New York Builders Paying Huge Buyouts to Tenants in Their Way

By MIREYA NAVARRO

Tishman Speyer Properties, one of New York City’s most active real estate developers, had bought two parcels of land on the Far West Side of Manhattan to clear the way for a 2.8-million-square-foot office tower planned for Hudson Yards.

Standing in the way, though, were the occupants of two apartments on the site. So this year, the developer turned to a lubricant that can be counted on to ease New York City tenants out of their rent-regulated units — a buyout, in this case, for $25 million in total to three tenants.

In New York’s exceptionally lucrative real estate market, multimillion-dollar buyouts are becoming more common, lawyers who negotiate for tenants and property owners say.

Full article, published by The New York Times on December, 24 2015

New Yorkers are fighting to save their city’s soul

Posted Thursday 2nd April, 2015 Text by Alex King

Gentrification is suffocating New York’s creative culture. We spoke to #SaveNYC campaign founder Jeremiah Moss to find out why it’s time to fight back.

A strange force is spreading across New York, turning the city’s chaotic, technicolour mass of humanity and culture a dull corporate beige. It’s called gentrification, and it plays out on many levels: from the closing of mom and pop stores, attempts to hide (but never solve) social ills such as homelessness and the expulsion of the poor and minorities, to the unstoppable spread of bougie brunch spots and the tearing apart of long-established communities.

New York City is devouring its children and all we have to show for it are chains: endless hotel, restaurant and store chains.

Full article on Huck

Does the New Crown Heights Starbucks Threaten Small Neighborhood Businesses?

By Irene Chidinma Nwoye Thu., Oct. 16 2014

The coffee tension brewing in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, started after Starbucks opened a new location right beside a four-year-old coffee shop, the Pulp and the Bean. Owner Tony Fisher is not necessarily scared of the competition. But he believes Starbucks will usher in even more commercial chains, causing the rent prices in the already expensive neighborhood to continue to soar. While Fisher appears visibly unfazed by Starbucks' presence, the anti-big-business slogans occasionally scrawled on chalkboards in front of his stores betray his fears about working next door to a corporate Goliath.

On September 25, only about five days after its neighbor began operations at 341 Eastern Parkway, the Pulp and the Bean's chalkboard read, "Everytime coffee is not bought here, a baby crys [sic] somewhere in the world." On a different day, the board at Fisher's other store, Bob and Betty's (an organic-foods market on the other side of the Pulp and the Bean), read: "Support big families not big business. Buy local."

There is no shortage of Starbucks in New York City. Last year, there were 283 Starbucks in the city (up from 272 in 2012 and 245 in 2009), according to the Center for an Urban Future, a NYC-based think tank that traces economic growth in New York State for policymakers. New Yorkers have grown accustomed to seeing a Starbucks every quarter of a mile, and the coffee company has evolved into a socioeconomic symbol.

Starbucks is often regarded as the last phase of gentrification in neighborhoods in the city. According to one Business Insider reporter, a new Starbucks suggests that a neighborhood is "up-and-coming," "a smart real estate bet." And the real estate part is one of the reasons Fisher is concerned. Rent prices in Crown Heights have risen in recent years.

"Two years ago [the rent was] $35 per square foot on Eastern Parkway," Fisher says. Now it's valued at $100 per square foot. "Starbucks will attract other corporate entities and rents in the neighborhood will go up," he adds.

Full article on The Village Voice Blogs

Why Zoning for Greater Density Will Fail to Make Housing More Affordable

by Jim Russell

Gentrification is an urban policy problem in need of a theory. Instead of theory, we have the geographic illusion of local: The current landscape is the result of community decisions. Gentrifiers, outsiders who move into a neighborhood, cause real estate prices to appreciate and displace more tenured residents. One way to make housing more affordable is to increase supply in the gentrifying neighborhood. Rising demand is a market signal to build. To make the market model more sophisticated, we can consider household income. The quantity of people seeking to live in a certain neighborhood isn’t appreciably greater than previous years. But the quality of income migrating into a neighborhood may be much greater than most residents earn. Regardless, supply and demand is still local. Conceivably, poorer residents could access better paying jobs in order to compete with newcomers for housing.

Full article in Sustainablecitiescollective on 8 July 2014

Brooklyn now the borough of kingly prices

BY DOYLE MURPHY

An $18 million triplex penthouse for sale in the Clock Tower Building in DUMBO is part of the increasingly expensive condo offerings in Brownstone Brooklyn and the trendy neighborhoods of Williamsburg and Greenpoint.

Move to Brooklyn — and bring your checkbook.

The average cost of condos in the borough’s most popular neighborhoods has topped $1 million for the first time, a new report shows.

Sales prices for the second quarter crested that watermark as the supply for townhouses runs low, forcing homebuyers to dig even deeper into their deep pockets for an alternative.

“I wish we all had crystal balls to see what happens next,” said Aleksandra Scepanovic, managing director of Ideal Properties Group, the brokerage firm responsible for the analysis.

The report tracks sales over the past three months in Brownstone Brooklyn and the red-hot neighborhoods of Williamsburg and Greenpoint, increasingly home to the city’s tastemakers.

