The de Blasio administration is pursuing two zoning changes that could make the city a denser place without increasing the size of buildings.

The city hopes to allow more so-called micro apartments, or units smaller than 400 square feet, and give developers leeway to carve up buildings into more apartments.

The modifications—which would only alter a building’s innards, not size—are buried in a citywide proposal called Zoning for Quality and Affordability, which is currently making its way through the public-review process. That overall proposal includes a number of other changes to the way buildings will be constructed in New York City.

However, these two changes are geared toward tackling a simple housing problem that housing advocates have called on the city to address for years: the dearth of apartments for single households. Nearly 50% of the city’s population is estimated to be single people, spanning a wide range of ages and demographics, according to the nonprofit Citizens Housing and Planning Council. Yet only about 7% of the city’s housing stock is made up of studios, and about 35% are one-bedrooms, which are units also eyed by couples.

“You can’t deny the data,” said Sarah Watson, deputy director of the Citizens Housing and Planning Council, which has been advocating for more flexibility in unit sizes for years. “This mismatch causes all sorts of economic distortions.”

Here’s how the zoning changes would address the issue: Currently, there is a cap on the number of units allowed to be constructed inside a building in New York City. The limit varies by district and neighborhoods, but in parts of the Upper West Side, for example, a 6,800-square-foot building is limited to a maximum of 10 apartments by something called the density factor.

The rule was designed to limit the density of a given building. It’s the reason, for example, that developers can’t build an entire complex consisting of studios. The de Blasio administration is seeking to relax this limit in areas of the city where buildings are roughly 12 stories or higher, which were hitherto forced to be less dense than some of their smaller counterparts.

In practice, a 72,500-square-foot building in Long Island City, for instance, might currently be allowed a maximum of 101 units. But if the rules are changed, 106 apartments could be built. In the most extreme case, a building could contain a maximum of 15% more apartments than currently allowed.

While many developers don’t even hit their maximum allowable density (meaning they stock their buildings with larger units), Watson believes that giving them more flexibility in deciding the makeup of apartments is a step in the right direction to addressing the shortage of small apartments, though she would like to see the city give developers even more leeway. The shortage is a problem because, when singles can’t find their own place, they find roommates and take over larger apartments that would have been taken by a family.

“It’s far better to do this in an upfront way and allow denser housing, rather than having hidden density on the inside of these buildings,” she said. “Otherwise you get into the issues of not being able to plan for education or transportation, because you need to understand where people are living.”

The other major change sought by the administration would be to eliminate the current 400-square-foot minimum apartment size that still exists but is seen as outdated.

In fact, there has been an industry consensus that smaller units can easily provide desirable living conditions, and that minimum room sizes and other specific measures are already dictated by the city’s building code and provisions in the Americans With Disabilities Act, among others.

With this in mind, the Bloomberg administration in 2012 commissioned a contest to build a micro-unit pilot project to increase the density of units allowed inside a building. That pilot has resulted in a 11-story modular housing development in the Manhattan neighborhood of Kips Bay called Carmel Place, with studios as small as 260 square feet, which is set to open later this year.

The proposed changes would not allow for a building as dense as Carmel Place, which had its density requirement completely waived instead of modified.

– See more at: http://therealdeal.com/blog/2015/10/23/gladstones-madison-equities-partners-plans-65-story-condo-at-45-broad/#sthash.bZw488JT.dpuf

The super-luxury condo developer is waiting to open sales in the 800-condo building up to U.S. customers until early next year.

Gary Barnett, the developer who sold New York’s most expensive apartment, is marketing his newest and largest Manhattan condo project to Asian buyers first—with prices well below those at his Billionaires’ Row towers.

Barnett’s Extell Development Co. will start sales of the more than 800 condominiums at his Lower East Side property exclusively overseas, including in China, Malaysia and Singapore, he said in an interview. Apartments at the 80-story tower, called One Manhattan Square, won’t be for sale in the U.S until early next year.

