Housing market

In tomorrow's Manhattan Transfers, I write about a seven-bedroom duplex (actually, a "gym/bedroom" makes it eight) that went on the market this month at 1030 Fifth Avenue for $47.5 million, one of the biggest apartment listings ever in New York.

(See Vespa-driving broker Sharon Baum's listing for good floor plans, or certified Lamaze instructor Fritzi Kallop's listing for the good interior shots.)

The sellers are an orthopedic surgeon named Dr. David Fleiss, and his wife, Karen, a Barnard trustee who founded the hedge fund KMF Partners. (If you're into this sort of thing, you may also remember Ms. Fleiss from an apartment deal with Brown Bunny director Vincent Gallo.  read more »

The second-quarter Manhattan housing market reports will be out by Wednesday morning of next week. Last time they hit, for the first quarter, the reports caused quite the kerfuffle, including internal company e-mails and a New York Times article trying to sort the whole thing out.

Basically, it went like this: Prudential Douglas Elliman and Miller Samuel's report showed a 34 percent annual drop in Manhattan home sales. Brown Harris Stevens and Halstead Property's showed a 5 percent gain. And the Corcoran Group's showed a mere 1 percent drop.

All good and well--different measures by different firms, different numbers.  read more »

But! Elliman superbroker Dolly Lenz sent out an

What better place to track the habits of tastemakers and trendsetters than the West Village, a neighborhood filled with lithe fashionistas and their imitators, big-spending bankers, all sorts of retail, and quaint real estate that is well beyond the price range of average folks.

It's only natural then that a New Yorker scribe who catapulted to fame with a book on the dynamics of trends would choose to live there. And after the book spends 28 weeks on the best-seller lists and you start making the rounds of the business/marketing conference circuit, doing about 25 speaking engagements a year at $40,000 a pop, like Tipping Point author Malcolm Gladwell, then it's only fitting that you'd buy a second place in the West Village.  read more »

Remember that rumored $90 million listing at 15 Central Park West? It was nothing.

Dolly Lenz, New York City's most gargantuan real estate agent, broke astounding news at Portfolio's Four Seasons get-together this morning: "There are a few apartments on the market at 15 CPW, a new development on Central Park West, asking somewhere between $80 and $125 million--three different apartments--and one quietly on the market at $150 million," she said.

Wowzah. Brokers have already made it known that two condos in the Robert A.M. Stern-designed blockbuster building are being offered at $80 and $90 million, so Ms. Lenz's quote not only means that there's a third apartment on the market in the building for somewhere between $80 and $125 million, but that there's a fourth spread whose owner wants $150 million.  read more »

Last month, The Observer wrote about 30 West 21st Street, the building famous for its old new-wave dance club Danceteria (Madonna debuted there). The place sold last year for $25 million to an investor who's turning the place into 11 4,000-square-foot apartments (listed around $5.8 to $7.9 million each), plus a triplex penthouse ($7.7 million), plus a townhouse apartment ($9.25 million).

“Legitimacy is the one word I can really give to it,” the investor, named Kevin Comer, said then, but by legitimacy he meant details like three-inch solid marble kitchen countertops, lifestyle designers, in-loft wine cellars and gyms, radiant-heat floors and daily maid service with chocolates on pillows.  read more »

Bank Street is a funny place. A man who makes mixed-media rock 'n' roll art, combining old pictures of Mick or Neil or Bob with "nail polish and pieces of burlap combined with gold leaf paint," just bought an expensive 166 Bank Street penthouse from a woman who hosts Germany's Next Topmodel and Project Runway and gets paid a lot to wear pink underwear.

According to a deed filed today in city records, Steve Joester and his wife, Debra, spent $5.35 million for Heidi Klum's penthouse, which, unfortunately for the supermodel, is a quarter million dollars less than the price The Daily News reported a week ago.  read more »

Dozens of families who risk losing their homes to foreclosure are expected to tell their stories at a Tuesday rally in Albany organized by ACORN.

On May 7, the New York State Assembly overwhelmingly passed legislation to institute a year moratorium on home foreclosure--during which a court would determine an appropriate minimun payment for the owner--and provide additional protections for families with subprime loans. The State Senate has yet to move forward on the issue. Meanwhile, federal legislation to address the subprime crisis is stalled in Washington.

In 2007, there were over 51,000 foreclosure filings in New York State according to RealtyTrac. During the first quarter of this year, 14,000 homeowners in New York began foreclosure proceedings, nearly 50 percent of which occurred in Queens, Brooklyn and Long Island.  read more »

The net worth of American households was an estimated $56 trillion by the end of the first quarter of 2008, according to Federal Reserve numbers out Thursday (PDF). That's $1.7 trillion less than the quarter before.

