Payments from the bistate agency helped bring anchor tenant to One World Trade Center

By Daniel Geiger

Departure of Chinese investor would clear the way for Marriott to continue with acquisition

A group led by China’s Anbang Insurance Group Co. withdrew its $14 billion takeover bid for Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc., clearing the way for a purchase by Marriott International Inc., according to two people with knowledge of the matter.

Starwood shareholders are scheduled to vote April 8 on Marriott’s cash-and-stock bid, valued at $77.94 a share, or $13.2 billion, based on Thursday’s closing price.

Carrie Bloom, a spokeswoman for Starwood, declined to comment. Representatives for Beijing-based Anbang couldn’t immediately be reached. The withdrawn bid was reported earlier by the Wall Street Journal.

Starwood shares fell 4% in after-hours trading to $80 as of 4:36 p.m. in New York.

Developers thought the luxury condo prices would just keep rising. Now they have to think again

by Daniel Geiger

The pessimism centers on residential development sites amid concerns the city is overstuffed with high-end apartments.

Among the recent string of sobering reports is news that a 10-story building in Brooklyn Heights—one of three large properties being sold by the Jehovah’s Witnesses there and in Dumbo—will fetch a price 25% below the $300 million or more for which it was initially projected to sell. The parcels are considered prime places for both residential and commercial development.

Brokers said the decrease mirrors a precipitous drop in the value of land sites in the city by 20% to 25% so far in 2016. These brokers declined to speak on the record because several are marketing such properties and don’t want to openly disparage the products they are trying to sell.

Tumbling land values, which had reached $1,000 or more per square foot for prime sites, are a reflection of the growing weakness in the city’s high-end residential market. Developers had been willing to pay record sums for land as long as the apartments they built could fetch unprecedented sums. The payoff is no longer the same, according to the brokerage Corcoran Group, which reported that the average sale price for a luxury apartment fell from $8.1 million in the fourth quarter of 2014 to $6.9 million at the end of 2015, a 15% decline.

The rise of the dollar against currencies of countries whose citizens have been stashing their wealth in New York real estate has also hurt the market, according to a report released last week by the National Association of Realtors.

Brazil, China and Russia have been particularly hard hit by the stronger dollar.

“Foreign buyers are facing some headwinds,” wrote NAR economist Scholastica Cororaton last week, noting that from April 2014 through March 2015, they spent $102 billion on homes in the U.S., with Chinese buyers leading the pack.

Co-StarONE57: Gary Barnett has been unable to move 38 units in this Billionaire’s Row tower.

“High-end condos are not being sold at the same rate as they were two years ago, when we were going through a sales boom,” said Jonathan Miller, CEO of real estate appraisal and data firm Miller Samuel. “We’re starting to see developers negotiate on price and the market [begin to] transition where it’s no longer a frantic selling environment for new development.”

Besides the falling sales projections and tapering interest among foreign buyers, developers must also worry whether they’ll be able to secure the loans to begin construction, as banks become leery of high-end residential development.

Developers Joseph Beninati and Bruce Eichner are both facing foreclosure in Manhattan after failing to lock up the loans needed to begin building. As many as 20 other sites may be unable to secure construction financing, and may stall and face foreclosure, predicted Dennis Russo, who leads the real estate practice at law firm BakerHostetler in New York.

In 2013, Eichner bought a long-vacant development site on the corner of East 125th Street and Park Avenue for $66 million. He planned to build a 330-foot-tall, 670-unit rental apartment tower there. Eichner, who has a history of defaulting when the economy turns, received a loan from Garrison Investment Group to buy the site but couldn’t secure construction financing to begin the project. The Durst Organization, a large New York City landlord, purchased the debt from Garrison and is now moving to foreclose after Eichner defaulted on the loan earlier this year. To extricate himself from the financial jam, Eichner in recent months has tried to sell the project for an asking price of about $150 million.

The growing talk of falling prices and foreclosures stands in stark comparison to the bullish mood of the market even just a year ago, when developers were seeing a nearly 18% year-over-year gain in the average price per square foot among new developments.