They also won’t be breaking any price records. Barnett estimates that most of the One Manhattan Square condos will be listed at $1 million to $3 million. Homes in that range are in short supply in Manhattan, where developers—including Extell—have focused almost exclusively on building larger and lavish apartments aimed at ultra-wealthy buyers who view New York real estate as a haven for cash.

“We think that’s a reasonable place to be,” Barnett said of the One Manhattan Square pricing. “There are a tremendous amount of people who would like to own something in New York City but are priced out because everybody’s building super-luxury.”

It was Barnett himself who ignited the development boom of high-end homes with the construction of One57, the 1,004-foot skyscraper across from Carnegie Hall on Manhattan’s west side. Extell began work on that project, planned as the city’s tallest residential tower, less than a year after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. ushered in a real estate downturn.

The building reached $1 billion in sales after six months, including a contract to buy a penthouse for $100.5 million, the highest price ever paid for an apartment in New York history. That deal closed last year.

Construction boom

Other builders followed suit. Now at least eight residential properties aimed at multimillionaires—including Zeckendorf Development Co.’s 520 Park Ave., Vornado Realty Trust’s 220 Central Park South and another tower by Extell about one block from One57—are under construction in or near Midtown, with the 57th Street corridor being dubbed Billionaires’ Row. Manhattan prices overall reached a record of $1,497 a square foot in the third quarter, according to Miller Samuel Inc. and Douglas Elliman Real Estate.

While expensive homes are still drawing interest, the greater demand from places like Asia is for less pricey offerings, of which there aren’t many, Barnett said. Extell, which usually doesn’t outsource the sales and marketing of its properties, has hired Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. to sell One Manhattan Square’s units internationally, with exhibitions planned next month in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Beijing, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur.

“There’s a tremendous hunger to purchase in New York for investment or for living or for safety or for a pied-a-terre,” Barnett said. “It’s hard to find something which is a good value and that more people can afford.”

The project at 252 South St., about a mile from New York’s Chinatown, will be the largest ever for Extell by number of units, he said. The complex will have 50,000 square feet of indoor amenities that will include art studios for residents. Another 40,000 square feet of outdoor space will feature landscaped gardens and a “tea pavilion,” he said. The tower, which will be complete at the end of 2018, also will include smaller units, he said.

“There nothing really that’s crazy expensive,” Barnett said.

Land deal

The firm agreed to buy the land, near the Manhattan Bridge and the East River, in January 2012 for $103.5 million, according to public records. The timing of that site purchase—ahead of a spike in land prices brought about by the latest construction boom—is what enables Extell to offer apartments there at lower price points.

“He was the first out of the box after the financial crisis to market super-luxury,” Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel, said of Barnett. “If you take him to be a market leader, this is recognition of the next wave—when it’s possible for developers.”

HFZ Capital Group’s Ziel Feldman and homebuilder Toll Brothers Inc. have also announced plans to build less pricey condos as a way of satisfying a shortage in the Manhattan market.

For Extell, lower price points are a good strategy to attract buyers in China, after a currency devaluation in August made the cost of buying homes in the U.S. more expensive, Miller said. The devaluation, and the prospect of another, probably increased the appetite of buyers in the country, said Miller, who recently traveled to Shanghai to give presentations to real estate investors.

On New York listings website StreetEasy, page views originating from China more than doubled in July from a year earlier. That was the same month that China’s security regulator banned major shareholders from selling stakes in listed companies for half a year.

“That just makes people more anxious to invest in a stable and secure and economically vibrant country,” Barnett said. “The United States fits the bill and New York City tops the list. We haven’t seen any slowdown in demand at all.”

October 01, 2015
By Rich Bochmann

“Our strength is assembling land,” Extell Development’s Gary Barnett told an Israeli TV station late last year as he gave a reporter a tour of his condo tower One57. “On that, we’re Number 1.”

It’s hard to deny the accuracy of Barnett’s assessment. While Barnett was chatting with that reporter, construction crews were clearing the site for his next supertall tower just one block west at 217 West 57th.

