Tom Acitelli

From a report released earlier this week by the city's Independent Budget Office:

Although the recent economic data for New York City are ambiguous, IBO is forecasting that a local recession is imminent, if it has not begun already. While we expect the city to enter the recession later than the rest of the country, the local downturn is expected to be longer, with recovery not occurring until the second half of 2009.

Full report here in PDF.

A couple of months ago, we wrote about the reality of twenty-something Brooklynites returning to live with their parents in the brownstones and apartments they grew up in, and feeling no shame about the decision. The evidence was largely anecdotal.

Not anymore.  read more »

Jerry Speyer, whose Tishman Speyer recently had a falling out with the M.T.A.  read more »

Joy Behar buys a rundown Uptown condo.

Model Lily Donaldson may have set an Avenue B sales record.

Bruce Ratner wants someone to name the tallest tower in Atlantic Yards.  read more »

Location: You paint a pretty grim portrait of the financial services sector and its present role in the American economy. You write about the recent economic bubbles, including the housing bubble: ‘As for the financial sector’s behavior in such circumstances, surely there must be some applicable variation of Lord Acton’s famous thesis about the greater the power, the greater the abuse and corruption.’ What parts of the financial services sector are so corrupt and so prone to abuse?

Mr.  read more »

It’s on again: the spring hunt for Manhattan apartments, and, according to the numbers, this season should be as grim for new tenants as the last one. A new report shows average monthly rents in many Manhattan neighborhoods, including perennial favorites the Upper West Side and the Upper East Side, virtually unchanged from the same period last year, despite the intervening economic worries.  read more »

The video above, courtesy of The Observer's Azi Paybarah, features City Council Speaker Christine Quinn expounding this morning on major development projects like the Javits Center expansion and renovation; the stalled Moynihan Station plan; and the Related Companies' West Side rail yards plans.

"I really see all three of them as critically important," Ms. Quinn said. Of Related's rail yards plan specifically: "Now, yesterday, we had a terrific step forward...  read more »

From the Wall Street Journal this morning:

U.S. purchases of new cellphones declined in the first quarter for the first time in several years, signaling that worries about an economic slowdown are hurting the handset market, according to two new studies.

Perhaps soon fewer people gabbing away in the Amtrak quiet car?

Check out the above rendering. We got it on Monday afternoon at a press conference to tout the deal struck this weekend between the Related Companies and the M.T.A. over the development rights of the West Side rail yards.

Look closely. An old rendering, from Related's original rail yards bid in November, featured a sign above the concert stage that read "myspace.com". It was, of course, a reference to then-anchor tenant News Corp., owner of MySpace.  read more »

From Lynn Harris' essay on Park Slope in the Sunday New York Times, quoting John Mollenkopf, director of the Center for Urban Research:

"There is all this class resentment in New York, and it's very tied up in real estate. People who are well-housed are the envy of others."

The New York Sun reported today that Governor Paterson pays $1,250 to live in a rent-stabilized apartment in Central Harlem. This reality, given that the governor has a second home as well as a third (the Governor’s Mansion in Albany), has reawakened the monster question surrounding New York City rents: What if we just got rid of stabilization? Wouldn’t the fresh supply of market-rate apartments drive rents down? And wouldn’t the rich forever be forbidden from freeloading off the stabilization laws?

Luckily, we have Cambridge, Mass., to answer these questions.  read more »

From the Post today:

A partnership of Kirk Kerkorian's MGM Mirage and investment company Dubai World has held discussions about buying the Drake Hotel site from developer Harry Macklowe...

 read more »

The number of apartment buildings sold in Manhattan above 96th Street in the second half of 2007 dropped 29.5 percent from the first half of the year, according to a new report. The report, prepared by appraisal firm Miller Cicero for investment-sales brokerage Massey Knakal, shows also that the number of walk-up and elevator apartment buildings in Upper Manhattan fell by 30.8 percent from the first half of 2007.

Apartment building sales also dropped in Manhattan below 96th Street. Sales of walk-ups were down almost 50 percent from the first half of 2007. Sales of elevator buildings, however, increased 13.5 percent.

Sales of apartment buildings borough-wide fell 27.5 percent from the first half of 2007 through the second.  read more »

The 100 Most Powerful People in New York Real Estate. That is all.

For those of us of a certain age, MTV's The Real World was, like, the coolest thing ever: Pedro vs. Puck, that Irish guy Dom from the second season, the year it took place in London with the, like, 16-year-old dating the 14-year-old. Fascinating slice-of-life stuff when viewed from the suburbs.

And, then, for a long, long time, it was the stupidest thing on cable TV. And still is, probably. We don't know. We stopped watching around voting age.

But! Today, MTV announces that the 21st season of The Real World will be filmed in Brooklyn.

Release after the jump, and expert commentary here regarding possible spots in the borough for filming.  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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My colleague Dana Rubinstein broke the news earlier this week that the new One Bryant Park unofficially opened on Monday. Over 300 Bank of America employees took to their desks in the 54-story, Durst-developed skyscraper in midtown.

Above is a photo of the lobby earlier today. Life! At last!