“Until the middle of last year, no one was fearful, but today a higher percentage of people are,” said Bob Knakal, Cushman & Wakefield’s chairman of New York investment sales. “Markets are psychological, and as the fear builds you get a herd mentality that comes into effect.

“It’s harder to get deals done—buyers and lenders are being more cautious, and it’s harder to get equity together,” Knakal added.

Cushman & Wakefield projects that 175 to 200 development sites citywide will be sold in the first quarter of 2016—as much as 37% fewer than in the first quarter of last year, which was a record quarter for sales.

Although there has been little definitive data to show that the high-end residential market is tanking, there is growing evidence that the direction of prices and the pace of sales are pointing downward.

Builders change strategies

In its quarterly earnings call in February, Vornado Realty Trust declined to disclose recent sales figures at a superluxury tower it is building along Billionaire’s Row at 220 Central Park South. The omission stoked speculation that sales, after starting strongly, have fallen off in recent months.

Developer Gary Barnett has been unable to sell a block of 38 rental apartments at One57, the high-end condo tower he built on Billionaire’s Row. Barnett also has slashed prices at a condo tower he’s building on the Lower East Side, cutting his projection for the total value of the apartments by about $200 million, to almost $1.9 billion.

Kevin Maloney, the developer of a luxury condo building at 10 Sullivan St., is carving the 17-story building’s three-level, $45 million penthouse into two units more modestly priced because of a dearth of buyers actively looking for such expensive apartments. Builders Harry Macklowe and CIM Group recently decided to cut in half the full-floor units on floors 91 to 95 of the 96-story superluxury condo spire that is nearly complete at 432 Park Ave.

Brooklyn’s soaring market for residential development sites has also been thrown off this year, though the culprit is not a market glut or the global economy, but the failure of the real estate and construction industries to reach a deal to extend a tax break.

The expiration of the 421-a tax-abatement program this year has thrust the land market into a precipitous decline. Ofer Cohen, founder and principal of Brooklyn-focused commercial brokerage firm TerraCRG, estimated that land sales would drop by 70% this year.

Developers viewed the tax break as essential to their bottom lines when building rental housing, Cohen said, and few if any development sites have traded hands since it expired. The abatement offered developers a break on their real estate taxes if they included affordable units in their projects.

“Around 80% to 90% of the market for development sites was for rental-housing construction,” Cohen said. “The only rental development sites that are trading now are those that already qualified for 421-a because they got their foundations poured. And there’s not that many of those on the market.”

Arrested development

Bruce Eichner hoped to build luxury apartments on an East Harlem lot across from Metro-North’s Harlem-125th Street station. Now he’s trying to sell the land.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses are struggling to sell parts of their former Brooklyn headquarters, including these buildings in Brooklyn Heights as demand wanes for luxury development sites.

BY AMY PLITT:

A rendering of Central Park Tower sans spire, circa September 2015

Extell’s Central Park Tower is still a ways off from claiming its prize as New York City’s tallest tower, but construction on the 1,550-foot supertall is coming along. While it’s in the early phases, one big mystery—what the facade will look like—is getting somewhat cleared up. An anonymous tipster sent a photo to YIMBY that shows one of the curved panels that will make up the building’s steel-and-glass exterior, and it accompanies a construction update on the building. It’s no longer just a big hole in the ground; the lower levels of the building, which will hold a seven-story Nordstrom department store, are already becoming visible above ground.

[One of the building’s exterior panels. Photo via YIMBY]

[Construction progressing at the site. Photo by Andrew McKeon via YIMBY] 

Joseph Beninati was denied a temporary restraining order that he had sought to block lender Gamma Real Estate from seizing or auctioning properties he wanted to raze to make way for new tower

by David Geiger

Rendering of Bauhouse Group’s East 58th Street condo tower

The developer planning a supertall tower in the Sutton Place neighborhood of Manhattan lost a key decision in court Tuesday, paving the way for a foreclosure auction of his properties.

Joseph Beninati was denied a temporary restraining order that he had sought to block lender Gamma Real Estate from seizing or auctioning off his properties at  428-432 E. 58th St., three contiguous five-story apartment buildings. In January, Beninati, founder of Bauhouse Group, defaulted on a $147.25 million loan from Gamma, a firm controlled by real estate investor N. Richard Kalikow, after trying unsuccessfully to sell the site or refinance it. The court’s refusal to grant the restraining order was a major blow to Beninati.