That tower — which was unofficially known as Nordstrom Tower, but has now beenofficially dubbed Central Park Tower — will top out at 1,550 feet tall when it opens in 2019.

And like One57, it’s a textbook study on assembling the development and air rights needed to construct a supertall residential building. That process often takes years and involves a level of perseverance not all developers are cut out for.

But for most developers, particularly those near Central Park, assembling air rights is key. Barnett, for example, spent more than a decade negotiating nearly a dozen acquisitions to put together the 1.2 million square feet of development rights needed for the 183-unit Central Park Tower, which will reportedly have a record sellout of $4.4 billion.

“Gary is the most consummate, patient, visionary assembler of land in the city now,” said Michael Silverman, the co-chair of the land use group at the law firm Kramer Levin, which advises Barnett and other developers on land assemblages.

Here’s a look at some of the key deals that allowed him to go big at Central Park Tower — along with other key moments for the city on the supertall-tower front.

2001

Trump World Tower opens at 845 United Nations Plaza on the East Side. At 861 feet, it claims the title of the city’s tallest residential tower.

2003

Two years later, around the time that the Time Warner Center opens at what now seems like a modest 750 feet tall, Barnett is quietly negotiating to buy a controlling stake in the group that owns the former home of the Hard Rock Café a few blocks away at 221 West 57th Street.

Summer 2005

Extell closes on the Hard Rock deal as well as a property directly behind it fronting 58th Street, paying a total of $67.5 million. Together, the properties give him about261,080 square feet of development rights, and become the first pieces of Central Park Tower’s footprint.

December 2005

Barnett negotiates with the Art Students League of New York, a non-profit school whose alumni include Jackson Pollock and Georgia O’Keeffe, to buy air rights from its headquarters, which sits next to his site at 215 West 57th Street.

The 1892 French Renaissance building is a city landmark. But that doesn’t prevent its owners from cashing out on roughly 136,096 square feet of air rights above it.

January 2006

Barnett leapfrogs to 205 West 57th Street and pays $7.73 million to buy 100,670 square feet of air rights from the Osborne Apartments, a landmarked co-op built in the late 1800s.

March 2006

Rival developer Harry Macklowe closes on his $418 million purchase of the Drake Hotel, which will eventually become the site of his mega residential tower 432 Park Avenue. The building, also the product of a complicated assemblage, claims the title of the Western Hemisphere’s tallest residential tower when it tops out at 1,496 feet in 2014.

June 2006

Barnett continues plugging away at his assemblage for Central Park Tower. He pays $57.5 million to buy the B.F. Goodrich Company Building at 1780 Broadway, plus two other contiguous properties that form a rough T-shape next to his site. When the city moved to landmark the properties three years later in 2009, Barnett struck a deal that allowed him to demolish the two smaller buildings in exchange for preserving the ground-level façade of the 12-story “Automobile Row” building and incorporating it into his development. The deal netted him 156,050 square feet in development rights.

September 2006

Barnett locks down a narrow, 20-foot-wide lot wedged between two puzzle pieces on the 58th Street side of his site. He pays $14 million to the building’s owner, Robert Neuwirth, a prominent gynecologist, adding another 20,250 square feet to his tower.

November 2006

Barnett closes on a $2.23 million air-rights purchase from the 16-story St. Thomas Choir School at 202 West 58th Street. The move fetches him about 11,984 square feet in additional rights.

January 2007

Barnett snags another 14,290 square feet, paying $3.7 million to the estate of legendary developer Sol Goldman for the air rights over a 13-story apartment building at 200 West 58th Street.

2009

In the midst of the global recession, Extell breaks ground on One57, ensuring its status as the first among the city’s supertall towers when it tops out at 1,004 feet.

2011

Frank Gehry’s 8 Spruce Street opens Downtown. At 891 feet tall, the rental building, which was developed by Forest City Ratner, becomes Manhattan’s newest trophy tower.