More on the wealth slide in today's Journal.

A duplex apartment that stretches across two Tribeca buildings, 39 and 41 North Moore Street, just hit the market for $17.9 million. The listing broker, Helen Dreyfuss, says there's about 3,973 square feet of interior space (that's 11 rooms, four bedrooms, two wood-burning fireplaces, an office, a media room, and windowed double kitchen), plus 2,321 square feet of epic terraces ("seamless integration from predinner cocktails to dinner to after-dinner drinks and cigars in a finely articulated sequence of individual spaces.")

The sellers are Joy and Leonard Toboroff, the 74-year-old vice chairman of a Houston-based oil/gas-drilling outfit named Allis-Chalmers Energy. They got the place a few years ago from Tom Freston, the felled MTV and Viacom chief.

Reached through his broker, Mr. Toboroff had this to say when asked why he'd put the place on the market: "We have two kids that are out on their own now--my daughter got married last summer; we’re out of the country about 100 days of the year anyway." Then he paused. "I don’t know! No real reason. But I think an economic reason can be made that Obama can be elected and he’s pledged to raise capital gains."  read more »

Brownstoner breaks down the number of Brooklyn condo and co-op offering plans filed with the state Attorney General over the last few years (1,393 plans for 28,499 new units since 2004) and quizzes developers on what's to come.

Not much, apparently:  read more »

A Reuters article this morning tosses a little sunshine into an otherwise gloomy assessment of the effects of a shakier Wall Street on Manhattan real estate:

The full impact of Wall Street layoffs on the Manhattan real estate market could take a year or possibly longer to work through.  read more »

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Here's a breath-taker: The Wall Street Journal reports today that Ed McMahon, Tonight Show regular and one-time spokesman for American Family Publishing, faces foreclosure on his six-bedroom home in Beverly Hills.

The 85-year-old, who recently broke his neck in a fall, took a $4.8 million loan from a unit of notorious Countrywide Financial, and then took a large home-equity line of credit from the lender.  read more »

Even if the prospect of a $100 million apartment sale in Manhattan isn't wildly far-fetched, there are some good reasons to be skeptical about all the news lately on venture capitalist's Lindsay Rosenwald's 15 Central Park West spread.

On Sunday, The Times wrote that Dr. Rosenwald's 5,870-square-foot duplex in the condo, which he bought for $30 million in April, has gotten "five or six calls from brokers, offering as much as $100 million for his apartment." But the source for that information is the owner himself, and the only other tidbit to back up his numbers is a story exchanged between brokers in which Dr. Rosenwald "was said to have been offered $85 million." We don't hear who those brokers are.

On the one hand, anything is possible—remember the Bronfman brothers' extraordinary flips last year—but, still, Dr. Rosenwald comes across as a man who wants to stir up excitement (and a lot of money) for his apartment. Even though he said he was happy in the building, consider that his only direct quote in the piece is, "The only thing in my life that is not for sale is my wife and my kids.”

So it makes sense that there’s news this morning that a Brown Harris Stevens broker, Janet Gifford, just sent out a memo saying that the place is coming on the market: “As of now, we are asking $90 million.”  read more »

The average sales price of a South Park Slope condo increased 96 percent from April 2007 to April 2008 to $608,824, according to a report out on Tuesday from industry trade group the Real Estate Board of New York. Condo sales in the neighborhood increased from three in April 2007 to 21 in April 2008.

We're trying to find a link to the full report.

The Observer tends to profile brokers that not only have offices, but work with fountain pens on antique oak desks (which is why Edward Lee Cave’s grandfatherly firm is pictured above).

But today there was a huge victory for Internet-based agents--and don't sneer at that phrase, because "more consumers use the Web when house hunting than rely on 'For Sale' yard signs." In a settlement today, the Justice Department said that the National Association of Realtors could no longer restrict Web-focused, discount brokers from the group's database of real estate on the market, known as an MLS.

Luckily for the realtor group, they don't have to pay a fine, or even admit wrongdoing.  read more »

Residential development permits took a 51 percent dive citywide this year, according to an article in today's Crain's New York Business, further refuting the notion that New York is immune to national economic tremors.  read more »

Every boroughs' homeownership rate has increased steadily since 1990, even as home prices spiked throughout the city.

In 1990, 25.9 percent of Brooklyn residents owned their homes, according to the State of New York City's Housing and Neighborhoods 2007 released by N.Y.U.'s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy last month. By 2000, that percentage was 27.1; by 2006, the last year data was available, it was 32.3 percent.

