Tom Acitelli

"Brokers are bottom feeders. Best way to find an apt. is to go to the building where you want to live and ask the super or find who the management agent is and deal with them directly."

"You pay for professional services; that's how the world runs. If you walk into a real estate office asking for someone's time and knowledge, don't complain when you get charged. No management offices charge a broker's fee, that's why it's a broker fee because the broker charges you it for their time and knowledge of the market!!" ["My Rental Broker: 'I'm Just Concerned With Getting You a Place You Love'"]

We learned that:

• Atlantic Yards opponents filed a case in state court.
• Tribeca contains the nation's most overpriced zip code.
• The Nets arena at Atlantic Yards might not be done until 2011.
• An accountant pled guilty to stealing $2.8 million from Tishman.
• Brooklyn girls love skintight pants.
• Tompkins Square's new dog run is a metaphor for the East Village.
• Brooklyn's office vacancy rate is rising.
• Fifth Avenue's the world's third priciest residential street.
• Whole Foods plans to open a store on Second Avenue.
• Governor Paterson wants a new Moynihan Station plan.
• Cipriani will keep its liquor licenses and stay in business.
• Prospective Manhattan office tenants should be optimistic.

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"$244.5m + $56m = $300.5 million to design a PATH station - are you kidding me? This is just to design the damn thing, let alone build it. Its no wonder the Port Authority is falling all over itself to cover up the fiasco that is the World Trade Center." ["At WTC, Conflict of Interest Concerns"]

Editor's note: The $56 million is included within the $244.5 million figure.

The Village Voice's cover story this week slams Andrew Cuomo as a sort of bumbling godfather of the current subprime mortgage crisis that has done so much to damage the American economy and to ruin lives.

A summarizing paragraph from the long story by legendary investigative reporter Wayne Barrett:

Andrew Cuomo, the youngest Housing and Urban Development secretary in history, made a series of decisions between 1997 and 2001 that gave birth to the country's current crisis. He took actions that—in combination with many other factors—helped plunge Fannie and Freddie into the subprime markets without putting in place the means to monitor their increasingly risky investments.

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Amtrak's Northeast ridership was up nearly 8 percent annually in July, following a national trend of increasing ridership on the passenger rail carrier. Amtrak is on pace to carry a record 28 million passengers nationwide in 2008, a jump from the previous record of 25.8 million set last year, according to this morning's Wall Street Journal.

But the ridership jumps are straining a decidedly creaky infrastructure. From the Journal:

On a recent Wednesday afternoon train, travelers boarding at Philadelphia's 30th Street Station toward Washington discovered passengers were already crammed together between cars. Crowding is also a problem on the higher-priced Acela Express service in the Northeast Corridor, which Amtrak launched in 2000.

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"WOW - I love this idea - I would LOVE LOVE LOVE a Costco in my neighborhood (actually I would prefer SuperTaget but Costco is great too) - I love cheap stuff and I'm tired of paying $5 for Corn Flakes - build it, build it, build it." ["Remember Trump City?"]

New York City foreclosures increased 67 percent annually and 6 percent monthly in July, according to a new report from research firm PropertyShark, which defines foreclosure as a property scheduled to have a foreclosure auction take place for the first time during the month. The city had 338 such first-time foreclosures in July.

Staten Island had the highest monthly and annual foreclosure increases in July. Staten Island foreclosures were up 86 percent monthly and 218 percent annually. Queens had the most foreclosures by volume with 178, a slight decline from June but 80 above the number in July 2007. Manhattan had the least foreclosures in July at 14.  read more »

The Bronx was one of only two U.S. counties in 2007 outside of the West and the South with a majority Hispanic population, according to new census estimates culled from counties with at least 10,000 residents each.

Of the 46 majority Hispanic counties nationwide, only the Bronx and Sweard, Kan., were outside of Florida, California, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and Washington State.

Also, Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx were three of the 13 counties of populations of at least one million with majority-minority populations generally, according to the census estimates.

More on the census stats here.

From The Times on Barack Obama's most robust fund-raisers:

At least 100 Obama bundlers are top executives or brokers from investment businesses: nearly two dozen work for financial titans like Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs or Citigroup. About 40 others come from the real estate industry.