June 2012

Extell announces a partnership with the department store Nordstrom to open the company’s first NYC location. The outpost will occupy seven stories at the tower’s base — hence the unofficial Nordstrom Tower name.

June 2013

In two separate transactions, Michael Stern’s JDS Development Group and Property Markets Group team up to buy Steinway Hall and the ground underneath at 111 West 57th Street for $177.8 million. The building will briefly be the city’s tallest apartment tower at 1,438 feet when it tops out in 2018. That is until Central Park Tower is complete.

July 2013

Barnett pays $25 million for the 20-foot-wide lot at 232 West 58th Street, completing his building site. In return he gets about 20,750 square feet of development rights.

October 2013

Barnett buys 90,371 square feet of development rights from Peter Fine’s Atlantic Development Group. The transaction is facilitated through city’s inclusionary housing program, which allows developers to sell development rights by creating affordable housing. Barnett can thank Atlantic’s 2005 project at 1 East 35th Street for this boost.

February 2014

The Art Students League approves an agreement allowing Extell to widen its building 28 feet to the east by cantilevering over its headquarters. Barnett pays the league $31.8 million for the easement and scores an additional 6,000-plus feet in air rights. It’s also the first time he reveals renderings for the tower designed by Adrian Smith and Gordon Grill, the firm behind the world’s tallest building: The 2,722-foot-tall Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

July 2014

Documents leaked to the website New York YIMBY peg Central Park Tower’s height at a symbolic 1,775 feet tall in deference to One World Trade Center. “It will be one foot less,” Barnett tells the Israeli TV reporter later in the year. “Out of respect.”

September 2015

New renderings reveal Extell has eliminated the building’s architectural spire, decreasing the overall height to 1,550 feet.

While the city’s other boroughs have yet to catch up, Brooklyn has beaten its previous median sales price record by 25%

By Joe Anuta

The median sale price of a Brooklyn home hit an all-time high during the third quarter of 2015, coming in at $676,250, or 15% higher than the same time a year ago, according to a market report released Thursday. The results reinforce just how much Brooklyn has gown into a desirable place to live—its recovery from the Great Recession has far outpaced other boroughs.

Brooklyn is the only borough whose median sale price has surpassed a previous high set before the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers. In fact, its growth has dwarfed other areas of the city. Case in point, while the median sale prices in Manhattan and Queens this quarter—$998,000 and $450,865, respectively—were still a few percentage points below their zeniths set in 2007. Brooklyn has exceeded the previous record by 25%.

“That’s not solely price appreciation and limited supply and demand—it’s a change of identity,” said Jonathan Miller, head of appraisal firm Miller Samuel, which prepared the report for Douglas Elliman, referring to Brooklyn.

Exactly how that identity, a sort of cultural patina that has attached itself to the borough, has evolved is complicated. But it is clear that a new crop of buyer is seeing Brooklyn not as an alternative to pricey  Manhattan, as in years’ past, but as a first choice.

Developers are also paying more attention to Kings County. But while additions to the housing stock have kept inventory relatively stable and above historic lows—the number of apartments for sale was down 13% from the third quarter of last year—it was not enough to slake demand. In fact, the average amount of time an apartment sat on the market was 55 days, down 40% from last year, signaling the market’s quick pace and that upward pressure on prices will likely continue.

The median price this quarter was 15% higher than a year ago and whether such a growth rate is sustainable in the long run is highly questionable. “Are wages growing that fast?” Mr. Miller asked. “I’d say no.”

October 07, 2015 08:00AM
By Konrad Putzier

With dozens of luxury condo towers under construction, New York’s skyline is in flux. And so are developers’ finances.

Almost $12 billion of apartment deals are under contract at the 15 biggest luxury developments under construction where sales have launched, according to figures compiled by The Real Deal from listings data firm On-Line Residential. That’s $11.7 billion of sales that haven’t closed – in some cases several years after signing.