Buyers in the two trendy nabes were willing to pay, on average, more than $1,000 a square foot to live along the treelined streets or in repurposed warehouses. That’s a steal compared with the luxury listings popping up in the borough.

A stunning, six-bedroom penthouse at 360 Furman St. overlooking Brooklyn Bridge Park is being marketed by Sotheby’s for an asking price of

$32 million. The amenities include a movie theater, a wine cellar and a master bath the size of a studio apartment.

Too much? The second most expensive condo is a 7,000 square-foot triplex in DUMBO’s iconic Clock Tower Building listed at $18 million.

Traditionally, townhouses had been king in neighborhoods like Park Slope, Cobble Hill and Brooklyn Heights, but there just aren’t enough of them to keep up with demand, Scepanovic said.

The same is increasingly true of condos as some buyers switch gears. Open houses routinely draw 100 people or more, and overall prices jumped 27.5% during the past 12 months, according to the report.

“We’ve got condos that we’re selling for $300,000 and condos we’re selling for $10 million,” Scepanovic said.

“The question is, where is that middle ground?”

Stash Pad

By Andrew Rice

The New York real-estate market is now the premier destination for wealthy foreigners with rubles, yuan, and dollars to hide.

The buyer, an Italian, was in town for a week, with a million or so dollars to spend. We met one Sunday morning at 20 Pine, a Financial District condo building. She wore a red scarf, jangly jewelry, and a pair of lime-green sunglasses perched atop her curly hair, and she told me she would prefer to remain anonymous. Working through a shell company, she was looking to anchor some of her wealth in an advantageous port: New York City.

The building’s lobby, designed in leathery tones by Armani, swirled with polylingual property talk. As the Italian and I waited for her broker, an Asian man sitting on a couch next to us asked, “You see the apartment?” But he didn’t wait for an answer, leaping up to join a handful of women speaking a foreign language heading toward the elevators.

After a few minutes, a fashionably stubbled young man swung through 20 Pine’s revolving door: Santo Rosabianca, a broker with Wire International Realty. The firm, run by Rosabianca’s brother Luigi, an attorney, specializes in catering to overseas investors. A first-generation American, Santo greeted the buyer with kisses and briefed her in Italian. She was searching for a property that would generate substantial rental income. “Wall Street is not my favorite place,” she told me. “But he says it is very good for rent.”

Like several other buildings she was being shown, 20 Pine was developed at the height of the real-estate bubble. After the crash of 2008, it became an emblematic disaster, with the developers selling units in bulk at desperation prices, until opportunistic foreigners swooped in with cash offers. The salvage deals are long gone, but 20 Pine retains its international appeal. The one-bedroom the Italian was looking at, on the 27th floor, had a view of the Woolworth Building, sleek finishes, a bachelor-size kitchen, and access to an exclusive terrace reserved for upper-floor residents. It was first purchased by an investment banker in early 2008 for $1.3 million, was resold in 2011 for $850,000, and was now back on the market for close to its prerecession price. Rosabianca told the Italian it would rent for more than $4,000 a month, enough to assure a healthy cash flow while its value appreciated. “There’s really no safer way to get that kind of return,” he said, “than in New York City real estate.”

Read the full article in the New York Magazine (June 29, 2014)

Brooklyn landlords illegally harassed, targeted rent-stabilized tenants: suit

A group of Brooklyn tenants have filed a federal lawsuit against two landlords, accusing the defendants of illegally trying to force them out of their rent-stabilized apartments to make room for new renters who pay market rates.

The Flatbush Development Corporation and the Flatbush Tenants Coalition, along with 11 named tenants, filed the housing discrimination case Monday in Brooklyn federal court.

They’re seeking unspecified damages, according to the suit.

Most of the plaintiffs — who live in three buildings on Hawthorne Ave. and Brooklyn Ave. in Prospect Lefferts Gardens — have resided in the complex for decades, according to court documents.

The suit alleges that landlords Yeahaya “Shay” Wasserman and Yitzchock Rambod, Homewood Gardens Estates LLC and Eastern Hawthorne Realty 651 LLC have violated the Fair Housing Act as well as city and state human rights laws.

The landlords targeted longstanding black tenants who lived in rent-stabilized apartments, the suit contends.

The plaintiffs pay anywhere from $600 to $1,400 a month for 52 three-bedroom units in the three buildings, according to the lawsuit.

Calls to the offices of Wasserman and Rambod were not returned Tuesday. Their office at Eastern Hawthorne Realty was closed for Passover, a sign said.

The tenants, represented by lawyers from Legal Services NYC, say they were the victims of a systematic pattern of harassment, neglect and frivolous housing lawsuits designed to force them out to make room for new tenants paying double the rent.

The group claims the landlords, who bought the buildings in 2009, have neglected to do repairs in black-occupied units.

The defendants have also taken tenants to housing court with falsified claims and left rent checks uncashed in an attempt to evict rent-stabilized residents, the lawsuit asserts.

Black tenants were also forced to get rid of pets and washing machines, the suit says.

Full article in The Daily News, Brooklyn Section (15 April 2014)