Michael Shvo

Even during these dreary times, the ambition that carries on in Manhattan real estate is practically Shakespearean. People who spend many millions of dollars on a chunk of luxury property one day seem to believe that chunk will be sellable the next for many millions more.

On Aug. 11, a limited liability corporation controlled by Charles Yassky, a developer and real estate investor, paid $13.2 million for a 36-foot-wide red-brick mansion at 122 East 78th Street.

The building, split into two floors of offices and three floors of small apartment units, went on the market two weeks ago for $18.  read more »

The news last week that John McCain couldn't quite remember how many homes he owned jarred our memory a bit. In a 2005 New York magazine profile of master residential marketer Michael Shvo, the wunderkind said that he had no idea how many apartments he owned at the time.

From the profile by Jancee Dunn:

Shvo owns apartments in many buildings—three in the Oxford on the Upper East Side, four in the Downtown by Philippe Starck on Broad Street, and his main residence in the Grand Millennium, on the Upper West Side, for instance—but he claims he has no idea how many apartments he owns altogether.

One has to imagine, however, that such forget-tery only enhances someone's reputation in Mr. Shvo's field.

The Daily News reports that master marketer Michael Shvo will, for his new Shvo Academy, have eight interns compete this summer to design the first residential property for the moon.

The interns, who come from top schools around the world, will take the project through pre-development research, strategic planning, design, marketing, communication and sales. Then, they will present their project to a panel of real estate experts including Shvo and a scientist from the American Museum of Natural History's Hayden Planetarium.

Yes, but can he get Philippe Starck this time around? (Hat tip: Curbed).

When sales for the Financial District condo 20 Pine The Collection started in the fall of 2006, it was An Event. Part of that had to do with the housing market at the time, all bullish and booming, the condo towers sprouting throughout Manhattan tumescent monuments to money and a city back from the September 11 brink.

But it also had to do with Michael Shvo. The wunderkind marketer was in charge of selling developers Lev Leviev and Shaya Boymelgreen's 20 Pine, no small feat given its location. The Financial District, despite being literally the area around Wall Street, had never really appealed to Wall Street types. They tended to flee the area at dusk.

But some might be sticking around.  read more »

“You’re catching me at a crazy time,” Michael Shvo said over the phone from his limo last month.

The audacious marketing genius behind such hugely hyped high-end condo projects as Bryant Park Tower and 20 Pine The Collection had just returned to Manhattan after several weeks overseas. While family business took top priority—his father recently passed away in Israel—Mr. Shvo, 35, lately has been rather preoccupied with expanding his presence internationally.  read more »

The only thing more exciting than today’s news about the upcoming sale of Bob Guccione’s townhouse (or about Sharon Baum's Vespa), is Prudential Douglas Elliman’s annual awards ceremony, taking place right this moment, until noon, at Cipriani 42nd Street.

It’s the stuff real estate dreams are made of! Annual broker awards, especially at a monolith like Elliman, are about money, status, competitiveness, salesmanship, hierarchy, and of course, self-celebration.

Yet Elliman, it turns out, does not appreciate it when real estate reporters try to attend. After a series of e-mails and phone calls last night with Elliman’s public relations team, I was turned away at the softly red-lit entrance to the 65-foot-high, 87-year-old ballroom today at 9:12 a.m.—first by one well-dressed woman, then a second nice woman and suited man came over too.  read more »

Michael Shvo's eponymous firm dominates the job board recently launched by The Real Deal magazine. Of the 16 help-wanted ads on the board, 11 are from Shvo. (Only seven are actually labeled as coming from Shvo; the other four come from an unnamed "top international luxury real estate branding, marketing and sales firm" that has a partner list conspicuously similar to Shvo's.)  read more »

Besides being Manhattan realty mavens, what do Michael Shvo, Louise Sunshine, and Dennis Mangone have in common? They've all fled New York this week for the well-tanned haven of Miami Beach, where Art Basel ("the most important art show in the United States, a cultural and social highlight for the Americas") began yesterday.

"My clients are collectors... They collect art, they collect Yachts, they collect condominiums, they collect lifestyle," said Mr. Mangone, a senior vice president at the Cororan Group. On the art fair's first day, Mr. Mangone met a European gallerist who's now interested in an apartment at 40 Bond, the hip new condo building developed by Ian Schrager.  read more »

One of Robert K. Futterman’s favorite photographs shows his kids standing in front of what is now the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue.

Hanging in the empty window behind them is, of course, a sign sporting Papa Futterman’s own blue “RKF” logo, inspired by his “real-estate hero,” Edward S. Gordon, and his longtime client, the GAP.  read more »

The subprime mortgage crisis has created a real estate economy that affects superstar brokers like Michael Shvo one way, and major bank chiefs another.  read more »

Arriving at the opening day of the W New York-Downtown Hotel and Condominium sales office was a little disorienting. A polite doorman greeted you at the entrance--but, beyond the threshold, complete darkness. Then, as soon as the next automated door opened, you were in a different world. It was no longer a Wednesday morning in the financial district.