A prolonged wait between signing and closing is hardly unusual for new developments, since construction has to near completion before a temporary certificate of occupancy can be issued. A sign of success in many ways, the large volume of units under contract also highlights the uncertainty condo developers are dealing with, and the risks they face if the market suddenly turns and buyers have second thoughts. For buyers, waiting years for an apartment in a market where existing units often sell in weeks requires patience.

Rudin Management and Global Holding’s Greenwich Lane leads the pack with 181 units under contract totaling $1.4 billion, according to a spokesperson for the project. The West Village project’s condo filing plan was declared effective in February 2014 and its current sellout figure is $1.7 billion – meaning the developers have almost met their target for the 199-unit building.

Alexico Group’s 56 Leonard Street had its offering plan declared effective a month earlier, in January 2014, and it has also sold almost all of its units. Work on the tower began in 2007, but was halted for several years in the aftermath of the financial crisis until the developers finally secured a construction loan from Bank of America in 2013. The 145-unit tower is scheduled to open next year, and has 142 apartments under contract for a total of $1.12 billion, according to OLR.

Among the newer offerings, SR Capital’s 551 West 21st Street has found quick success with buyers. The building is Scott Resnick’s first major project since leaving his family’s company, Jack Resnick & Sons. The offering plan was approved this March, and Resnick has already sold most of its units. “I’m certainly sleeping well at night, knowing that I am contracted for 80%,” he told the Wall Street Journal in May. According to OLR, 28 out of 44 units are under contract for a total of $400 million – close to the current sellout of $464 million.

The ranking comes with caveats: some developments have several closed sales, which are not reflected here, meaning it is by no means a ranking of sales success. And two prominent developments, 220 Central Park South and 432 Park Avenue, do not have any units under contract listed on OLR. In the case of 432 Park, TRD pulled a figure of $869.7 million from StreetEasy listings data, but sources close to the project say the real figure is likely much higher. In April, the Observer reported that the tower is 70 percent sold.

October 05, 2015 05:10PM

After launching sales in January, Ian Bruce Eichner’s Flatiron condo tower has hit the half-way mark, and the developer plans to put the first of two penthouses on the market in the spring for as much as $38 million.

Buyers have snapped up 50 percent of the 83 units at 45 East 22nd Street, Eichner told The Real Deal.

“We’ve sold evenly in every category we’ve got,” said Eichner, who hired Corcoran Sunshine to handle sales and marketing at the building.

The building, which uses a clever design to place more sellable square footage on the higher floors, has a projected total sellout of $714.6 million, according to a condo offering plan on file with the Attorney General’s office.

The most expensive unit on the market now just cracks the $20 million mark, with a number of full-floor units and a pair of penthouse apartments yet to be released at a time when sales of trophy listings in certain parts of the city have shown signs of cooling lately.

Eichner said the first penthouse, at 6,000 square feet, will hit the market around $38 million, while a second penthouse could fetch an even higher price.

When construction is finished in 2017, the Kohn Pedersen Fox-designed spire will climb more than 100 feet higher than One Madison, making it the tallest building between 57th Street and Lower Manhattan.

The tower is the product of a complex land assemblage Eichner put together next to One Madison, and marks his return to New York City development following several high-profile ups and downs

October 02, 2015 10:16AM
By Konrad Putzier

UPDATED, Oct. 2, 11:10 a.m.: The Dalian Wanda Group, China’s largest commercial real estate developer, is closing its New York office by November 30 and will run its U.S. operations from Beijing.

Wanda occupied a small office at RXR Realty’s and Blackstone Group’s 1330 Sixth Avenue. It wasn’t immediately clear why the Beijing-based company is leaving the Big Apple, or whether the step has any impact on its investments here.

Sean Muellers, Wanda’s chief U.S. representative, will leave the firm after three years at the end of November, according to an email sent out to colleagues and business partners, a copy of which TRD obtained. “Due to a corporate reorganization, Wanda’s New York Representative Office will be closing by November 30th,” Muellers wrote. “Please note that all US investment activity going forward will be managed directly from Beijing.”

