Results tagged “realestate”

For a moment there, it seemed like the economic downturn was going to bring a much-needed reality check to the world of real estate. But no. The Daily News reports today on the efforts of real estate brokers to re-brand supposedly undesirable neighborhoods by giving them more marketable monikers — like "GoCaGa" for the area between Gowanus and Carroll Gardens, "BoHo" for the Bowery south of Houston, "SunSlope" for the streets between Sunset Park and Park Slope, and "iTri" for the Iron Triangle in Willets Point. "These names are great selling points for agents trying to bring clients into a neighborhood that wasn't so hip before but sounds a lot hipper now," said Jean Charles, a senior agent at Bond New York, a major sales and rental firm.

Remember that free building in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens? Unsurprisingly, the whole thing was a prank. Reportedly a local resident was fed up with the rundown building (located at 205 Parkside Avenue) and decided to put up a sign and a Craigslist ad advertising it for free. The prankster told the Daily News: "We want to see something positive happening with the building [not just a] festering rathole on what could be a lively thriving commercial strip."

Though the real estate boom is over in Williamsburg, it's apparently still roaring in Greenpoint. A first time developer and former attorney to Donald Trump revealed his plan this week to construct a 47-story high rise on the waterfront that would tower over nearby North Brooklyn skyscrapers like the Edge and Northside Piers by 17 floors.

If you've been looking for the silver lining in the recession, here it is: Thanks to plummeting industrial real estate values, the Brooklyn Brewery will be able to stay in Brooklyn. Just last summer, the Williamsburg-based lager-makers feared they couldn't afford to stay in their increasingly costly neighborhood when their lease expired, but dwindling property values and receding interest from non-manufacturing interests allowed the Brewery to sign a 15-year lease.

So let’s get this right. If you're a Moscow mogul looking to buy the New Jersey Nets and move them to Brooklyn, you don’t have to do any of the legwork that comes with finding an apartment in the bustling borough?

What do you do after being dropped by Fox 5? Well, close more than $15 million worth of real estate deals with Prudential Douglas Elliman, of course. That's right, former reporter Penny Crone, is cleaning up on the Manhattan real estate front. Douglas Elliman president Steven L. James told the NY Times, "She takes no hostages. That was one of my worries, but I watched her on a complicated deal where her personality just couldn't be at the forefront, and she did it. She actually pulled it off. She took the back seat, the quiet role, which I'm sure was very unfamiliar terrain for her."

Do you want 14 residential units and 3 commercial units in beautiful Brooklyn for the low low price of: Free? The blogger at Hawthorne Street points to Prospect Lefferts' 205 Parkside Avenue, "an abandoned rathole" that has been vacant since 1979 and is now being advertised as free (though they doubt it's really free). There's even a Craigslist ad backing up the sign on the building. Any takers? UPDATE: The new rumor is that this is a prank. We still bet squatters could get in a few months of free rent, however. [via Curbed]

   

Click through to read about Kidrockers, Cruel Black Dove, Bridges & Powerlines, this year's Gothamist House, and a CMJ Fail at Brooklyn Bowl.

Oh you Bushwickians and your tent cities. The latest in neighborhood tent news comes by way of a Craigslist posting, written by some younger folk who possibly have Where the Wild Things Are fort envy:

While Bernie is busy making new friends in federal prison, the U.S. Marshals have announced that the deal on Madoff's Montauk home is officially closed. And the final selling price is $650,000 over the asking price! The $9.4 million deal was made back in September, but the Government was not allowed to reveal the final selling price until after the deal closed. Pamela Liebman, Corcoran CEO, told ABC News "Buyers were extremely enthusiastic about the location of the house and its potential and not at all put off by the fact that it was Bernie Madoff's house." Because really, look at that view!

Mayor Bloomberg's $7.5 billion plan to build or preserve city-financed residences for low-, moderate-, and middle-income families has constructed and protected 94,000 units over the past seven years — but over the same period the city's richest man has been unable to prevent rents from skyrocketing on some 200,000 other "affordable" units.

The Pepto pink palatial palace on Garfield Place is now off the market! That's not because it sold, either — the Brooklyn Paper reports that 92-year-old owner Bernie Henry's grandson is now "under investigation for forging key documents that have put a cloud over who has legal ownership of the building." Yikes! Some neighbors may be pleased to see the house stay pink for longer — one told the paper, “At first, you hate it because it’s new. But then you come to love it. And then you don’t want it to ever change.”

