Sunday Summary: How Many Deals Can We Do Before NYE?

Just last week Commercial Observer was touting our lists of the biggest, best and flashiest leases, sales and financings of 2025.

Turns out, we jumped the gun.

We learned of at least two humdingers that cracked the top 10 since those lists were published.

Last Tuesday we learned that Gary Barnett’s Extell Development nabbed a $1.13 billion financing from Tyko Capital for its supertall 655 Madison Avenue, which would make it New York City’s biggest construction loan of the year … well, biggest so far. (And we’re not being cheeky here. There are other deals in the works that would also crack the top 10 if they close before Dec. 31.)

We also broke the news this Friday of what’s probably New York’s biggest office-to-residential conversion loan ever (as in this year or any year): Metro Loft and InterVest  secured $867 million from Tyko Capital, J.P. Morgan Chase and Apollo Global Management for their conversion at 111 Wall Street.

Oh, and Bloomberg signed a 495,753-square-foot renewal at Global Holdings’ 120 Park Avenue, which would also make it No. 5 on our biggest leases of 2025 list.

And, while we didn’t see any sales records cracked, there was a healthy amount of activity despite the snowy, slushy weather outside.

Bushburg Properties, for one, knows a good deal when they see one and picked up 100 William Street in the Financial District for $70 million — which is less than half of the $166.5 million the seller, Manulife, paid for it back in 2013.

BXP is also fine-tuned to a good deal. The company plunked down $55 million for the 300,000-square-foot 2100 M Street NW in Washington, D.C., from AllianceBernstein to rebuild as a swanky 320,000-square-foot trophy office. And, if that sounds risky, BXP already signed Sidley Austin to be its 240,000-square-foot anchor tenant.

Beyond deals for specific properties, there were some bigger deals that crossed the 2025 finish line last week.

Paramount Group shareholders, for example, approved its long-negotiated sale to Rithm Capital for $1.6 billion — despite the fact that shareholders are apparently less than pleased with Chairman and CEO Albert Behler’s $34 million exit package. (As Crain’s reported back in March, Paramount made over $4.6 million in “previously undisclosed payments to outside companies owned by CEO Albert Behler.”)

For a deeper dive into the sale (minus some stuff that couldn’t be disclosed until it was done), it might be worth checking out CO’s interview with Rithm’s Michael Nierenberg that published earlier this month.

Plus, we learned that Bain Capital Real Estate and 11North Partners raised a whopping $1.6 billion for their 2024 joint venture focused on buying up grocery-anchored, open-air retail centers. That’s right. Retail rocks.

Love it, or Lever it

There were plenty of smaller deals that also earned 2025 status.

Brookfield Properties and WatermanClark’s famed Lever House at 390 Park Avenue in Midtown secured $150 million in refinancing from Bank of New York Mellon.

Ian Schrager scored $310 million in CMBS refinancing on the 367-key Public Hotel at 215 Chrystie Street in a deal arranged by J.P. Morgan Chase.

And Brooklyn was in on the race, too. David Grunfeld filed plans to turn 277 North Eighth Street in Williamsburg into a 17-story, mixed-use building with 99 units of housing; and Midwood Investment & Development nabbed $200 million of construction financing from Affinius Capital to construct a 21-story, 276-unit multifamily rental in Gowanus (with ground-floor retail) at 200 Douglass Street.

Hey, don’t forget Florida!

It wasn’t only New York City that’s been active. PMG, Lion Development Group and Lndmrk Development got $92.5 million from Maxim Capital Group to build One West Twelve Residences, a 372-unit luxury condo in Miami’s Overtown neighborhood.

Also in South Florida, Publix continued its long dive into owner-operatorship, shelling out $83 million for the Polo Club Shops in Boca Raton from Jamestown — which netted Jamestown a nifty profit. (They bought the 137,780-square-foot asset for $50.7 million in 2015.)

The biggest news out of South Florida, though, was … well … big. Truly so: Stephen Ross’s Related Ross landed $772 million in construction financing for two West Palm Beach office towers. It’s one of the biggest such loans in the region this year.

Southern California wanted in on the six-figure fun, too, with Amidi Real Estate Group getting $125 million in financing from Oaktree Capital Management for TenTen Campus, a 228-unit apartment complex in Downtown Glendale.

All in all, this should give you a lot to think about over the course of the Christmas holiday this week. Prediction: Next week will be slower. But we wouldn’t put money on it.

If you’re still in the prediction mood, there’s plenty to think about in the field of artificial intelligence in 2026 — and how it will affect proptech.

“Over the next few years, AI will start to truly understand the physical world,” according to Jeevan Kalanithi, CEO and co-founder at OpenSpace. “Large language models have dominated the news cycle for the last few years, and for good reason. They are amazing. But the next major leap will come from spatial AI — AI systems trained on reality data like images, video and spatial information that capture how the physical world actually looks and functions.”

Merry Christmas — see you next week!