Real Estate Sector

GOP Uses Stock Act as Excuse to Call Kirsten Gillibrand a Congressional Inside Trader (Again)

​Following yesterday's passage in the U.S. Senate of the Federal Stock Act, the New York State Republican Party came out swinging. Per usual, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand -- who voted in favor of the bill -- is the target of the GOP's blows.First and foremost, the Federal Stock Act would make it so ... More >>

NYCLU Goes After Brookfield Properties For Zuccotti Eviction

The birthplace of Occupy Wall Street lives on! And so does the anger surrounding the infamous eviction of protestors back in November. Today, the New York Civil Liberties Union filed a brief with the city's Criminal Court arguing that Brookfield Properties, the owner of Zuccotti Park, had no legal ... More >>

BitTorrent-Based Internet Piracy Does Not Hurt U.S. Movie Sales: Study

As the movie and music industries continue to bemoan internet piracy -- and push for internet-censoring laws like SOPA, PIPA, and the TPP to curb illegal file sharing -- a new academic study has come out that debunks a major belief about piracy and profit loss. In "Reel Piracy: The Effect of Onlin ... More >>

Economic Recovery Might Make You More Broke

The economy is improving in New York, so prepare to feel poorer! Because the real estate market has grown stronger recently, Manhattan rents are expected to balloon from 6 to 12 percent, DNA Info reports. The data, from residential brokerage firm BOND New York , suggest that high rents have return ... More >>

Mayor Bloomberg: 'Double the Class Size With a Better Teacher Is a Good Deal for the Students'

Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday at a conference at MIT that if he had it his way, he'd slash half the teaching staff of city schools. CBS doesn't have a whole lot of context for the quote, but read it and weep: "If I had the ability to just design the system and say ex cathedra this is what we're g ... More >>

Bloomberg Takes Flak at Facebook Presser for Comment About Firing Teachers

​Mayor Bloomberg, Sen. Chuck Schumer, and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg announced today that Facebook is opening an engineering office in New York City. Though Facebook already has 100 employees in New York, this is their first engineering office outside the West Coast. It will open in early 2 ... More >>

Mayor Bloomberg Refers to His and Diana Taylor's 'Pillow Talk'

​Mike Bloomberg's girlfriend Diana Taylor happens to sit on the board of directors of Brookfield Office Properties, the company that owns Zuccotti Park. This has raised some eyebrows, given Brookfield's tense relationship with the protesters occupying its property and the way the mayor and the ... More >>

Real Estate Company Renames Midtown 'MiMa'

​New York City real estate agents have given us one more reason to despise them; they're trying to rebrand Midtown West as MiMa, which is short for "The Middle of Manhattan," because the word "Midtown" doesn't make that clear enough. This new name is the work of Related, the company that just ... More >>

Dan Garodnick Q&A: The Senate Bill That Would Bail Out Landlords and Gut Court Ruling on Stuy Town Rents

David ShankboneIn 2009, a landmark state appeals court ruling found that the owners of Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village had illegally deregulated 4,400 apartments while enjoying special tax breaks from the city. Its impact wasn't quite clear; no one was sure what the legal rents of those apartme ... More >>

Cathie Black Gets a Free Pass from Business Pal Mort Zuckerman's Editorial Page

Cathie Black: What will she bling to the job?By Lily Altavena As backlash to Cathie Black's appointment as chancellor of New York City public schools mounts, the mayor remains mum while others question why he chose someone with such a lack of experience in education. The Daily News' editorial boar ... More >>

High Roller Steven Roth Buys Into Some Bad Karma

​The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that real-estate mogul Steven Roth recently bought Bernie Madoff's beach house for $9.41 million. That's some negative karma Roth is buying into. But the real-estate mogul is less known for his involvement in another business venture with even worse ju ... More >>

Battle of the Buildings: Empire State Building and 15 Penn Plaza Wage War of Artistic Renderings

​The empire state of mind is pretty pissy this week. Empire State Building owner Anthony Malkin of Malkin Holdings says that the enormous new building planned for 15 Penn Plaza, two blocks west of his 80-year-old beauty, would mar the view of New York's iconic skyscraper and change the skyline ... More >>

AMERICAN ODDITY

Coney Island's not-so-endless summer

Real Estate Company Invents New Manhattan Neighborhood

New Nabe!​You know all those little pockets of alleyways and small streets in New York you typically just appellate "no man's land"? The Manhattan Times reports that we now have a new (presumed) neighborhood in one of those little gray areas to mark an approximately two-block radius section of ... More >>

The New Museum Celebrates the Demise of CBGB, Rise of John Varvatos

​The conversion of CBGB into a fancy boot emporium is ancient news at this point, and as evil or wrongheaded as John Varvatos has often seemed on the Bowery--a sliver of the old wall, behind glass! Guns N' Roses!--putting CBGB out of its misery in 2006 was a mercy killing. It hadn't been good ... More >>

Pedro Espada Jr.: No One's More Loyal -- to Landlords

By Sara Gates Senate Majority Leader Pedro Espada Jr. defected from the Democrats and then defected from the Republicans during last year's Albany madness, but he'll always be loyal to his landlord pals. Last month, Espada launched a trial balloon for legislation that would ostensibly "freeze rent ... More >>