Apparently, none of the top real estate bundlers are based in New York.

My colleague Dana Rubinstein wrote last month about how most New York real estate moguls were so far sitting out the '08 race for donations.

Natural gas and heating oil costs are expected to rise considerably as the nation slides into winter, according to a Wednesday New York Times story. (Rising heating oil prices “could be New England’s own Katrina,” wrote one Vermont newspaper recently.) In New York City, these increases could affect building sales as traders must deduce future heating costs not based on today's numbers--or last year's--but on the anticipation that such costs are going to keep going way up. These deductions affect the pricing of buildings on the sales block.

Here was Robert Knakal, chairman of investment-sales firm Massey Knakal, last month in a company release:

Right now we are seeing, for the first time since drilling began in the 1850’s, prices climbing for 7 consecutive years.

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Private schools in New York City are expanding to meet the continued demand of the ever-burgeoning tot set, according to today's New York Times. One example cited was the Mandell preschool on the Upper West Side:

This spring, for the first time, several of the 43 Mandell preschool graduates found themselves without anywhere to go. So Mandell, which has been around for generations, decided to do its part to ease the kindergarten crunch by opening its own $2 million elementary school, in a 17,000-square-foot storefront on Columbus Avenue at 96th Street.

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"Oh great, just what the neighborhood needs -- ANOTHER luxury high rise for foreigners with euros who do not even live here or for the 1/10 of 1% of any NYers with any money left -- hear about recession? And yet ANOTHER Whole Foods and other retailers to further congest an already congested area -- did we mention the AM & PM gridlock from 63nd Street & 2nd Avenue to 55th Street daily and the ever increasing volume in and out on the 59th Street Bridge? Has the Mayor and everyone else 'in charge' completely lost their minds about this particular intersection ?" ["Whole Foods to Open on Second Avenue"]

A Russian billionaire bucks the buying trend and sells a Trump condo.

Tech biggie Peter Norton buys Village penthouse for $6.8 million.

A Port Authority commissioner may have a conflict of interest at Ground Zero.

The looming battle for the last bit of Trump's old Riverside South.

The number of $1 million-and-up Manhattan apartments drops in '08.

Why aren't more women in commercial real estate's top positions?

The Obama effect on New York property sellers.

Real estate law superstar Jonathan Mechanic on big deals, big egos.

Sales contracts don't mean what they used to in building trades.

Meet the star exterminators! They zap around your favorite restaurants.

Ex-TV newswoman Penny Crone grabs her son and gets into real estate.

Environmentally friendly performance club Galapagos Art Space opens officially tonight at 7 at 16 Main Steet in Brooklyn.

The Observer's Gillian Reagan wrote recently about the whole green nightlife movement:

...[W]ith gas prices soaring and the words “energy crisis” tumbling off even the most un-Gore-like lips, the whole project of greening up nightlife seems perfectly prescient. The typical club—with its blasting sound systems, sweat-cooling air-conditioners and lights blazing three nights a week—gobbles up 150 times more energy than a four-person family every year, according to Enviu, a Netherlands-based, environmental nonprofit group. In New York City, dance spots tend to be open five to six days a week, making their consumption that much higher.  read more »

The local economic woes are impacting not just Manhattan's faltering office market.

The Brooklyn office market vacancy rate ended the first half of 2008 slightly higher than at the same time last year and it's expected to rise more before the year is out, according to a new report. The report (PDF), from investment-sales firm Marcus & Millichap, forecasts a year-end vacancy rate of 10.5 percent, up from the 10.4 percent at the end of the second quarter on June 30.

As many as 2,000 office-based jobs in Brooklyn are expected to be eliminated this year, according to the report, mirroring the trend in Manhattan.

Meanwhile, the average asking rent for Brooklyn office space has increased in 2008. It was $27.58 a square foot by the end of the second quarter, up 5.1 percent annualy and 4.9 percent since January.

A former project accountant at Tishman Construction Corporation has pleaded guilty to stealing $2.8 million from the company in a phony invoicing scheme, Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau's office announced this afternoon.