“We have spent two years of time and millions of dollars,” said Beninati, who looked deflated outside the courtroom in lower Manhattan Tuesday afternoon.

Gamma’s attorney in the case, Ronald Greenberg of the firm Kramer Levin, disclosed that nine bidders planned to participate in the foreclosure auctionscheduled for Feb. 29. Beninati could conceivably recoup some of his investment in the site if a bidder agrees to pay a sum in excess of what Gamma is owed. However, Beninati didn’t see that as a likely outcome.

Beninati’s lawyers, Stephen Meister and Kevin Fritz, accused Gamma of improperly marketing the properties to potential buyers in order to enhance its chances of taking over the site. Some real estate executives who have followed the case expect the properties to end up in Gamma’s possession after Monday’s auction—an outcome that would wipe out Beninati’s investment in the project.

“I don’t believe there’s information in the hands of bidders that would allow them to understand the complexities of the site,” Beninati said. “If we could get that information into the hands of bidders we would be able to get a collection of offers.”

Beninati’s problems come as both real estate lenders and buyers have begun to pull back on construction of high-end condo projects owing to increasing concerns that the condo market may be slowing as an oversupply of newly built multimillion-dollar apartments come up for sale.

Beninati envisioned demolishing the three buildings on East 58th Street and erecting a 950-foot-tall, ultra-luxury condo tower on the site—a plan that has sparked outcry from some of the project’s neighbors and city officials.

In court, representatives for Gamma acknowledged the project’s challenges.

“The market is turning,” Greenberg, Gamma’s attorney, said, urging the court to disallow an injunction that would delay its efforts to take back the properties. “More importantly, there was a press release only last month by the Manhattan borough president, signed by a state senator and City Council members, that they would seek to change the zoning of the site and cut the height from 1,000 feet to 260 feet. Right now we’re exposed.”

February 24, 2016 12:10PM
By EB Solomont

From the outset, Trinity Church’s decision to develop a luxury condominium in Lower Manhattan seemed at odds with its commitment to community service and low-income housing. Now, the Episcopal church has quietly scrapped plans for a residential tower at the site of its 90-year-old parish building, where it will instead build a community center and offices.

Gone are the condos. New plans call for a 145,000-square-foot mixed-use building at 74 Trinity Place, church officials and architects disclosed during a community meeting held on Feb. 21.  The building will house more than 98,000 square feet of community space, including classrooms, gym facilities, a café and a formal meeting room with floor-to-ceiling windows that face the historic Trinity Church directly across the street at 75 Broadway.

“Trinity’s Vestry determined that a commercial tower… is better suited to supporting the important mission-focused work that is the basis for the new building,” the Rev. Dr. William Lupfer, rector of Trinity Wall Street, told The Real Deal in a statement Wednesday. “Considering our numerous ministries in Lower Manhattan and our close ties to the community, a flexible office component makes more sense.”

Throughout its planning process for the site, the church has sought community input via a series of “charettes,” a term for design meetings with community stakeholders.

“Without the charette process… we might have built the wrong building,” architect Fred Clarke of Pelli Clarke Pelli said at the Feb. 21 meeting.

The offices, which will start on the 10th floor of the 25-story building, will be the “right size for smaller startup companies,” he said. “It’s a highly-efficient office tower.”

Early plans called for a nearly 300,000-square-foot tower with six or seven stories reserved for the church’s offices, topped by a 25-story residential portion. In 2013, Trinity tapped Pelli Clarke Pelli to design the building, and said it was seeking a development partner to execute plans for the residential component.

But local residents opposed the residential portion, saying it looked out of place. They also expressed concern over an onslaught of residential development in the area, including Time Equities’ 50 West Street and 125 Greenwich Street, being co-developed by Bizzi & Partners, Michael Shvo and Howard Lorber’s New Valley.

Last year, Trinity commissioned the GillWright Group to conduct a community study, which contributed to its decision to retool its plans.

