REBNY REAL ESTATE BOARD

It’s hard to tell we’re in an economic contraction – or, dare we say, recession (cue scary music) – what with retail rents continuing to rise along prime New York shopping corridors.

Haven’t the landlords paid any heed to Ben Bernanke? Or to the plight of their colleagues in commercial real estate who, as this paper has reported, are hiking up the amount of goodies they’re giving renters in exchange for signing leases?

Apparently they haven’t.

According to the Real Estate Board of New York’s annual spring retail report, released today, ground-floor rents along Third Avenue, between 60th and 72nd streets, rose 51 percent to $329 per-square-foot compared to the same time last year. On Fifth Avenue between 14th and 23rd streets, rents rose 50 percent to $401 a square foot.  read more »

And you thought the slumping economy meant you might finally be able to afford a home in this absurdly expensive city.

Fat chance.

New York City’s streets (particularly in Manhattan and Brooklyn) continue to be paved with gold, according to a report released today by the Real Estate Board of New York on its residentialNYC.com Web site.

The average price of a coop or condo in Manhattan in the first quarter of this year leaped 40 percent to a jaw-dropping $1.55 million, compared to the same quarter last year.  read more »

We have a Q-and-A with longtime Real Estate Board of New York President Steven Spinola running in tomorrow's Observer. Among the many topics he discussed in his spacious Lexington Avenue office was the immensely powerful trade group's relationship with Albany as of late. Apparently, things with Governor Eliot Spitzer are particularly rosy:  read more »

It's got a whiff of that Bastille-on-July 13, 1789 feeling. The Real Estate Board of New York sent out a letter (after the jump, below) to those attending its 111th annual banquet, this Thursday at the New York Hilton. The letter, which came with an admission ticket, implores guests to keep out the uninvited riff-raff:

You must have this ticket in order to enter the Grand Ballroom... Please help us solve the security problem that has annoyed so many REBNY members. Only those who pay the price of admission should enjoy the pleasures and opportunities that the Banquet offers.

The Real Estate will have a full report on the banquet (or, "Banquet") on Friday.  read more »

- Tom Acitelli