John Hoeffner will get seven to 14 years in prison and must pay $1,420,214.66 in restitution for forging vendor invoices and altering vendor checks related to Tishman work at Yeshiva University in Upper Manhattan.

Full release from the DA's office below.  read more »

Ah, pricey condos and hip restaurants! Tribeca's 10013 zip code, according to Forbes magazine, is America's most overpriced.

Basically, it's like this: the return on cost of living in Tribeca is so high that it makes it almost not worth it; it would be better to rent there, according to Forbes criteria, than to buy based on the return on dollars spent. Tribeca finished just ahead of Boston's Chinatown zip code. Who knew?

Hat tip, Curbed.

From the front page of today's New York Times:

The percentage of mortgages in arrears in the category of loans one rung above subprime, so-called alternative-A mortgages, quadrupled to 12 percent in April from a year earlier. Delinquencies among prime loans, which account for most of the $12 trillion market, doubled to 2.7 percent in that time.

"I am Canadian and have lived here the past 8 years, entering with a TN visa, then obtaining an H1B Visa and now have my green card. I came here legally and I did not take a job from anyone, and yes, we do have to prove to Homeland Security that a job cannot be filled by an American. To the gentleman who 'lost his job to a Canadian' -- how was that possible? Was he/she more qualified than you? Folks, don't use such a broad brush in painting your opinion of Canadians. There are smug people all over the world. Do you love every American you encounter?" ["Canadians Among Us!"]

Economic historian Peter L. Bernstein writes in the Sunday New York Times about the need for housing prices to turn around before the rest of the economy can:

Nevertheless, the therapy must focus on the household sector, wrestling with the triple blows of high home prices, oil prices and food prices. Nothing will turn the economy around until we can restore some sense of hope and security among consumers — perhaps even as food and oil remain painfully expensive.

Today, a halt in the decline of home prices seems the necessary condition to transform the system from despair to hope and to turn the financial sector, now embattled and disorganized, back into the functioning organism the economy needs so badly.

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We learned that:

• The Port Authority reached a deal with St. Nicholas at Ground Zero.
• Commercial brokers are quoting Shakespeare to describe the market.
• Myrna Ronson was the $48 million seller at 2 East 67th.
• The average American bridge is 43 years old and crumbling.
• The Los Angeles Times shuttered its Sunday real estate section.
• City Comptroller Thompson wants a rainy day fund for New York.
• The Port Authority's chair wants to meet more about Ground Zero.
• Cautious fatalism reigns on and around Wall Street.
• Manhattan's office market vacancy rate is rising fast.
• The Straphangers Campaign named the L the best subway line.

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We missed this a couple of weeks ago in the Post (a recent Economist story on London divorces jarred our memory), but a shakier Wall Street has apparently started to split up more Manhattan marriages.

When Tom discovered Cindy had begun cheating on him since he was laid off, their marriage was about as stable as a hedge fund.

Three months later, with Tom still out of work, Cindy packed her bags and hired a divorce lawyer.

"I lost my family, lost my kids, lost my income, lost my identity," Tom told his divorce lawyer, Dawn Cardi, the founding partner at her Park Avenue firm.  read more »

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"Okay, so how many billions a week are we spending in Iraq? Last I heard it was about $5 billion per week. And we're having trouble coming up with $7 billion? Really?" ["Billions Down the Tunnel!"]

Since 2000, the number of Canadians living in New York City has more than doubled to over 21,000. In Manhattan alone, they make up the eighth largest population of foreign-born residents. Leigh Kamping-Carder describes why they come--and how--despite stricter immigration laws, a stronger Canadian dollar, and the confounding American health care system. Full story here.

The second-quarter Miller Samuel-Douglas Elliman report on the North Fork and the Hamptons housing markets is now online as a PDF.

Another fun fact! Among the East End's luxury markets, Quogue had the highest average sales price at $15,650,000. Yes, Quogue.

The Hamptons remain much more expensive (of course) than the North Fork of Long Island's East End. Recent second-quarter 2008 numbers from appraisal firm Miller Samuel and brokerage Douglas Elliman showed an average North Fork home sales price of $921,803 based on deals closed in the quarter ending June 30. In the Hamptons, that average was $1,730,414.

