Massey Knakal Realty Services

Who would’ve thunk that statements Barack Obama made in April would have repercussions in the New York investment sales market in August?

Building owners, fearful that a Democratic administration will raise capital gains taxes (or that a Republican one will do the same, given the proven flexibility of John McCain on myriad issues), are putting their buildings on the market so that they can sell them before Jan. 1. That’s the date at which any midyear ’09 tax hike would likely apply retroactively.

Here’s what unsettled them. On April 16, during the Democratic debate in Philly, ABC moderator Charles Gibson sternly queried Senator Obama about his former promise not to raise capital gains taxes higher than 28 percent—the top rate under Bill Clinton.  read more »

A marvelously polymathic family who lives in perhaps the oldest private home on the Upper West Side plans to sell the property and use the proceeds to create a foundation named after a microbe.

Said microbe, Ochromonas danica, traditionally inhabits Danish bogs, and sometimes the odd laboratory, like the one where landlord Thomas Haines, 74, encountered it back when he was a Ph.D. candidate at Rutgers University. He lovingly calls it a “freak” of an organism, one whose unusual flagellar membrane so sparked his fascination with lipid membranes that he named his dog Danica, his daughter Avril Danica Haines and his property holding company Danica Realty. Now, he plans to call his charitable foundation, which he recently registered with the I.R.S., the Danica Foundation.  read more »