The New York Observer » Investment Sales http://www.observer.com Just another WordPress site Tue, 14 Feb 2012 22:10:56 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Investment Sales in New York City on Top Again New York City attracts more commercial property investment than anywhere else in the world, a report from Cushman & Wakefield released last week revealed. Gotham beat out London as the hottest investment hub, an honor it has not held since 2007. Read More

]]> http://www.observer.com/2011/10/investment-sales-in-new-york-city-on-top-again/ Notes From the A Train Since departing Massey Knakal as one of its principals earlier this year, Shimon Shkury has been president of Ariel Property Advisors, where he has aggressively focused on Upper Manhattan properties. Mr. Shkury, 40, spoke to The Observer about the neighborhood’s umpteenth renaissance, an uptick in development sales and multifamily financing.

The Observer: You’re doing an enormous number of residential and mixed-use deals in Harlem. What’s drawing you to that particular neighborhood?

Mr. Shkury: In general, we’ve been doing a lot of work in our backyard, which is Upper Manhattan and the Bronx, in the multifamily arena mostly, but development as well. We’ve seen some uptick in activity in the past year, clearly in 2010 and the first half of this year. Read More

]]> http://www.observer.com/2011/08/notes-from-the-a-train/ Breaking It Down by Borough In last week’s column, we took a look at the overall New York City building sales market and compared its recent performance with past periods. This week, we will take a similar look at the first half of 2011 (1H11) but will analyze the performance of each individual geographic submarket.

As I have written for some time, we fully expected the Manhattan market to lead the entire marketplace out of the downturn and are indeed seeing this happen. Sales volume picked up in Manhattan before it did in other submarkets, and we are starting to see value appreciation in Manhattan.

In the outer boroughs (including northern Manhattan), sales volume has been lagging and, in some cases, has only recently started to recover. Read More

]]> http://www.observer.com/2011/07/breaking-it-down-by-borough/ Verizon’s Real Estate Spree, 2005-2011: $871 M. Regular columnist Michael Stoler on Verizon's major sales the last few years.

While companies like Google are hungry to own commercial real estate in New York City, its competitor Verizon continues to sell off corporate real estate here. Read More

]]> http://www.observer.com/2011/07/verizons-real-estate-spree-2005-2011-871-m/ $1,059 a Foot in the Village A five-story federal style townhouse in the West Village—which, incidentally, houses some of the luckiest rent-controlled tenants in the entire city—has sold for $6.5 million, brokers said. Read More

]]> http://www.observer.com/2011/07/1059-a-foot-in-the-village/ What’s Driving Investment Sales Right Now During the first half of 2011 (1H11), the dollar volume of investment sales transactions in the New York City market was $12.6 billion. On an annualized basis, activity is on pace to increase by 73 percent over the 2010 total of $14.6 billion.

At face value, this number leads to an extremely optimistic perspective regarding the market’s performance. However, Read More

]]> http://www.observer.com/2011/07/what%e2%80%99s-driving-investment-sales-right-now/ $595 a Foot On Park Avenue South The mixed-use residential and retail property, 220 Park Avenue South, near Gramercy Park and Union Square has sold for $20 million, brokers said. With a taking price of $595 per square foot, the turn-of-the-century, 33,638-square-foot building and its 37 rental units could be ripe for a condo conversion, said Peter Von Der Ahe of Marcus & Millichap Real Estate Investment Services, which negotiated the sale. Read More

]]> http://www.observer.com/2011/07/595-a-foot-on-park-avenue-south/ Never Mind the Trophies—What About the Other Office Sales? Eastern Consolidated recently released a report noting that New York office property trades have more than doubled during the second quarter to $4.3 billion, leading us to wonder if the investment-sales market, at least for office properties, really has come back.

But then we noticed something: Major firms with major deals on massive office towers dominate the list, with individual buys valued at hundreds of millions of dollars (which would contribute heftily to that $4.3 billion total). Not surprising, but it makes us wonder how the rest of the market is doing.