The median sales prices were similarly far apart--$605,000 in the North Fork and $970,000 in the Hamptons. Proximity to glam has its price.

But! Whereas the Hamptons' prices tumbled annually in the second quarter, the North Fork's jumped.

That $921,803 North Fork average marked a 32.  read more »

The Observer's Em Whitney peeks in on how spoof blog Lux Living and 51-year-old newspaper Town & Village are covering the controversy at Tishman Speyer's Stuyvesant Town and Cooper Village apartments. Full story here.

John F. Kennedy International Airport was the world's 13th busiest by passenger amount in 2007, according to a new report from the trade group Airports Council International. JFK was the only New York area airport to make the list (PDF) of the world's 30 busiest (see update below).

In 2007, 47,716,941 passengers passed through the airport on the edge of Queens, an 11.9 percent increase over 2006. Of that total number, 21,543,251 were international passengers, making JFK the 15th busiest in the world in terms of international passengers (list here as PDF).

Atlanta's Harstfield-Jackson was the world's busiest airport in 2007 in terms of total passengers. London's Heathrow was the busiest in terms of international passenger.

Update 8:16 p.m.

Newark's Liberty International did make the top 30 list of the world's busiest at No. 21, with 36,367,240 passengers in 2007.

Like in Manhattan (and Brooklyn and Queens), home sales in the Hamptons plunged annually in the second quarter of 2008. At the same time, the average home sales price dropped annually and quarterly as well to $1,730,414, according to a new report from appraisal firm Miller Samuel and brokerage Prudential Douglas Elliman. The report covers closed deals for the quarter ending June 30.

The 26.2 percent sales drop from the second quarter of 2007 mirrors a Manhattan year-over-year drop of 21.8 percent, suggesting the oft-cited symbiosis between the two housing markets. Quarterly Hampton sales, similar to Manhattan's, were up 12.8 percent to 352--that's still well below the 477 recorded in the second quarter last year.  read more »

The Dead's Phil Lesh pays cash for a $1.7 million Soho condo.

A glut of mega-rentals hits Manhattan: $75K a month at The Plaza.

Susan de Franca, Related's luxury saleswoman, talks high-end.

What additional livable streets would mean to New York.

"The most important public transportation project in the country."

CB Richard Ellis bests archrival Cushman & Wakefield in '08 leasing.

See the biggest available Manhattan office spaces!

Manhattan's office vacancy rate creeps toward double-digits.

Jason Pomeranc explains why boutique hotels love the late opening.

"What is so special about Brooklyn?? That's all we ever read about in this rag. Are you telling me the snotty (white) infants in Park Slope will be getting a better slice of life than the (brown/white/asian) kids in Astoria and Jackson Heights??" ["Brooklyn, The Borough: Growing Up New York"]

The Dutch call it a woonerf—a “livable street” resplendent with wide sidewalks, ample retail, greenery and minimal automobile traffic. It’s designed to boost quality of life for citizenry, the till for retailers and property values for landowners. Perhaps you’ve noticed that New York City doesn’t have many woonerfs amid its warren of streets, which make up one-fourth of the city’s land area.

But what if it did?

Retail sales and property values would jump; pollution and noise would drop; and contentment among those lucky enough to live near or on a livable street would abound. That’s the idyllic outcome, according to a preliminary report shared with The Observer by the nonprofit group Transportation Alternatives.  read more »

Commercial brokers call it equilibrium: when the Manhattan office market's vacancy rate ascends to the 7 to 9 percent range, and the negotiation advantage tips toward tenants.

Manhattan may be there now.

A new report on the second quarter from Colliers ABR pegs the Manhattan vacancy rate at 8.7 percent by the end of June, and likely rising fast. That's an increase from 7.8 percent in the first quarter. For top-shelf Class A office space, the quarterly vacancy rate increase was even steeper: 5.7 percent to 7 percent.

