Brooklyn, where the asking rent was $35 a square foot, Crain’s reported. The space, which is under a 20-year lease that officially began in May, will be used by the city's Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications for offices and a data center. A build-out of the space is expected to begin this week and the agency is slated to move in during the first quarter of next year. [more]

U.S. construction spending hits 10-year low

September 1st, 2010    Posted in Real Estate News Construction spending fell nationwide for the third month in a row in July 2010, this time to its lowest level in 10 years, according to a report released today by the U.S. Department of Commerce. July's $805 billion annual spending rate was 1 percent below June's $813.1 billion rate and 10.7 percent below the $901.2 billion level recorded in July 2009. The private residential construction sector, which has been battered by gloomy reports since the expiration of the federal homebuyer tax credit in June, saw a 2.6 percent decline in spending -- to an annual rate of $240.3 billion -- since June but a 5.5 percent increase over July 2009. [more]

Pols, real estate pros divided on new disclosure law

September 1st, 2010    Posted in Real Estate News Elected officials and advocates praised a new law passed by the City Council last week that requires far more disclosure from apartment building investors, and predictably, real estate insiders criticized it as overkill. Yet there is one puzzling question with the new law: It was justified by and based on a decades-old law that the city has not adhered to in years. In the 1980s, when real estate investors were snapping up single room occupancy hotels and converting them to standard apartments, the city passed legislation that required individuals who own more than 25 percent of an SRO to register with the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development. However, for at least nearly 20 years, the agency has never tabulated the information. In fact the current form the city uses for the required registration of multiple dwelling buildings does not even contain a field to enter such data (see the registration form after the jump). An official from HPD made the surprising admission in city council hearings in June that its computer system, called Premises, would have to be reprogrammed to contain the additional data. [more]

Sale of former NASCAR site hits roadblock

August 31st, 2010    Posted in Real Estate News KB Marine Holdings, the company purchasing the former NASCAR site from International Speedway, has missed two closing dates, the Staten Island Advance reported. A new deal is being negotiated for the West Shore waterfront parcel in Staten Island, according to ISC spokesperson Charles Talbert, but the future remains uncertain for the 676-acre site, the largest privately owned piece of undeveloped industrial land in the city. Last year, ISC announced it was in contract to sell the site to KB Marine for $80 million, nearly $30 million less than ISC paid to assemble the former oil tank farm in 2004. [more]

Problem bank list could reach 1,000 by mid-2011

August 31st, 2010    Posted in Real Estate News
The number of banks in financial trouble is at an 18-year high, Colin Barr, senior writer for Fortune, says in the CNNMoney video above, with 118 recorded so far this year. That number will reach nearly 200 by the end of the year, he said, and around 1,000 by early- to mid-2011 -- unseen since the 1980s. "You get a slower economy, you get more unemployment, you get more bank failures," he said. With loans down 7 percent from a couple years ago, banks are not contributing to the nation's recovery. "Banks are kind of on the sidelines," he said, adding, "We're in this holding pattern."