In 1990, 63.7 percent of Staten Islanders owned their homes, a percentage that would rise to 72 percent over the next 16 years. In the Bronx, it went from 17.9 percent in 1990 to 21.5 percent in 2006; in Queens, from 42.4 percent to 47 percent; and, in Manhattan, from 17.9 percent to 23.5.

These increases, of course, paralleled jumps in home prices.  read more »

Prices for single-family homes fell 1.7 percent nationwide in the first quarter of 2008 from the last quarter in 2007, according to the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise and Oversight.

Doesn't seem like that steep a drop. But! It's the first such decline in the index's 17-year history. Eeep!

It's an anti-yuppification backlash in Brooklyn!

About 20 Brooklyn families are looking to share a house in a Brownstone Brooklyn neighborhood, where they can engage in communal behavior like shared meals and communal relaxation activities, according to the Brooklyn Paper.

Like much else in Brooklyn, this urban kibbutz lifestyle won't come cheap.  read more »

From a new report (PDF) by the Center for Economic and Policy Research and the National Low Income Housing Coalition:

According to the most recent Census numbers, in the past year, the number of renter households in the United States increased by nearly 1 million. By contrast, the number of homeowner households increased by just 139,000. The ability for metropolitan area housing markets to accommodate this shift to rental will vary considerably.  read more »

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Need to buy in the Hamptons soon? There should be plenty to choose from. The inventory of unsold homes on the market there was up 4.6 percent from the fourth quarter of 2007 to the first of 2008 (and a remarkable 27.2 percent from the first quarter of 2007), according to a report from Miller Samuel and Prudential Douglas Elliman.

In the North Fork, inventory was up 10.2 percent quarterly and nearly 20 percent annually.

We'll have more on the Long Island housing market in tomorrow's Observer. Hint: Manhattan. That's all we'll say.

The number of Hamptons home sales dropped 28.8 percent from the fourth quarter of 2007 through the first quarter of 2008, according to a new report from appraisal firm Miller Samuel. Sales dropped 42.4 percent annually in the first quarter.

At the same time, both median and average Hamptons home prices increased annually; and the inventory of unsold homes on the sales market increased both quarterly and annually.

In an epic article today on why the super rich are still spending superbly, the Times wrote that buyers have "already closed on 71 Manhattan apartments that each cost more than $10 million, compared with 17 apartments in that price range during all of 2007."

That stat was already outdated by lunchtime.

According to city records, an 11th-floor apartment at The Plaza sold this month for $45,100,956, which makes it the second most expensive apartment ever to close in New York. It's behind only Harry Macklowe's massive spread four floors down at the newly renovated hotel, and slightly beats the even $45 million that scary hedge fund guru Dan Loeb just paid for his 15 Central Park West penthouse.  read more »

The Times' hedonistic front-pager this morning on how the very rich keep on spending, never mind the downturn, mentions this Manhattan housing market tidbit:

Buyers this year have already closed on 71 Manhattan apartments that each cost more than $10 million, compared with 17 apartments in that price range during all of 2007.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago in The Observer's print edition about the resiliency of the luxury housing market here. The average luxury apartment sales price cleared $7.66 million in the first quarter of 2008, according to appraiser Miller Samuel and brokerage Prudential Douglas Elliman.  read more »

A hit children's TV show will take you far in this town. Dora the Explorer co-creator Eric Weiner and wife Cherie Vogelstein, a playwright, have bought a high-floor, seven-room condo at Ariel West, the new glass tower on West 99th Street and Broadway. According to city records, they paid $4.395 million.

Besides their four-bedroom, three-and-a-half-bathroom, 2,881-square-foot apartment, the Upper West Side writer couple will have an in-building spa, plus a 51-foot-long swimming pool--though, you know, what self-respecting Upper West Side writer couple doesn't have one of those nowadays?

   read more »

As the summer Hamptons season creeps closer, here's how housing prices there started 2008.

The luxury numbers below are taken from a fourth quarter 2007 report (PDF) authored by Jonathan Miller for Prudential Douglas Elliman.  read more »

Socialite and founder of the Sotheby's fashion department Tiffany Dubin bought a $3.4 million, ninth-floor co-op in her building at 29 East 64th Street from venture capitalist Jean Francois Astier, city records show.