Church officials first signaled plans to scrap condos at a Nov. 21 charette, when Lupfer referenced the influx of residential development in Lower Manhattan. “We have not found a crystal ball to project the future… so we want to have the kind of space and finishes that can be changed over time,” he said.

To that end, he said the church vestry – already a major landlord in Hudson Square – decided over the summer to build offices atop a community center. “The offices are investment,” Lupfer said. “If we thought we could invest better somewhere else, we would have done it.”

The Hudson Square/West Village submarket commanded asking rents of $69.75 per square foot during the fourth quarter, with a 6.7 vacancy rate, according to Cushman & Wakefield.

Trinity – whose ownership of more than 200 acres of Manhattan real estate dates back to the 1700s – is one of Hudson Square’s major office landlords. Last year, the church sold a stake in its 5 million-square-foot portfolio to Norway’s sovereign wealth fund for $1.56 billion. The deal valued 11 of Trinity’s buildings at $3.55 billion, as TRD reported.

Trinity officials said at the time that diversifying the church’s assets was “critical” to sustaining the ministry’s operations.

Grovo has signed a 10-year lease for 70,000 square feet at 50 W. 23rd St., where Dropbox and SoundCloud already have offices
by Daniel Geiger

A midtown south building on West 23rd Street is quickly becoming a haven for tech companies.

Grovo, which provides clients with online training for employees, has signed a 10-year lease for 70,000 square feet at 50 W. 23rd St., a building owned by Two Trees Management. The company will be taking the entire fifth, sixth and 12th floors at the 13-story, 340,000-square-foot property. Asking rents at the building are above $70 per square foot. The firm will be moving out of 3 Park Ave., where it has 29,000 square feet.

“We’re incredibly excited to have identified a new location for Grovo that will accommodate our current and future growth,” said Jeff Fernandez, Grovo co-founder and  CEO, “Our new home will provide open, communal areas for even more collaboration to accelerate our mission to deliver workplace learning programs people love.”

Two Trees is best known for its projects in Dumbo, helping to establish that Brooklyn neighborhood as a popular location for both residential and office tenants. Recently, the company has focused on 50 W. 23rd St., a property it purchased in 2010.

“Building off of our success in Dumbo, where we learned that tech tenants need adaptable, open office space, 50 W. 23rd St. has attracted top tenants across the industry,” said Jed Walentas, a principal of Two Trees Management. “This building remains an ideal location for firms looking for centrally located, adaptable spaces with first-class amenities.”

Walentas said Two Trees has invested about $25 million into renovating the building over the past three years. The improvements include upgrading the lobby, installing more sophisticated heating and ventilation systems and the addition of a 11,000-square-foot roof deck.

With the Grovo lease, Two Trees said, the building is now about 90% occupied. The deal follows two other recently signed leases with tech firms:Dropbox, a cloud computing and storage company, took 31,270 square feet at the building in December, and SoundCloud, the online music platform, took 43,000 square feet there in the summer of 2015.

Dan Conlon and Elizabeth Bueno, in-house leasing executives at Two Trees, represented the landlord in the deal. Eric Ferriello and Robert Tunis, brokers with Colliers International, represented Grovo. Ferriello was also the broker who represented SoundCloud in its lease.

An overabundance of condos without buyers could mean the end of easy money for resellers

By Joe Anuta

In March 2014, a JPMorgan Chase managing director named Leslie Perkins paid $5 million for an Upper East Side condominium at 141 E. 88th St. Almost exactly a year later, she sold it for $6.5 million—a 30% return before taxes and fees.

Perkins, who could not be reached to comment for this story, is a type of well-heeled New York City investor who has made fast money in recent years by buying apartments in new condominiums, in some cases so early on that units hadn’t even hit the market. Because the attorney general’s office does not sign off on new condominium offerings or conversions until 15% of a development’s apartments are in contract, developers tend to start selling units at a discount. Investors willing to take a risk on a building not yet completed, are there to pounce.

“There is a herd mentality in real estate,” said Leonard Steinberg, president of residential brokerage Compass. “And if someone is going to support a building early on, there has to be some incentive or some reward.”

