Tom Acitelli

New York University's Furman Center for Real Estate & Urban Policy has cranked out another annual State of New York City's Housing and Neighborhoods. The initial focus of the report appears to be on the growing, gnawing lack of housing affordability for much of the city:

The report... finds that the median home sales price in New York City rose by 68 percent from 2000 to 2005, adjusting for inflation. This is welcome news for existing homeowners, but it also means that homeownership is harder to attain. Fewer than 5 percent of home sales in 2005 were affordable to New Yorkers earning the City's median income ($43,434), down from 11 percent in 2000.

One wonders, however, how much worse this affordability crisis has become--but the above statistic and its conclusion, like others throughout the report, come from numbers that are now at least 15 months old. The report, then, for example, pre-dates the subprime-mortgage imbroglio and the cooling of the national housing market.

Still, it may be worth your perusal.

- Tom Acitelli

• What'd you get for that friend who just got the perfect New York pad with a terrace? How about the Cocoon Hammock? Designed by Henry Hall, the hammock becomes its own little outside room, apparently, and so you should be warned: "The hammock is not meant to be moved once it is assembled, as it is roughly 12-sq. ft. and weighs over 400 pounds."
[Luxist]
• Whole Foods plans a new location at Third Street and Third Avenue along the happy banks of the Gowanus Canal, and a group calling itself Park Slope Neighbors wants the food giant to reduce the location's planned 420 parking spaces by at least 100. The main beef the group has is with Whole Foods apparent attempt to implement "a suburban-style plan"--because, when people think of Park Slope, they don't think suburban. No, not at all.
[Brooklyn Record via Brownstoner]
• The final day of the Futuristic Dumbo exhibit is on Friday. Catch it while you can, then, and see what urban-design students at Pratt envision for Brooklyn (see above). Among other questions, the exhibit seeks to answer one most New Yorkers would rather quietly avoid: "How do we adapt to the rising seas in our waterfront neighborhood?" Indeed.
[DumboNYC]
• The Times throws at us today a story about that certain little sadness some money-flush New Yorkers endure: "post-renovation depression." The Wrap would crack a joke or some sort of dry witticism, but, truth be told, the whole thing's rather sick (and not in a clinical way). Behold: "While remodeling is often portrayed as a nightmare -- with delays, cost overruns and scary contractors -- some say it is more like a dream they would rather not wake up from." [NY Times via Gawker] - Tom Acitelli
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Real estate gossip inside prime real estate--what better way to pass a Wednesday evening?

John and Denise Calicchio hosted a book party for High Rise Low Down, a new 360-page dish spilling the secrets of Manhattan's ritziest apartment buildings. The fete filled but one section of their three-part duplex in 820 Park Avenue.

A pinkish Warhol print of a smiling Marilyn Monroe mounted behind the dining room table set the evening's tone: Happy, glitzy, and all that Gotham jazz...

A-list real-estate types like broker-to-high-society Larry Kaiser IV, Stribling's luxury guru Kirk Henckels, developer Bill Mack of Time Warner Center acclaim, and at least one Rudin gabbed and drank with the likes of songwriter Hal "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" David and designer Vera Wang, who sliced through the crowd in what looked like a threadbare poncho and a winter hat pulled snugly over her head.

Champagne, white wine, and margaritas were served, along with hors d'oeuvres and a helping of speculation about the book's juiciest bits.

Its three authors--Eunice David (Hal's wife), Kathryn Livingston, and Denise Calicchio (nee LeFrak)--made brief speeches standing on the lower steps of the duplex's beige-carpeted, winding staircase, which led to a cozy upstairs lounge with its own--thoroughly stocked--wet bar and views of Park Avenue.

The best of the evening came last: Mr. David, leaning on a black baby-grand piano, sang his lovely Burt Bacharach hit "What Do You Get When You Fall in Love?" The song's answer is ominous for real estate fans: "A guy with a pin to burst your bubble/ That's what you get for all your trouble."

David Patrick Columbia's New York Social Diary has plenty of photos from the evening. Look for a review of High Rise Low Down: Who's Who and What's What in New York's Most Coveted Apartment Houses in The Observer's new real-estate section in early February.