In 2012, Wanda bought the AMC movie theater chain for $2.6 billion. Last year, it announced a $1.2 billion mixed-use development in Beverly Hills and acquired a development site in Chicago with plans to develop a $900 million mixed-use tower.

Unlike rival Chinese developers like Greenland Holdings, China Vanke or Soho China, Wanda has no stake in major New York real estate projects. In 2013, Reuters reported that the firm wanted to build a $1 billion hotel in Manhattan, but the plans apparently never came to fruition. Sources told TRD that Wanda was recently looking to buy hotel development sites in major U.S. cities, including New York.

Wanda has $85.6 billion in assets under management and is owned by China’s richest man, Wang Jianlin. Like other major Chinese developers, the firm was hit by the recent slump in the Chinese housing market. In June it announced a “strategic alliance” with China Vanke.

Wanda and Vanke “have been disciplined,” Borja Sierra, U.S. head of capital markets at Savills Studley, told TRD in June. “They’ve said no to a lot of opportunities. They don’t only want to have an asset. They want to buy the right place.”

Dalian Wanda Group could not be reached for comment.

In the third quarter, the median Manhattan sale price was about $1 million.

By Joe Aruta

Over the past three months, Manhattan homes flew off the shelves at a record pace and price.

On average, listings were snatched up in 73 days, according to a third-quarter market report released Thursday by appraisal firm Miller Samuel for Douglas Elliman Real Estate. The report found that the amount of time it took to sell all of the inventory at the current pace, called the absorption rate, was roughly half of the amount of time compared with the past decade’s average.

“Basically, the market is clearing twice as fast as it normally would,” said Jonathan Miller, head of Miller Samuel. That quick turnaround time is largely due to tight inventory and robust demand.

The increased appetite for apartments is also behind the increase in average price per square foot to $1,497 for the quarter, another record.

Mr. Miller’s report was released along with a slew of others that, while arriving at slightly different numbers, all recorded the median Manhattan sale price at about $1 million, up approximately 10% from  last year. In fact, one report by residential brokerage Compass said that the median price had, for the first time ever, exceeded $1 million.

However, Compass also reported that sales volume fell to 3,929 transactions, about 10% fewer than last year. That dip can be attributed to the lack of apartments on the market.

“We expect prices to continue to increase and inventory to remain in short supply,” the report noted.

The high-end of the market was relatively flat, with the median price of luxury homes, which the Miller Samuel report defined as apartments topping $3.6 million, increasing by 10% over last year. Sales volume for these pricey pads increased by roughly the same amount. On the other hand, these apartments sat on the market for roughly double the amount of time compared with the overall Manhattan market.

Meanwhile the median price of new developments shot up  25% over last year to about $2 million, and according to Frederick Peters, head of Warburg Realty, more newly constructed units are  on the way. “There is always a fall market, but this one has been unusually well populated,” he said.

Michael Bloomberg and the Koch brothers were included on the magazine’s list of the richest individuals in the nation.

Forbes magazine has released its Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest Americans, with 70 New Yorkers making the cut.

Businessman David Koch ranks first in the city, tied for fifth overall with his brother Charles Koch.

Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, eighth overall on the list, was second on the list of New Yorkers, followed by George Soros and Carl Icahn.

The magazine also weighed in on Donald Trump’s infamous claims about his finances, ranking the billionaire developer and media personality at 121 and estimating his personal fortune to be $4.5 billion.

Forbes Editor Randall Lane spoke about Mr. Trump’s fortune on NBC’s Morning Joe, discounting the value of Mr. Trump’s “personal brand” that the Republican presidential hopeful has said accounts for several billions in wealth.

“We think we’ve finally settled the issue,” Mr. Lane said. “He’s out there telling everybody he’s worth $10 billion. He’s not.”

One notable exclusion from New York’s wealthiest is William Erbey, whose mortgage financier, Ocwen Financial, was probed by New York state investigators for allegations including conflicts of interest.

Mr. Erbey, who stepped down as executive chairman, saw his personal fortune plummet after Ocwen’s stock fell 76%, according to Forbes.