In 2015, the best apartment flippers saw seven-figure gains within 18 months of buying their units, according to data compiled by listings website CityRealty. Among them were Robert and Kathleen Kaswell, founder of a real estate firm and a former CEO of Nine West Group, respectively. The husband and wife profited more than 50% on their unit in Walker Tower, located at 212 W. 18th St. in Chelsea.

After closing on the 17th-floor apartment in December 2013, they sold it for $10.7 million to Andrew Liveris, the chief executive of Dow Chemical, in February 2015. During the same time period, Dow Chemical stock rose by a modest 4%—which illustrates why this particular real estate play can be so attractive.

“Whether [my clients] could retire or make that their business I don’t always know,” said Bruce Cohen, a partner at real estate law firm Cohen & Frankel who puts together contracts for condo buyers. “But there are some who have made boatloads of money.”

But the most lucrative flips of 2015 may be some of the last. Manhattan sales data show that quick resales are becoming less profitable. Returns fell by half in the past year, to an average of 15%. And real estate experts believe that as more luxury condos in new towers come onto the market, supply will far outstrip demand.

‘Everybody’s retirement plan’

A flip isn’t defined by an exact time period, but most brokers would consider it buying and selling for a profit within a year or two (the legal definition technically refers to a much rarer occurrence of reselling a signed contract before the deal has closed). Friends and family members of developers, along with real estate brokers and savvy investors, have been flipping for decades.

“In the ’80s, this was everybody’s retirement plan,” said Jonathan Miller, head of appraisal firm Miller Samuel.

What makes for a good flip varies. The most common explanation for big deals is the simplest: Developers discount some units by as much 30% to entice early buyers. In exchange, builders get something even more valuable.

Buck EnnisJonathan Ostrow, the founder of website MicControl.com, closed on a $2.8 million apartment in HFZ Capital’s One Madison in November 2014 and resold it just three months later for a 50% gain

The initial offering of condominiums in New York state is regulated by a special office under the state attorney general called the Real Estate Finance Bureau. Before developers can start signing contracts, bureau staffers must vet highly detailed project plans. Vornado Realty Trust, for example, submitted 554 pages for its luxury tower at 220 Central Park South. The plans disclosed everything from how the condo board will function to the offering price of every unit in the building.

Once 15% of the apartments are in contract and the bureau declares a new building plan effective, developers typically begin to jack up prices to discourage potential buyers from waiting too long to sign a contract. At 220 Central Park South last year, Vornado raised prices by a collective $659 million over seven months, according to records from the real estate bureau.

These price gains can create instant equity for early buyers, who can then cash out by reselling their units. It is too soon to know whether early 220 Central Park South buyers will flip, but Vornado announced last year it had sold $1.1 billion worth of apartments without even opening its sales office to the public.

“Early on, the [developer] and the broker are [often] offering low-hanging fruit,” said Nancy Packes, who runs a namesake real estate consulting firm.

Typically, smaller units on the lower floors, which net the lowest profit anyway, are the ones that are underpriced. Penthouses and more valuable offerings are held longer until prices climb. Of the 10 biggest Manhattan flips in 2015, three were units purchased directly from the developer below the 10th floor, according to data collected by CityRealty.

Most developers write clauses into their contracts forbidding the buyer to flip within a year of closing, to avoid competition.

“If a developer has nine three-bedroom apartments for sale, it’s not good if you’re out there trying to flip a three-bedroom as well,” said Andrew Heiberger, founder of brokerage Town Residential.

Developer Steve Witkoff, on the other hand, allowed buyers to resell units before they had even closed on their contracts at his West Village development 150 Charles—and then took a cut of the profits.

Last year’s winners

The flippers of 2015 tended to be successful entrepreneurs or finance professionals. In other words: investors with cash.

Dax DaSilva is a Canadian tech entrepreneur who co-founded Lightspeed, a company that provides point-of-sale systems for small businesses. In March 2014, a trust registered in his name closed on an apartment in Walker Tower for $4.6 million; 18 months later, the trust sold it for $7.7 million.

Buck EnnisJoseph Sitt, the chief executive of Thor Equities, more than doubled his money last month by selling a SoHo retail co-op 138 Greene St.