Los Angeles' residential forceclosure rate in April was 13 times that of New York's, according to a new report from PropertyShark (PDF).

Los Angeles recorded 4,540 newly scheduled foreclosure auctions in April, up an astounding 466.8 percent from the number in April 2007. New York City recorded 329 foreclosure auctions in April, up 84.8 percent from April 2007, but down from March of this year. New York's foreclosure rate per household in April was 0.011 percent. L.A.'s was 0.145 percent.  read more »

Baron Eric de Rothschild buys a Village penthouse for his painter wife for $1.15 million.

Sales plunge, prices stay high in the Hamptons and the North Fork. Sound familiar?

David Paterson taps Christopher Ward to take over the Port Authority. Next stop, Moynihan Station?  read more »

The Long Island housing market is often held as a mirror to the Manhattan one. The reflection’s been presciently accurate as of late.

Home sales—from the playgrounds of the Hamptons through the bedroom communities of western Nassau County—dropped sharply in the first quarter of 2008 from the louder boom times of early 2007.  read more »

To view the North Carolina Democratic primary from outside the state is to view an ascendant Hillary Clinton and a Barack Obama mired in "bitter" and Jeremiah Wright. To view the primary from inside North Carolina is to see almost the exact opposite.

I traveled back and forth from Charlotte, the largest city in North Carolina, this past weekend. I grew up there.

All the anecdotal evidence suggested that it's Obama country.  read more »

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.

From Thomas Friedman's column in The New York Times this morning. He was writing about the lack of investment in American infrastructure, among other things:

If all Americans could compare Berlin’s luxurious central train station today with the grimy, decrepit Penn Station in New York City, they would swear we were the ones who lost World War II.

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.

Scarlett Johansson sells her Tribeca condo short.

Veronica Hearst just plain sells on the Upper East Side (she needs the cash).

A top Bear Stearns exec talks about getting while the getting was good.  read more »

As all around it crumbles, Manhattan’s hotel market remains sublimely buoyant. But there are subtle signs of cheaper rooms to come.

On any given night in the first three months of 2008, over 80 percent of the borough’s hotel rooms were occupied. Moreover, nearly 85 percent of the rooms in Manhattan’s nicer hotels—the Four Seasons, the Regency, the Waldorf, perhaps—were as well, according to PKF Consulting, a firm that tracks hotel markets nationwide.  read more »

The book to the right landed in our mailbox on Monday afternoon. It's called Greenopia, New York City, Eat, Shop, Live Green; and it's a new guide to over 1,300 restaurants, shops and other resources throughout the city.

And not to worry: the book, published by The Green Media Group (really), promises that "each business and organization is independently researched and rated based on Greenopia's unique Green-Leaf Award system..."

It is with a certain fear and loathing that New Yorkers think of Los Angeles. Seared into the Gotham psyche 31 years ago: Woody Allen’s Alvy Singer following Diane Keaton’s Annie Hall to La-La land—stop and go, stop and go, in a car; a house party full of phonies on the make; and then, thankfully, back East on a plane. We’re the careful pioneers; they’re nuts. But more Manhattan and Brooklyn residents this decade have relocated to L.A. than vice versa, according to an Observer analysis of I.R.S. data.  read more »

The average Manhattan apartment by the end of March cost over $1.7 million. The borough’s rents have been stagnantly high for over five years; $1,500 monthly gets you a studio on the Upper West Side.

What’s a Manhattanite to do if he or she can no longer afford Manhattan but doesn’t want to leave New York City?

Move to the Bronx, probably.  read more »

Shine your shoes and do your hair up pretty, tomorrow's Ingenies Night! The Real Estate Board of New York hosts the 64th annual commercial real estate Oscars at the 101 Club on Park Avenue starting at 5:30. Invitation only!

Who will take home the coveted Most Ingenious Deal of the Year Award? Last year it was Woodie Heller and Howard Nottingham of Studley.

Here's a list of current nominees. See you there!

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 »

The dismal performance of the New York Knicks has hurt the fan-fueled business of Irish pubs near Madison Square Garden, according to the Sunday Times.  read more »

From the Wall Street Journal this morning, about the 142-year effort to build a bridge between Sicily and the Italian mainland:

The late marine explorer Jacques Cousteau helped with research. At one point, a study was commissioned to study the effect of the bridge's shadow on fish. None was found.  read more »

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Gristedes grocery store billionaire John Catsimatidis apparently has the support of Donald Trump in his race for mayor.

The New Yorker’s Ben McGrath reports that Mr. Catsimatidis has signed up pledges of support from not only Mr. Trump but also from most of the “at least thirty-five to forty percent of the Congress, and most of the major governors” who, according to Mr. Catsimatidis, “know I’m doing what I have to do.”  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 »

It’s a sign of the times: Japanese firm Hiro North American Properties’ sale of the office tower at 650 Madison Avenue has closed, and, at $680 million, it’s the biggest building sale of 2008 so far (and the only over $400 million). Wasn’t too long ago—10 months, give or take—that $680 million for a Midtown building was ho-hum.