Read More

]]> http://www.observer.com/2011/06/never-mind-the-trophies%e2%80%94what-about-the-other-office-sales/ Lehman Brothers Unloads 200 Fifth to JPMorgan in $700 M. Deal As expected (we noted last week this would likely happen and soon), Lehman Brothers has agreed to unload its majority stake in the old Toy Building at 200 Fifth Avenue in a deal that values it at about $700 million. It is one of the biggest building sales of 2011 so far, and one of the most significant moves by the croaked investment bank's holding company in its campaign to liquidate its real estate. The buyer is a wing of JPMorgan.

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]]> http://www.observer.com/2011/06/lehman-brothers-unloads-200-fifth-to-jpmorgan-in-700-m-deal/ Lehman Lives: Zombie I-Bank Takes Manhattan When real estate executive David Sigman first walked into 25 Broad Street, about a year after Lehman collapsed, it was a funhouse of pre-2008 distractions: the lobby unfolded with yards of purple carpeting ringed by red circles into a would-be night club with dozens of crystal chandeliers and a mauve-color spa/yoga room. Most striking of all were the matching royal portraits of developer Kent Swig and his soon-to-be ex-wife, Liz Macklowe.

The Observer recently reported that the first 10 apartment tenants had signed at 25 Broad, bringing the failed condo conversion back to life as a rental—and Lehman Brothers, twitching, back with it.

Not even three years after the bank’s collapse took the economy with it, Lehman, through its holding company, lives on, a rosy zombie quietly looking to make a small fortune off prime New York properties, and maybe—just maybe—pay off some creditors.

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]]> http://www.observer.com/2011/06/zombie-lehman-eats-real-estate/ Why Corigin Holdings’ Ryan Freedman Prefers Apartments Late last year, Ryan Freedman, the chairman and CEO of Corigin Holdings, played a big role in expanding the real estate and private equity firm’s New York metro platform—both launching a lending division and heavily investing in new assets. The young exec—“I’m younger than the average real estate CEO,” he said in declining to reveal Read More

]]> http://www.observer.com/2011/06/why-corigin-holdings-ryan-freedman-prefers-apartments/ Bed Bath & Beyond Building on the Block; Could Fetch $500 M., Sources Say Hot on the heels of RXR Realty’s purchase of the Starrett-Lehigh Building for $900 million and the sale of 111 Eighth Avenue to Google for $1.8 billion, Bed Bath & Beyond’s building is on the block.

A partnership of Joseph Chetrit and Yair Levy, spearheaded by Charles Dayan from Bonjour Capital, bought the building for $289.8 million in 2005, according to city records. But with the trendy Chelsea office market enjoying a boom, driven in no small part by the tech bubble, the building could sell for around $500 million, according to some sources.

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]]> http://www.observer.com/2011/06/bed-bath-and-beyond-building-on-the-block-could-fetch-500-m-sources-say/ A Thousand Looks Later, UWS Apartment Building Feud Ends $20.1 million to a private investor from New York City, The Observer has learned.

The 49-unit building at 114 West 86th Street went on the block Read More

]]> http://www.observer.com/2011/real-estate/thousand-looks-later-uws-apartment-building-feud-ends Summertime, and the Hotel Trading’s Brisk Our guest analyst Michael Stoler on the New York hotel market going forward.

As summer gets underway, New York City hotels continue to be busy. A survey by Priceline.com reports that hotels located in midtown west ranked in fourth position for the top 50 destinations nationwide for the Memorial Day holiday. Times Square and the Read More

]]> http://www.observer.com/2011/real-estate/summertime-and-hotel-tradings-brisk 10th Avenue Buyout: $42 M. Sherwood Equities and Fidelity Real Estate Group have entered into a joint venture to purchase 356-366 10th Avenue, a stalled development site in the rapidly growing Hudson Yards district, for $42 million, according to a source familiar with the transaction. Located adjacent to the northern end of the High Line, the site will allow for Read More

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