Jonathan Ostrow, the founder of websiteMicControl.com, closed on a $2.8 million apartment in HFZ Capital’s One Madison in November 2014 and resold it just three months later for a 50% gain. In many cases, these flippers actually signed a contract months—and sometimes more than a year, before actually closing.

Daniel Collin, co-chief executive of private-equity firm Monomoy Capital Partners, already owned a unit on the seventh floor of 415 Greenwich in March 2015 with his wife, Lindsey, when they purchased the building’s penthouse for $7.7 million. Nine months later, they sold it for $11.5 million.

Location and timing are also key to these flips’ success. Walker Tower, Verizon’s former Art Deco building along West 18th Street in Chelsea, is one of a number of projects, including One Madison and 150 Charles, where several flips have transpired.

In this case, JDS Development Group launched the Walker Tower project in 2012, which was so early in the condo boom that its units were precious commodities. Some of the apartments there increased in value so rapidly because of high demand that early buyers who were planning to live in the units were enticed to flip instead.

The Kaswells inked their contract before the attorney general’s office fully signed off on the project’s plans. By the time they closed and began prepping their move in 2014, their needs had changed, and they discussed the unit’s new value with residential brokerage Core.

“Eyebrows were raised,” said the Core agent, Christian Rogers. The couple made $3.77 million.

Uncertain future

The biggest flips typically happen at the outset of a boom, when prices increase rapidly, noted Donna Olshan, head of brokerage and consulting firm Olshan Realty. “I don’t think you can count on this as the model now,” said Olshan. Many real estate experts believe that the high-end condo market is being saturated with units, which is leading to longer sale times and smaller price gains.

“Developers will probably still prime the pump,” said Miller, whose firm analyzed Manhattan apartment flips over the past two years for Crain’s. “But the market might not be able to support two, three or four price increases—meaning the initial investor won’t get the same instant equity.”

Miller’s data show that in the past two years, about 240 apartments were sold in Manhattan that had been purchased only a year before. These units cost between $1 million and $2 million; the median price for a Manhattan home in the fourth quarter of 2015 was $1 million. Flippers averaged at least a 20% profit. That is easily enough to cover broker fees and taxes that typically make up 10% of an apartment’s price or more, if an apartment is flipped within a year and is subject to short-term capital-gains taxes. But by April 2015, average gains had fallen below 20%, and Miller doesn’t think they will rise above that mark any time soon.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that buying early in new condo developments has become a bad investment, Compass’ Steinberg said. It just means that it won’t be a quick one.

“Markets don’t go up indefinitely, but in big cities like London and New York, they recover very quickly,” he said. “If you have the ability to ride out a correction and can rely on renting the unit out, you will more than likely make money.”

Biggest flips in Manhattan* (Click on each row for more information.)

Building	Address	Purchased	Paid
Walker Tower	212 W. 18th St., 17D	12/23/13	$6,975,013
TriBeCa Summit	415 Greenwich St., PH-B	3/9/15	$7,744,000
Walker Tower	212 W. 18th St., 9E	3/24/14	$4,582,125
508 W. 24th S	508 W. 24th St., 5NS	11/20/14	$9,571,550
Philip House	141 E. 88th St., 7F	3/12/14	$4,995,169
One Madison	23 E. 22nd St., 14A	11/24/14	$2,851,100
One57	157 W. 57th St., 44B	4/24/14	$7,029,425
161 Hudson St.	161 Hudson St., 2A	7/3/13	$3,025,000
One Madison	23 E. 22nd St., 14B	12/11/14	$3,207,488
Millennium Tower Residences	30 West Street, PH2F	5/29/2014	$3,032,505

*Ranked by profit Source: CityRealty

A bathroom with a view in 432 Park

Harry Macklowe is probably sighing with satisfaction now that his pencil-thin super tower at 432 Park has closed its inaugural sale.

The three-bedroom unit at #35B closed for nearly $18.12 million, according to city records spotted by 6sqft. The 4,003-square-foot apartment includes four-and-a-half baths, a private elevator landing and 10-foot-by-10-foot windows.

However, the owner of the unit will most likely remain a bit of mystery, as the name on the document appears as LLC, 432 PARKVIEW.  –Christopher Cameron