Step right up, this beauty could be yours. Owner Bernie Henry coated his four-story brownstone on Garfield Place with this Pepto-pink color just three years ago (about 47 years after he moved in). The retired tailor told the Daily News, "I'm 92. It's time to get rid of it. It's a lot of money to keep it up ... I'm going to buy a smaller house around the corner." He says his new home will not get the same color treatment; in fact, he tells the paper he never meant to paint this one in such a garish hue, saying: "They sent me the wrong paint. It was painted this color accidentally."

Former governor Eliot Spitzer is really working on the next chapter of his life. When not pundit-ing on talk shows, being discussed as a 2010 candidate, or teaching at City College, he's working at the family biz, his dad's multi-million dollar real estate empire. Now it's been confirmed that Steamroller himself oversaw a pricey Manhattan real estate transaction.

It's not all Brownstones and haunted mansions in Brooklyn; a luxury condo called the Venetian has just been unveiled in all its hideousness! Brownstoner reports that the attempt at classical opulence, located in Gravesend, "looks a lot better in reality than we had expected." Be that is it may (is it?), this doesn't look at all like Brooklyn. But is it better than the "Williamsburg Grey" Karl Fischer creations?

Third quarter real estate data for Manhattan showed that sales for condos and co-ops improved from the second quarter... but sales still trail 2008 third quarter numbers. So, is the glass half full or empty?

You don't have to browse the Craigslist "Rooms for Rent" section very long before realizing that there are many tenants out there looking for "not just a roommate, but a FRIEND." This weekend's Times Real Estate section follows the journey of one 3BR LES apartment trying to figure out the right balance between being friendly roommies, but not BFFs. One tells them of a horrific summer she had where a roommate was seldom home, “and I got really lonely,”

Of course: Some real estate marketers are bandying about a new neighborhood name for a sliver of already pretty tiny TriBeCa—it's "North TriBeCa"—and they tell the NY Times that North TriBeCa has turn-of-the-last-century buildings (or facsimiles of them); eastern TriBeCa has the high risey buildings which a broker says "feels more like the financial district." But another broker says, "As a marketing ploy, I’d say buyers who come to TriBeCa are among the more sophisticated, and they’re not going to fall for it."

Brownstone Brooklyn, you never cease to amaze us. Long story short: Man buys brownstone in recently landmarked district of Prospect Heights from old woman. Old woman continues to live in the garden apartment. Man decides he wants to put a garage in there. LPC says they have no applications for Landmark approval for the address.

The city’s commissioner of small business services says that he has not seen as high a concentration of local chains anywhere in the city outside of Smith Street in Brooklyn. The Times checks in on the Carroll/Cobble hub that includes the Franks, the "Stinky people," and the cluster of lifestyle businesses that have created an Area area. One owner says the street allows him to “tap into these customers in a variety of different ways.”

A Greenpoint couple living on Driggs Avenue near McCarren Park is attempting a novel approach at fighting off what they describe as "hipster creep." They're proudly publicizing their building's long history as the Dekarski Funeral Home from around 1900 until the mid-’70s.

Back in 2005, it was the biggest residential land deal in the history of the city—Hudson Waterfront Associates, the Hong Kong-based consortium that worked with Donald Trump to develop and market the massive Trump Place development on the West Side, sold a 77 acre parcel of land to Extell for $1.76 billion. Now the Manhattan DA's office revealed it just arrested the project director for tax evasion and are looking into whether Hudson Waterfront evaded taxes on a $17 million portion of deal.

We guess there is a sucker born every minute. The brokers handling the sale of Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff's Montauk beach house say they've sold the property for over its $8.75 million asking price. The house is right on the beach (on 1.2 acres) with 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms, but it's not an over-the-top marble palace either. One commercial broker had told the Times a few weeks ago, "They're not going to get 7, not in this environment. If they get 5.5, they should take the money and run."

Philip Barry, accused of running a $40 million Ponzi scheme out of a Bay Ridge storefront, was charged with securities fraud by the feds yesterday. Barry allegedly promised his investors—many from his neighborhood—12-21% returns based on investments with stock options but he actually used the money to pay his own bills, speculate on real estate in Sullivan County... and start a mail-order porn business. The Daily News reports, "Duped investors [said] they knew he had a side business selling DVDs and CDs on eBay - and some said they always suspected something fishy. 'He said that prisons were his best customers,' said a shopkeeper near Barry's office who lost about $30,000 in the scheme and saw Barry walk by daily with a hand truck loaded with boxes on his way to the post office. 'He said they were videos, but he never said what kind.'" Barry's scheme fell apart in 2007 when clients wanted to cash out and the investigation began last year, when Barry himself told the feds he was running a Ponzi scheme.