This is her third acquisition in the building in nine months. Ms. Dubin's ex-husband, Louis, transfered ownership of two adjoining fifth-floor co-ops to her last August, after a protracted divorce. We wonder what Ms. Dubin, who is the stepdaughter of former Sotheby's chairman Alfred Taubman, plans to do with her new place all the way on the ninth floor.  read more »

The Real Deal reports that more New York condo owners are falling behind on paying their buildings' common charges:

Bruce Cholst, a partner at Rosen & Livingston who specializes in co-op and condo law, said he has seen an increase in the volume and frequency of warning letters sent to condo owners for fee delinquency over the past six months. He said many of those owners heed the warnings, but end up back in arrears a couple months later.  read more »

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Condo and co-op prices dropped in brownstone Brooklyn neighborhoods like Carroll Gardens and Park Slope in the first quarter of 2008, according to a new report from the Corcoran Group. Manhattan owners—and those who can afford to be some day—should take note.

The average sales price of Brooklyn condos and co-ops combined dropped 10 percent from the fourth quarter of 2007 through the first of 2008 to $615,000. The median price dropped as well, 7 percent to $549,000.  read more »

That was the number of condo and co-op sales in Manhattan in the first quarter of 2007, according to appraisal firm Miller Samuel. Only two other quarters since at least the late 1980's--the second and third quarters of 2007--have topped that sales amount. Will the first quarter of 2008 top it? Stay tuned.

Mild schadenfreude greeted the Bloomberg News story this morning that Manhattan home sales dipped in January and February compared to the same time period last year. See the thread of comments on Curbed here.

But a closer look at the perfunctory numbers reveals... what exactly?  read more »

Next Tuesday is April 1, and the first-quarter housing market reports for Manhattan will start trickling out from brokerages like Halstead, Corcoran and Douglas Elliman. What will they say about home sales?

No one knows for certain, of course, but the speculation should pick up noticably in the next few days so here goes:

The first quarter of any year is usually relatively paltry in terms of the number of closed deals because those deals were cut in the winter months, which are normally among the slowest in Manhattan housing.  read more »

The Wall Street Journal reports in depth this morning on what anyone following at home probably realized was inevitable: a drop in home prices because of all the foreclosed homes on the market. Simply put, the new supply is driving down the costs to buyers.  read more »

When the double-wide townhouse at 14-16 East 67th Street (known as the Guccione Mansion until last year, when a smart broker changed the name to Milbank) went to contract last month, the New York Post sighed that the buyer, hedge fund titan Philip Falcone, managed to "whittle the $59 million asking price down to well below the current townhouse record of $53 million."

Still, according to city records filed this morning, Mr. Falcone and his wife, Lisa, paid $49 million--the third highest sum ever paid for a townhouse in New York City--for the 27-room house. It belonged to Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione until he essentially lost the house to foreclosure in 2006. (As it actually happened, he had to sell to investors led by Laurus Funds, who had bailed him out back in 2004 with a high-interest loan, the very day there was a moving van outside the pornographer's house.)  read more »

Doorman co-ops in Manhattan now average $1.37 a square foot in maintenance fees and non-doorman ones $1.22 a foot, according to analysis by appraisal firm Miller Samuel and reporting by The New York Times. The shorthand for co-op maintenance fees used to be $1 a square foot.

One might have assumed that New York Nets co-owner Bruce Ratner does not adore the pettite charm of brownstones. After all, his planned 8 million-square-foot, 22-acre Atlantic Yards, which would be one of the biggest projects ever built by a single developer in New York, has been called "a nightmare for Brooklyn" because of its massive bouquet of Frank Gehry-designed skyscrapers.

But, according to city records, Mr. Ratner just bought himself a nice little 20-foot-wide, 6,408-square-foot, five-floor brownstone, exactly the kind that Brooklynites like so much. But it's on the Upper East Side.

On Valentine's Day, Mr. Ratner paid $6,965,000 for 128 East 62nd Street. More than half of the townhouse was owned by the Neustadt Collection of Tiffany Glass, founded by the late Dr. Egon Neustadt--who used to live in the house with some of his 300,000-piece Tiffany collection, according to Milton Hassol, the musuem's president.  read more »

The Real Deal's Data Book 2008 tumbled from our mailbox last night. Among the myriad of factoids was this one: The average sales price of an East Side Manhattan townhouse increased 317 percent from 1997 through 2007 to over $10.63 million. The average sales price for a West Side townhouse increased 227 percent to $4.61 million. And, 10 years ago, your average downtown townhouse would've cost $1.2 million, give or take. Now?  read more »

For the last 28 years, Jeremiah Oshea has been the super at 18 East 68th Street, the 36-foot-wide, 18,500-square-foot, 103-year-old mansion that just hit the market asking $64 million.

He lives alone in a one-bedroom apartment in the basement; the limestone mansion, now divided into apartments, has 17-foot ceilings and original wood paneling.

