By Gus Delaporte 4/24 10:45am

Awards

onenewyorkplaza

NGKF Nabs REBNY Most Ingenious Deal of the Year Award

The Newmark Grubb Knight Frank team of Barry Gosin, Brian Waterman and Romel Canete was awarded the Real Estate Board of New York’s Henry Hart Rice Award for the Most Ingenious Deal of the Year Award at the trade association’s 69th annual cocktail reception yesterday evening. The deal, which was a lease for Morgan Stanley at One New York Plaza, closed in April of last year.

The judging committee evaluated 37 dealmakers across sales, lease and finance transactions over the last year. So impressive were the submissions, that a presenter at last night’s event at the 101 Club wondered aloud whether the authors of the submissions had advanced degrees in creative writing. Read More

By Al Barbarino 1/24 4:09pm

Lease Beat

RXR Realty Signs 99-Year Lease at 75 Rockefeller Plaza

Scott Rechler’s RXR Realty has signed a 99-year triple-net lease at British department store tycoon Mohamed Al Faye’s 75 Rockefeller Plaza in Midtown Manhattan, where it plans to undertake a major capital improvement to reposition the building.

The 33-story building will be fully vacated by Time Warner Cable in 2014, leaving behind roughly 630,000 square feet of rentable area, and the renovations will include a new lobby and a restoration of its landmarked, classic limestone façade, executives at RXR said. Read More

By Al Barbarino 1/03 10:10am

Sales Beat

201 W 11th St - Front

Dermot Property Associates Sells 14 Building Portfolio for $190.5M

Dermot Property Associates has sold a portfolio of 14 buildings in Manhattan, the Bronx and Queens for $190.5 million, The Commercial Observer has learned.

Ten of the buildings – five in Manhattan and five in the Bronx – were sold to the Parkoff Organization for $158 million, and the remaining four were sold to Douglaston Realty, said Aaron Jungreis, president of Rosewood Realty Group, who represented the buyers.

The 14 buildings were initially marketed as a package before it was determined that splitting it up was in the best interest of both the buyers and the seller. Read More

By Alessia Pirolo 10/04/12 8:00am

Mortgage Beat

Cushman&Wakefiled.

C&W Report Shows Investment Sales Volume Decline in the Third Quarter

Investment sales volume in Manhattan dropped 30 percent year-over-year in the first three quarters of 2012 from the same period in 2011, mainly due to a reduction in distressed activity, data from commercial services firm Cushman & Wakefield shows.

In its third quarter report for the Manhattan commercial real estate market, Cushman & Wakefield shows that as of September 2012, investment sales volume totaled $13.6 billion, from over $20 billion in the same period of 2011. “The drop in volume, we believe, is due to the reduction in distressed property sales,” said Helen Hwang, a company executive vice president. Read More

By Tamar Katz 8/02/12 6:06pm

Development

Nat Rockett

71 Smith Street For Sale

71 Smith Street, a development site in Brooklyn’s Boerum Hill, is up for grabs. Cushman & Wakefield and JRT Realty Group have been tapped to market the property, a parking lot.

The 27,582-square-foot parcel is located between Schermerhorn and State Streets and allows for a 311,801 square-foot mixed-use project to be built. Up to 206,530 square feet of residential space can be raised. Another 105,271 square feet for commercial use is also zoned for the site. Read More

By Carl Gaines 2/29/12 2:41pm

Investment Sales

Illustration by Peter Lettre.

Medium Cool: Investment Sales Volume Spiked in 2011, but Future’s Still Cloudy

A self-described car guy, Woody Heller, executive managing director and head of the Capital Transactions Group at Studley, sees parallels between automobiles as hard assets and commercial real estate investment sales velocity in New York. Apart from the obvious luxury to be found in cars and Class A buildings alike—his 33-million-square-foot transaction volume likely doesn’t include a jalopy—both markets have also lately been bolstered by similar factors.

“With debt available and with interest rates so incredibly low, it encourages one to buy because money is so cheap,” he said. “If the asset class is in favor compared with what much of the alternatives are—if borrowing costs are incredibly low—it continues to steer people to want to invest in hard assets like real estate.” Read More