Not anymore. In the fourth month of 2008, $680 million is the new $1 billion. It’s a deal to be picked apart. So let’s do so.  read more »

A couple lists their Tribeca house for $35 million, possibly the neighborhood's priciest ever!

Another couple seeks to sell a redone Little Italy house for $18 million.

Manhattan's most exclusive co-ops: shelter from the economic storm.  read more »

In the middle of 2000, vacancy rates in Manhattan’s cheapest office addresses started to increase. The increase was gradual at first, barely noticeable amid the boom times. Then, the pace of the increase quickened, and pretty soon vacancy rates for the cheapest offices were about double what they were barely two years before.

The reason, of course, was the dot-com bust, which sent tech firms scrambling from offices in areas like the Flatiron district and Soho. The national recession followed, and then Sept.  read more »

Eastdil Secured has been hired to market Harry Macklowe's 1.765 million-square-foot office tower at 1301 Avenue of the Americas, according to the Post. The tower could set a single-building sales record, even in this cooling investment sales climate.

If it gets anywhere over $1,000 a square foot--eminently possible for a top-shelf Midtown building--1301 Avenue of the Americas could sell for at least $1.765 billion, which would put it just a shade below the all-time building record of $1.8 billion, which belongs to 666 Fifth Avenue and its owner, Kushner Companies.  read more »

State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and allies have effectively doomed Mayor Bloomberg's congestion-pricing plan for Manhattan. More from The Politicker.

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 »

It happens in New York City, and it's a crime: the deliberate killing of trees.

Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe, according to the Sunday New York Times, encourages anyone who knows about an arborcide to call... 311, sure, but probably 911, too.  read more »

"Put an end to the Americanization of the Swiss economy!"

So screamed a UBS shareholder at a February meeting of the Swiss banking giant's top executives and shareholders, according to an excellent report in the Sunday New York Times by Nelson D. Schwartz. The report catalogued the far-reaching effects of the American subprime mortgage crisis; one of those effects has been to fuel an anti-American bias in even the more traditionally serene parts of Europe.

Case in point: UBS at one point controlled $80 billion in subprime mortgage-backed securities. It's been forced to write down about $37 billion because of that gamble. It wasn't so much the financial loss that angered UBS shareholders (though that surely stung) but that the loss came because of what some Swiss saw as old-fashioned American over-consumption.  read more »

Another scene from Thursday evening's protest outside the Brooklyn Museum of Art against Atlantic Yards developer Bruce Ratner.

The big protest against Atlantic Yards developer Bruce Ratner went off Thursday evening outside of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, which was honoring Mr. Ratner inside for his philanthropy. Above is a nattily dressed protestor (it was black-tie inside and outside--get it?!) snapped by Observer photo editor Nicole Brydson. More to come.

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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The future of the Manhattan office market--and, for that matter, the Manhattan economy--could be divined by looking at the borough's Class B and C office space.

A new report shows an increase since early last year in the vacancy rates for Manhattan's lesser (read: cheaper) office space, though the reasons for the vacancies aren't entirely clear. The Class B vacancy rate increased from 9.3 percent in March 2007 to 10.4 percent in March 2008, according to brokerage Colliers ABR. The Class C vacancy rate increased during the same period from 5.4 percent to 9.1 percent.  read more »

The number of new foreclosures in New York City shot up in the first quarter of 2008, but not as much as in other large cities.

The number of new foreclosures in the five boroughs increased 51.4 percent in the first quarter of 2008 from the fourth quarter of 2007, according to a new report from research site PropertyShark.com, and 65.7 percent from the first quarter a year earlier.

The number of new foreclosures during the first three months of 2008 totalled 918, with Queens and Staten Island leading the other boroughs with 508 and 174, respectively. Manhattan had the least number of new foreclosures with just 23. Most of the new foreclosures were for single- and two-family homes in outer-borough neighborhoods like Jamaica, Howard Beach, the Rockaways and Woodhaven. (A new foreclosure was defined in the PropertyShark report as a property scheduled for auction for the first time during the quarter.)

Despite the dire increases and all the implications inherent, New York City remained a relative bulwark against the foreclosure wave sweeping much of the United States, especially other larger cities. In Los Angeles County, home of the nation's second-largest city, new foreclosures were up over 34 percent from the fourth quarter to an astounding 8,887. In Miami-Dade County, where the housing boom burned like wildfire until last year, foreclosures were up quarterly 14.88 percent to 2,231.  read more »

The Slatin Report has the first piece of fresh news in a long while about the possible sale of Harry Macklowe's GM Building. You'll remember it went on the market in January; and then two quick rounds of bids were done by early March. And then... well, not much beyond speculation.

Which brings us to today's news: Daily News publisher and Boston Properties chairman Mort Zuckerman is "the last man standing" in the fight to get the GM Building. And he may have to pay as much as $2.9 billion for it, which would make it the biggest single-building sale ever (that much we expected).

What's unexpected is Mr. Zuckerman himself. The Observer reported in early February that he was considering a bid for the building. "It's a terrific building without question," Mr. Zuckerman told our Eliot Brown then. Later, however, The New York Sun reported that Mr. Zuckerman was, in fact, not involved in the first round of bids.  read more »