Stuy Town owners miss mortgage payment

​The Tishman Speyer/Black Rock Realty partnership which bet $5.4 billion that they could convert Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village to market rate housing in a booming real estate market that no longer exists moved one step closer to a total loss on Friday when it missed a $16 million mo ... More >>

'Tis the Season: Protesters Hit A Queens Mall With Demands For a Living Wage

As shoppers scurried to snatch up last minute gifts inside the Queens Center Mall, local elected officials and community organizations painted the shopping destination's landlord, Macerich, as the latest Grinch in the ongoing fight for living wages -- just days after the city council rejected a ... More >>

Hookers, Slot Machines, Rats: Life at the Bronx's 2320 Aqueduct Ave

Life is a gamble when your home is a bargaining chip

Barrett: Builder Blamed In Firefighter Deaths Is Building Bill Thompson's Wife's Museum

​Bovis Lend Lease, the contractor whose admitted failings contributed to the deaths of two firefighters at the Deutsche Bank fire in 2007, is building the $180 million museum and condo project on Fifth Avenue spearheaded by Elsie McCabe, the wife of mayoral candidate and Comptroller Bill Thomp ... More >>

Stuy Town Tenants Don't Get a Break on November Rents, Despite Ruling

After last week's landmark Stuyvesant Town decision -- in which a state appeals court found that the mega-developer Tishman Speyer had misused city tax breaks and illegally converted to market rate thousands of rent-controlled apartments in the historic complex -- one would expect some confusion. Bu ... More >>

Tishman Loses Stuy Town Fight; May Have to Pay $200 Million, Default

When Tishman Speyer Properties took thousands of units in Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village -- longtime middle-class bastions on the edge of the hyper-gentrified East Village -- out of regulation and raised rents, tenants sued and a court found that the properties could not be deregulated, b ... More >>

After Stuy Town Decision, Experts See Real Estate Market "Collapse." Really?

When a state appeals court decision came down today that private equity-backed realty company Tishman Speyer illegally converted thousands of Stuyvesant Town tenants into luxury units, the company pleaded with the judge that the ruling could be a death blow. Tishman and its partner, the firm Black ... More >>

Stuy Town Owners Back in Court to Defend Jacked-Up Rents

After nearly three years of veritable civil war between two powerful real estate executives and thousands of tenants, the owners of the historic downtown residential complexes, Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, will appear in court again today. Landlords Jerry and Rob Speyer, and their part ... More >>

Times Notices Closing Stores, Disapproves; Banks, Starbucks to Pick Up Slack

The New York Times notices a great number of shuttered shopfronts in Manhattan and, after consulting with experts, decides it's because "New Yorkers have drastically cut back" on the things they buy from the stores, such as "expensive shampoo at 24-hour drugstores, cheese plates at sleek wine bars a ... More >>

Rents Drop to New Lows, Which Are Still Ridiculously High

The real estate market crash newspapers believe we should be upset about -- said papers apparently believing we all have a million bucks we'd like to invest in house-flipping schemes -- proceeds apace. Today the Wall Street Journal tells us the whole country is seeing a 22-year-high in vacancy rate ... More >>

Free Food Alert: Ice Cream Cones and (Almost Free) Iced Coffee

Today is Ben & Jerry's free cone day! Here's a list of Ben & Jerry's shops in New York--note that several of the shops in the five boroughs are not participating. Scrooges! Also, Dunkin' Donuts is selling small iced coffees for 50 cents today, 10 percent of which will go to the charity Homes for ... More >>

Toll Brothers Pulling a Fast One in Gowanus?

Never trust a landlord, even if you're a powerful community board. Gowanus Lounge has learned that Community Board 6, which had given conditional approval on February 11 to Toll Brothers' condo project on the Gowanus, thinks they've been swindled. Toll Brothers received the approval on the condition ... More >>

O Holy Night! Carolers to Pimp $2.55 Luxury Units

What's Behind Mort Zuckerman's Citigroup Crush?

Gowanus Project Moves Forward, Builders Suffer Huge Losses

WSJ Says Real-Estate Drop Will Lure Businesses, But How Low Can We Go?

Debate 3: An Interview with Joe the Plumber

Daily Flog: The Dow of panic; stocks and bondage; U.S. snatches gold

Sheraton Turns Sheep Meadow Into Office

Landlords Flipped 200-Plus Residential Buildings Into 'Hotels': Report

J&L Mall Closed, For Real This Time?

The Hudson Railyard Bids Are In

Yankee Lobbyists on Taxpayers' Tab

Circling the bases: Documents reveal city paid the team's lobbyists and execs—for lobbying city and state officials

The Real Estate Job Shuffle

Lost your job in finance? No problem. For a small investment of time and money, you can be on your way to making a living in real estate.

What Becomes a Legend Most?

Selling King's Papers; Reclaiming Malcolm X's

His Lips Were Sealed

Thompson Failed to Warn Council of Board of Ed Overruns

Trust Fund Trussed?

World Trade Center Lease Deal Could Slash Housing Revenue

Green Leads in Real Estate Green

But in Mayor’s Race, the Industry Hasn’t Picked a Horse Yet

Campaign Cash

Vallone Leads Pack in Real Estate Dollars