- Tom Acitelli and Max Abelson

Even Almighty God got the back of the hand.

On Thursday evening, the Real Estate Board of New York's annual awards gala assembled in a few thousand square feet of the Hilton in Midtown more money than anywhere else that night in the United States. But the crowd greeted the main event with the type of audience indifference usually reserved for the Golden Globes or a high school musical.

In theory, the night was an 111-year-old, black-tie excuse for the largest real estate trade group in the metro region to honor its own through a series of awards. And lots and lots of drinking.

Problem was, no one cared to listen, preferring instead to elevate mingling to an Olympic sport on amphetamines.

Steven Spinola, president of REBNY, gamely proferred introductions for the evening from a three-level dias crammed with luminaries--World Trade Center site leaseholder Larry Silverstein, SL Green head Stephen Green, Gotham Organization stalwart Joel Pickett, Related Companies CEO (and new REBNY Chairman) Steve Ross, State Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno, City Council members James Oddo, Melinda Katz, Leroy Comrie, City Comptroller Bill Thompson, Manhattan borough President Scott Stringer, office landlord Bill Rudin.

The abrupt belting of "God Bless America" did bring an awkward silence of forced respect as New York's propertied class rose to its drunken feet. But a decidedly--and deliberately--nondenominational prayer by Mr. Spinola failed to command even a slightly equal silence.

The mingling murmured onward unabated as the dinner got served: steak, fish if you wanted it, mixed vegetables, baked red potatoes, red and white wine, and Coors and Bud beers in bottles. (At a smaller reception before, minglers could snatch Amstel Light and Heineken, among every typical liquor mixture.)

There on the dias was Mary Anne Tighe, chairwoman of CB Richard Ellis, one of the largest commercial brokerages, trying to hand out one of REBNY's six awards of the Thursday evening. "Hello? Hello?!" she cried out, but no one listened.

Mr. Spinola returned quickly to the podium and announced the next guest speaker betwixt sharp "Shhhs!"

Eventually, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn appeared on the dias and spoke into the microphone: "Something-something-something. Thank you for making New York City as great as it is." (Mayor Bloomberg had stopped in toward the evening's slightly more sober start, and Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff, the Robert Moses of his age--only better liked--made the dutiful rounds at the earlier reception.)

The first booze-soaked after-party was hosted by investment-sales firm Massey Knakal, with reggae band Toots and the Maytals setting the tone to everyone's slightly jagged sway. (Newmark Knight Frank's Jimmy Kuhn's band did not play this year. Bummer.) If you stayed any later, you watched hundreds of glass-eyed brokers stumbling to the hotel's elevators or picking the wrong coat check over and over again.

Indeed, millions of dollars of deals were probably made last night, all of which were forgotten the second the attendees' heads hit their pillows in the wee small hours.

Mostly, REBNY's annual gala stood, again, a testament to what drives the deal-making that drives the New York City real estate market: connections. Making them. Rekindling them. Keeping them.

Mr. Spinola, sensing early on from the dias the lost cause of truly reaching the dozens of brimming white-clothed tables before him, noted the performance of every element of the city's property market in the year that just passed.

"It's a clear sign that 2007," he said, "for the industry, and for New York City, truly looks great."

- Tom Acitelli & John Koblin

Brace yourself: Manhattan housing market reports for the fourth quarter of 2006 are coming out on Wednesday. The reports from brokerages Prudential Douglas Elliman, the Corcoran Group, Brown Harris Stevens and Halstead Property are trickling out to the media today, and will spark at least a few days of (likely) widely divergent analysis among consumers, reporters and industry types.

The Real Estate can already predict this, however, having scanned only two reports so far: Manhattan housing was expensive in the fourth quarter of 2006.

Stay tuned.

- Tom Acitelli

Why spend that Wall Street bonus on real estate? How about a party instead?

A downtown Manhattan hotel is offering a swanky party package dubbed "Friends With Money" that costs $137,580, the average Wall Street bonus this winter, according to the state Comptroller.

The Ritz-Carlton, Battery Park, will provide overnight accomodations for 32 guests in the presidential suite and 15 executive suites, a 10-minute fireworks display, helicopter tours, and limousine transportation for every guest, the Wall Street Journal reports.

- Tom Acitelli