Larry Gluck’s Stellar Management Loses Riverton Apartment Complex in Harlem
The 1,232 apartment units comprising the Riverton will be auctioned off because its owner no longer pays its debt financing. Stellar Management, purchased the property in 2005 and took out a $225 million mortgage. But by September of last year, it was worth just $108 million, according to one analyst estimate. The gated enclave contains a long grassy mall, tree-shaded playground and marble lobbies.... [Read More]
February 4, 2010Touch A Brooklyn Apartment Building From The Subway…in 1969
Once upon a time, the Myrtle Street el train soared from Jay Street-Borough Hall to Metropolitan Avenue-Queens. In 1969, the elevated subway line was dismantled, but not before Theresa King and 1000 other passengers took the last midnight ride. As you can see from the pictures on her website, you could actually stick your arm out the window to touch the nearby apartment buildings. Her exhibit runs... [Read More]
February 4, 2010Arsonist Nabbed in Deadly Brooklyn Apartment Building Fire
Daniel Ignacio told police investigators that while he was drunk, he used paint thinner to ignite a roll of toilet paper on fire with a cigarette lighter inside a baby carriage in the stairwell of his apartment building. Ignacio then went to sleep, and woke up to find his Bensonhurst building at 2033 86th Street ablaze. (The residence is a 3-story, four-unit, mixed-use brick building erected in 1932.) Any... [Read More]
February 2, 2010New York City Apartment Complex Developer Loses Second Tower In Month
Yair Levy’s development firm, YL Real Estate Developers, defaulted on its $165 million mortgage on Rector Square, a failed 303-unit condo conversion in Battery Park City. Levy attempted to buy time for Rector Square, located at 225 Rector Place, by bringing a lawsuit against lender Anglo Irish Banking Corp., alleging the lender did not comply with its loan obligations. New York State’s... [Read More]
February 2, 2010What Convicted Child Rapist Is Also An Upper West Side Apartment Building Superintendent?
William Barnason, 57, has keys for the more than 50 apartments in the three apartment buildings he runs on behalf of apartment building owner Stanley Katz. According to the NY Post: In September 1987, Barnason — already in prison for sexually abusing a 5-year-old girl — was sentenced to 10 to 20 years after pleading guilty to rape, sodomy and sexual-abuse charges related to an attack on... [Read More]
February 1, 2010Who Will Control Stuyvesant Town?
Tishman Speyer has ruled out the nuclear option of bankruptcy to forestall the struggle for control of Stuyvesant Town / Peter Cooper Village. Now a real estate food fight will ensue over control of the 110-building complex, each one containing about 100 units. (WSJ incorrectly states that it is a 56-building complex.) WSJ states that the leading contender is CW Capital, a servicer representing the... [Read More]
February 1, 2010Harry Macklowe Buys High, Sells Low in New York Multifamily
Harry Macklowe is selling three Manhattan high rise apartment buildings to Sam Zell’s Equity Residential for a combined $475 million. Macklowe has already sold the River Tower, at 415 East 53rd Street, a 38-story property on Sutton Place and East 54th Street with 323 units, and 777 Sixth Avenue, a 32-story tower at West 27th Street with 294 units. Macklowe has signed a contract to sell Longacre... [Read More]
February 1, 2010Is Anyone Really Calling the Bottom in New York City Multifamily?
Multifamily values have not bottomed out because: (1) vacancies will continue climbing; (2) rents will continue declining; (3) interest rates have not yet crept up; (4) many loans have not depleted their interest reserves (Hat tip: Reuters). Add to this mix the growing numbers of unemployed and underemployed. More people remain unemployed long-term than at any time since 1948: Forty percent of all... [Read More]
February 1, 2010NY to Atlantic Yards Developer: Finish By…2035?!
What will happen by 2035? Muslims will outnumber Christians in Britain. China will surpass the U.S. economically. Jerusalem will lose its Jewish majority, if those predictions are accurate. In addition, 2035 is also the deadline the City and State of New York have given to Forest City Ratner to complete the Atlantic Yards project. In the event that developer Bruce Ratner misses that last deadline,... [Read More]
February 1, 2010The Unintended Consequences of Security Cameras on New York City Apartment Buildings
New Year’s Day, 2010: A time for celebration, resolutions, and…a huge fight along Albany Avenue, in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. Police arrived to disperse the crowd, and break up the fight. Davial Rowe and Nagi Benson were charged with assaulting a police officer. Surveillance footage from a camera mounted on a nearby apartment building show New York’s Finest repeatedly... [Read More]
January 29, 2010Which New York City Apartment Building Owner Faces an Attorney General Investigation For Tenant Harassment?
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo will start a lawsuit against Neil Rubler’s Vantage Properties for systemic harassment of its tenants. Since 2006, Vantage has acquired more than 125 buildings with more than 9,500 units—the majority of which are rent-regulated—in Harlem, northern Manhattan and parts of Queens. Nicholas Haros, dubbed one of the city’s 10 worst landlords in 2005... [Read More]
January 28, 2010