                  

Last week, the U.S. Marshals Service put Ponzi king Bernard Madoff's Montauk beach house on the market for $8.75 million—and now his Upper East Side penthouse duplex is officially for sale too. The apartment was seized in July and the Post reports it's on sale "for $7.5 million or more" with "its contents — expensive and otherwise — [to] be separately auctioned off."

Money may not be able to buy you love, but the promise of love may lure you into shelling out some of that cash on a luxury condo? Realtors! They're so crazy. According to the Real Deal, the folks behind 184 Kent in Williamsburg will soon be "hitting the streets of the Lower East Side in a van, looking to take well-to-do hipsters to the Brooklyn waterfront. They won't actually be driving them there. But the idea is to troll for arty, young Lower East Side-type professionals where they live and hang out." Strange vans are the perfect way to approach people whose money you want, we agree. This one will be adorned with fake advertisements for "WilliamsburgLove" (a mock dating site which even has video), and position itself outside of clubs; with this tactic they said they think they'll have the building fully leased in 8 to 10 months (that's 350 units). [via Curbed]

Aha! The mystery of why actors Jennifer Connelly and Paul Bettany fled from Brooklyn, leaving a beautiful Prospect Park West mansion to take up residence in a Manhattan penthouse was revealed last Friday night. Connelly was on the Tonight Show and told Conan O'Brien that frankly, the house, as much as she loved it, was spooky, "It was a little big...frankly, it was a little like Scooby-Doo, creepy, you know, like the haunted mountain mansion." Zoinks!

Last week, the U.S. Marshals Service put Ponzi king Bernard Madoff's beachfront Montauk property up for sale at a cool $8.75 million. And apparently, seeing the four-bedroom, three bath home has been the thing to do this weekend—at least that's what the NY Times Styles section says. There was a Russian-accented man overheard saying, "Put us in for $7 million," only for his wife to say, "I don’t know what he’s doing. We live in a house twice this size with a nice view. We’re going to come here with kids, two dogs, everything else?" (The broker told the Times the man, an old client, was just joking.) Among the onlookers were Beastie Boy Ad Rock's sister who mentioned that Ruth Madoff's shoes were for sale and soap opera actor Vincent Irrizary who thought, "I’d like to buy [Madoff's] shoes, glue them to a canvas, say something artistically about the man who walked in those shoes." A commercial real estate broker opined, "They're not going to get 7, not in this environment. If they get 5.5, they should take the money and run." The broker's commission is being donated back to the fund for Madoff's victims.

Earlier this year the Harlem home once owned by the late James Bailey (of Barnum & Bailey fame) dropped in price from $10M to $6.5M (soon after it was brought down to $3.5M). Now Curbed reports that the limestone castle on St. Nicholas Place and 150th Street has just sold for a $1.4M! Surely the gigantic price drop had more to do with economic climate than all the bad press for the circus he helped found. Regardless, the site points out that this could be the real estate steal of the year, going for around $170 per square foot; a "cold calculation [that] doesn't even include the Belcher mosaic glass, 12' high mercury mirror, French polished oak floors and all the other dramatic original details in need of a thorough dusting." Surely this selling price has Bailey rolling over in his grave like a well-tamed circus lion. Wonder how much he paid to have the home built back in 1888...

Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries says that there are 65 condominium developments in Brooklyn which are "either financially troubled or on the verge of distress". He said, "There was an irrational exuberance of construction in the area these past few years," and Crain's reports that he's "in the early stages of approaching developers and banks behind some of these properties with a proposal to convert the unsold units into affordable housing." (Apparently it's unrelated to the city's own from-foreclosed- to-affordable-housing push.) The Local has a list of the developments; Curbed notices, "There's some shockers on there, including the blockbuster One Hanson Place conversion." Possibly related: Prices were cut on the remaining units at One Hanson Place ("One of the biggest was a 23 percent price reduction on a 1,500-sf, 2-bed, which went from $1,222,431 to $945,000").