The reasons? Rising layoffs among office-based employees amid a generally stagnant economy. From the report:

At long last the official employment numbers are catching up with the anecdotal evidence flying out of New York securities firms.  read more »

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The Los Angeles Times on July 27 published its last Sunday Real Estate section. The reasons, according to The Times' blog L.A. Land, are familiar ones in the punch-drunk newspaper industry:

[B]ecause of reductions in staff and space, the Sunday Real Estate section has printed its final edition. Real estate coverage will continue to appear online throughout the week. Hot Property, Neighborly Advice and the occasional Pardon Our Dust remodeling tale will appear in print as part of the new Saturday Home section.

The section started in 1901.

Key findings from the report released today by the nonprofit American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials on the condition of America's bridges. (This Friday will mark one year since the Minneapolis I-35W Bridge collapse that killed 13 people.)

• Age – Usually built to last 50 years, the average bridge in this country today is 43; almost 20 percent of these bridges are over 50 years old.
• Repair Costs – According to new data from the Federal Highway Administration, the cost to repair or modernize the country's bridges is $140 billion, assuming all the bridges were fixed immediately.
• Traffic Congestion – The top 10 highway interchange bottlenecks cause an average of 1.
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The estimated number of automobile miles logged in the Northeastern United States dropped 4.2 percent annually in May, according to federal stats reported in this morning's Wall Street Journal.

That decline in driving (and similar declines across the nation spurred by higher gas prices) have robbed the government of fuel taxes, which go toward infrastructure improvements for highways and mass transit systems.

In many areas, the ragged edges are already showing. About 25% of bridges in the U.S. are either "functionally obsolete" or "structurally deficient," like the Mississippi River bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis last August, killing 13 people.

Moreover, the pavement is rated "not acceptable" on one of every seven miles of the nation's roads, according to the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission.

We learned that:

• The Zeckendorfs are happy with 15 CPW's new retailers.
• Flash Dancers may be the cleanest strip club in Manhattan.
• Amtrak's latest Northeast fare hike had to do with fuel costs.
• Working in Long Island City can be as frustrating as living there.
• Atlantic City and Williamsburg have a lot in common.
• Fuel costs in city buildings can reach $2,000 per apartment.
• One of 15 CPW's last penthouses sold for $21.5 million.
• Another Willets Point landowner has made a deal with the city.
• Amtrak's Northeast ridership was up 3 percent annually in June.
• Anthony Weiner is a pro-development guy.
• Electeds want Tishman Speyer to set ground rules at Stuy Town.
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The former North Phoenix home of John and Cindy McCain has been listed for $12 million, according to The Wall Street Journal. The seller, Jane Popple, hopes to capitalize on the prospective first family's cachet: She's listing it for nearly four times what she paid Cindy McCain in 2006.

"If Mr. McCain does get elected," said Ms. Popple's broker, "obviously there will be a lot more value in a potential buyer's mind."

The house, on two acres, was Ms. McCain's childhood home and Senator McCain's family residence for 20 years.

Supermodel Gisele Bundchen and her boyfriend, Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, have re-listed their respective Manhattan apartments, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Ms. Bundchen is now asking $5.9 million for her West Village penthouse with Hudson River views--a little bit more than half the original asking price in September 2007. Marie Schmon of Corcoran has the listing.

Mr. Brady wants roughly 10 percent more for his Time Warner Center condo than he asked last year. Raphael De Niro (Robert's son) and Claudine DeMatos of Douglas Elliman are handling the now $18.29 million listing.

"Looks like the Pelli building would be the easiest to climb." ["Rogers, Pelli, KPF: Their Visions of A Port Authority Tower"]

The number of offering plans approved by the state for fresh New York City condos and co-ops declined 4.5 percent from 2006 to 2007, according to The New York Sun this morning. The state attorney general's office, which must approve offering plans before sales can start, accepted 663 plans containing 25,271 units last year.

It's the first annual drop since 1999. But it may not be as momentous as it first seems.

Residential building permits in the city had dropped annually 46 percent in the first quarter of 2008, according to Census data. So a much bigger decline than 4.5 percent in offering plans accepted would have been expected; it didn't happen.  read more »

From The New York Times:

Lawmakers and experts described the legislation as a landmark shift in the government’s role in the housing market, extending a helping hand to both Wall Street and Main Street. They said it would rank in importance with the creation of the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation to prevent foreclosures in the 1930s as part of the New Deal, and legislation in 1989 responding to the savings and loan crisis.