When asked about the listing, Mr. Oshea, from Ireland’s County Kerry, said, “I think it is on the market, I’m not told whether it is or whether it isn’t, but I have a feeling it is.” I mentioned that the asking price is $64 million: “Oh my God,” he said.  read more »

If the diamond-brooched Upper East Side brokers all give up their chauffeured Rolls-Royces for scooters, is it a sign that the Manhattan real estate apocalypse really is nigh?

Corcoran senior vice president Sharon Baum, who briefly dated Michael Bloomberg after graduating from Harvard Business School in 1965, has been chauffeured to and from her $20 million listings in a Rolls-Royce for the last 12 years.

Her license plate says SOLD 1. So does a matching diamond brooch.  read more »

When 40 Barrow Street went on the market back in August, Curbed wondered whether there were any "solvent hedge-funders left out there" who could afford to pay the $10 million for the charming, two-family townhouse and give it the restoration it deserves. Apparently, it's a job for an artist.

The famed Mexican installation artist Gabriel Orozco and his wife Maria Gutierrez paid $8.85 million for 40 Barrow Street, according to city records.  read more »

Each absurdly wealthy family is absurdly wealthy in its own way.Take Ira Rennert, who parlayed junk bonds and Hummer uber-vehicles into a slot (#891) on the list of the world's billionaires, not to mention an oceanic estate in the Hamptons (and, farther away, an equally-sized smelting plant in Peru, and a highly-polluting Missouri plant). Mr.  read more »

The exclamatory independent news program Democracy Now! won’t be broadcasting out of a Chinatown firehouse for much longer.

According to city records, the left-leaning TV/radio group (Newt Gingrich once told co-host/founder Amy Goodman that he warned his mother not to speak to reporters because of people like her) have paid $6 million for a raw loft at 217 West 25th Street.  read more »

Oh, Ira Rennert! What a guy.

I wrote last month that the man who has an $185 million Hamptons compound and a few massive smelting plants in Peru and Missouri (plus, of course, a billion-dollar fortune from junk bonds and Hummer vehicles) had bought two $30 million-plus apartments for his two daughters.

This afternoon, the more spectacular of the deals was registered in public records, for all future ages to behold. Daughter Tamara Winn and her husband just closed on a $32 million duplex at 740 Park, the Bethlehem of uptown co-ops.

No mortgages have been filed yet, which suggests it could have been an all-cash deal: Mr. Rennert, you're a good dad.

UPDATE: Daughter #2 closes too.

The average sales price per square foot for housing in the New York City metropolitan area was $289.79 in November 2007, according to the latest monthly report (PDF) from research firm Radar Logic Inc.  read more »

The Giants had their ticker-tape parade this morning. The last time the city hosted a ticker-tape parade was for the World Series champion Yankees in October 2000. Back then, the median price for a Manhattan co-op was $340,000, according to research firm Radar Logic Inc. The median price for a condo was $535,000.

In the midst of the worst economic crisis in six decades (according to George Soros), the tip-top of Manhattan's high-end did awfully well yesterday.  read more »

Prudential Douglas Elliman's fourth-quarter Manhattan housing market report, authored by appraiser Jonathan Miller, is now available online (PDF). It showed, among other stats, that apartment prices had ascended to an all-time average high of over $1.4 million.

On Jan. 2, things weren't looking all that bright for Jonathan Tisch, New York Giants co-owner (and, ahem, the heir to the multi-billion-dollar Loews fortune). His team was headed into the playoffs, where they hadn't had a win since 2001.

But, according to city records filed this afternoon, Mr. Tisch closed that day on a massive apartment deal, selling his unlisted duplex at ritzy 950 Fifth Avenue to Starbucks founder and CEO Howard Schultz (and his wife Sheri) for $24.75 million. The Giants have won two massive games since then, and are a match away from the Super Bowl. Maybe Mr. Tisch's good mood was contagious?  read more »

The Atlantic's Matthew Yglesias this month analyzed the fallout from the mortgage-lending crisis and found an interesting aside: Some of the same people who made a killing trading in subprime mortgage debt may be losing their homes, if they haven't lost them already:

(45 residences in Greenwich, Connecticut, home to many hedge-fund operators and investment bankers, were in foreclosure in the third quarter of 2007)

Goldman Sachs partner Alan Shuch paid $8.2 million for a condo at Fifteen Central Park West, according to city records on Thursday. Mr. Shuch, who is head of assett management at the firm, and Leslie Wohlman are listed as the buyers of apartment 26D on the Jan. 4 property deed.

Another Goldman partner, Ashok Varadhan, purchased a $16.03 million condo at the Zeckendorf brothers' famed buidling just two days earlier.