It was a Michael Shvo reality. And in Shvo's reality it was time for a cocktail.  read more »

We just got an email from Shvo, the marketing firm run by the redoubtable Michael Shvo, to say that the condos inside the future W New York Downtown will go on sale Nov. 7.

The Observer broke the news in March of Mr. Shvo's work on the tower at 123 Washington Street, which is being developed by Joseph Moinian. The tower will include 222 condos and 217 hotel rooms.

Shvo is also marketing the condos at 20 Pine The Collection, another financial district creation that's helping change the neighborhood, for better or for worse.

Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens had the exterminator come over to his lower Manhattan apartment one recent morning; as he left the exterminator to do his dirty work killing bed bugs, Mr. Stephens passed a sign put up by his landlord touting the "luxury rentals" in the building.

That got him thinking:

...[T]hanks partly to Manhattan's circumscribed geography, partly to the stock market's record highs and partly to the verbal effusions of billionaire mayor Mike Bloomberg, who in 2003 described his city as a "high-end product" -- Gucci on a metropolitan scale -- there's very little in New York today that isn't a "luxury," in name if not in fact. In turn, this has created linguistic challenges (or opportunities) for real- estate developers trying to distinguish their offerings from the rest of the pack. Call it subprime language in an era of subprime mortgages.

Mr. Stephens goes on to cite examples of this verbal Olympics, particularly the marketing behind the new East 23rd Street condo designed Philippe Starck ("whoever that is"). The marketer behind that condo? Michael Shvo, whom Mr. Stephens should really have to lunch some day if he wants to understand how apartments went from apartments to luxury apartments.

Arthur Gallego, Michael Shvo's vice president of communications and public relations for the last year, is leaving Shvo to start his own boutique agency, Gallego & Co. Mr. Gallego sent out a mass email this afternoon.

Noon today is the deadline to try your hand at giving Michael Shvo's firm its new tagline. Curbed will accept ideas all morning, and then Mr. Shvo will give $10,000 to that lucky soul who conjours up the winning tag.

(Interesting aside: Mr. Shvo does not have an entry on Wikipedia. We checked.)

 

 

You may want to sit down for this one: Michael Shvo, titan of Manhattan luxury marketing, wants you to pick his firm's new tagline.

Curbed reports that Mr. Shvo will give $10,000 to the lucky Svengali who picks the successor for Shvo's current "Exclusive Sales & Marketing" tagline. The Observer confirmed with Curbed on Friday that this was, indeed, a real competition and not a joke. Mr. Shvo, as The Observer noted earlier this month, is renowned for over-the-top marketing and for a reputation that inspires both awe and loathing in his competitors and compatriots.  read more »

The deadline for submissions is June 1. So, Shvo Off and Do It! Or something to that effect...

Having worked Manhattan with the likes of Philippe Starck, Jade Jagger and Giorgio Armani, New York real estate’s original bad boy (almost 35!) sets his ‘magic’ sights beyond the U.S.—and on Williamsburg.  read more »

“This is not a building opening—it’s just a party,” said luxury-property propagandist Michael Shvo.

He was standing along a black carpet runway with black velvet ropes and a big white backdrop bearing logos for the new Gramercy, a 21-story high-end apartment tower on East 23rd Street outfitted by eccentric French designer Philippe Starck.  read more »

That’s true if you’re Curbed—at nearly three years old, the granddaddy of New York real-estate blogs. Its senior editor Joey Arak talks about Dumbo, The Times and what makes ‘the Real Lower East Side.’  read more »

Oh, so that downtown W Hotel: well now it's officially official. A news release comes in declaring that the 123 Washington Street, Moinian-developed condo-hotel will be 57 stories and include 217 guest rooms and 222 residential units.

And those 222 residential units will be marketed by Michael Shvo, as The Observer reported last week. The entire release, including quotes from Mr. Moinian, Mr. Shvo and a W official, after the jump.  read more »

- John Koblin

Ryan Gentles, the manager of the Strokes, has bought a penthouse at the American Felt building&mdash  read more »

Last year an American won for the first time in nearly fifteen years, but this year's Pritzker Architecture Prize was awarded to a Brazilian, Paulo Mendes da Rocha. All the excessive details here, and some images of his work.

How long before he ends up in a meeting with Ian Schrager or Richard Born or Michael Shvo?  read more »

- Riva Froymovich

Honestly, we haven't been reading much of The Press lately, ever since the cartoon debacle. But "The 50 Most Loathsome New Yorkers" issue remains a classic.

However, this year's list is quite different, with an influx of real estate big wigs. Bruce Ratner, Larry Silverstein, David Walentas, Shaya Boymelgreen, and Michael Shvo all make the list. Barbara Corcoran and Steven Roth--who were on last year's-- are spared.

Considering that none of these guy made the list in 2005, why are they now so loathesome in 2006? Perhaps, the ever-changing editorial team at The Press is now filled with more avid Curbed readers, rather than critics of downtown hipster DJs.

- Michael Calderone

OnOct. 18, Michael Shvo, the top-grossing broker for Prudential Douglas Elliman  read more »

On Sept.  read more »