From the Wall Street Journal:

The bill, which began seven months ago as a modest attempt to help struggling homeowners, will now likely touch a vast array of borrowers, lenders, and investors: from owners in Colorado facing foreclosure to community banks in California and investment banks on Wall Street.  read more »

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Explaining the voodoo economics of 15 Central Park West.

Freddie Mac's ex-president buys a West Side condo, sans mortgage.

Why won't Manhattan rents come down this summer?

Anthony Fodera, a business owner at Willets Point, lays into Mayor Bloomberg.

The last big landowner in Columbia's West Harlem way readies for a showdown.

Obama and McCain get little love from New York real estate--so far.

A former Carter adviser plans a new Bryant Park hotel.

The Hotel Pennsylvania inexplicably shoulders on, hackers rejoice!

Manhattan apartment rents will likely exit the summer as high as—if not significantly higher than—they entered it. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, of course: Everything was going to change because of the flaccid local economy, wilting under the strain of Wall Street layoffs and inflated living costs. Deals would abound.

But the layoffs have been gradual: about 2,000 in the city’s financial services sector in the past year, according to the state’s Labor Department; and the number of private sector jobs increased annually just 0.6 percent. The city’s unemployment rate in June was up to a seasonally adjusted 5.  read more »

"Jesus Christ, get over it. Transportation costs have gone up across the board for everyone, and every shipper. If you're bitching about $92, I wonder what you'll be saying two years from now when airfare to go anywhere domestic will start at $400, and the trains won't be far behind." ["Amtrak On Its Latest Fare Hike"]

Robert Knakal, chairman of investment sales brokerage Massey Knakal, spells out in a recent interview how rising oil prices are affecting building sales in New York City:

Right now we are seeing, for the fi rst time since drilling began in the 1850’s, prices climbing for 7 consecutive years. When we are underwriting apartment buildings now, we can no longer rely on last year’s fuel bills to forecast next year fuel expense. We are underwriting using today’s price to account for the significant increases we have seen. Not too long ago fuel was $750 per unit and today it can be as much as $2,000 per unit.

The rest of the interview, done through the brokerage, can be found here (PDF). And my colleague Dana Rubinstein sat down with Mr. Knakal in June.

Last week, I griped about Amtrak's latest fare increase, particularly in the Northeast. Amtrak got back to me today in an email. It turns out it's not just in the Northeast; and it is partly due to higher fuel costs. From the email:

On July 8th, we increased the fares on the following routes by 5%. This was done as a result of our recent labor agreements as well as the rising cost of fuel on those routes that are powered by diesel locomotives. Our fares are set by supply and demand so the continued high demand and constrained capacity we are experiencing were also factors in the increase.  read more »

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The Financial Times' Jeremy Lemer parachutes into Long Island City and relays the massive changes in the neighborhood back to the folks in Europe.

Interestingly, he weaves how government actions, particularly zoning changes, helped spur LIC's rapid development:

In 1981 it was zoned as a mixed use district. Then, as now, Romanesque Revival terraced houses stood cheek-by-jowl with factories - home to builders' yards, elevator repair companies and printing shops. ...

Zoning changes have, belatedly, had rapid and far reaching effects. Inland, a 2004 rezoning has transformed the Hunters Point mixed-use area by allowing industrial sites to be converted to residential uses. "The rezoning made a lot of millionaires," says [property broker Andrew] Fine.

I wrote in last week's Observer about how a large rezoning in Williamsburg and Greenpoint spurred not only rapid residential development, but also recent home-price jumps (see chart above).

Decades of so-called white flight from American cities, including New York, are ending, according to a Wall Street Journal article on Saturday by Conor Dougherty. This end has spawned a fresh set of clashes and challenges:

[I]n Brooklyn, in a majority African-American section of the borough, Councilwoman Letitia James says a handful of predominantly white parents last year asked her if some of their local tax money could be steered to schools in a nearby neighborhood. The parents wanted their ki