Commercial Observer

Without a doubt, December 2012 will be remembered as an epic month in the history of property sales in New York City.

In December alone, there were 984 properties sold totaling $11.8 billion. This monthly total is nearly double the entire year’s dollar volume in 2009. It is also the highest monthly total, in both number of properties sold and dollar volume, since we began tracking the market in 1984. Read More

During the depths of the recession, many real estate brokerage companies cut budgets and cut them severely. Some of these cuts ranged from 25 percent to as much as 50 percent. For other companies, the cuts were a more modest 10 to 20 percent. In almost all cases, these cuts allowed companies to weather the storm and come back as the market recovered. Most made cuts of items that were nonessential. These were things that might have been nice to have, or in some cases somewhat important, but were not crucial for the ongoing performance of the company’s operation. Read More

One of the most prominent needs in the New York City real estate market is affordable housing.

With the expected growth in our population over the next couple of decades, it is imperative that work-force housing exist. This is housing for police officers, firemen, teachers and the scores of other workers who make this city run. An insufficient supply of affordable housing for these folks is a critical issue for the economic well-being of the city that future local administrations will have to address.

Most of our elected officials continually, and inaccurately, refer to our rent-regulation system an “affordable housing” program. Rent control and rent stabilization do not create affordable units as options for our current work force. Read More