July 21, 2010 01:30PM By Candace Taylor

Bob Scaglion of Rose Associates (left), NY Living Solutions’ Gannon Forrester and the Aire at 200 West 67th Street

Aiming to gain an edge on the other new luxury rentals just hitting the market, Upper West Side tower the Aire held a contest last month, offering bonuses to the brokerage that completed the most transactions in the building.
The 80-agent sales and rental firm New York Living Solutions won the contest, helping to bring the building to roughly 25 percent leased, according to Rose Associates, the on-site leasing agent for the building.

The contest, which ran from June 1 to July 4, offered bonuses to the firm which completed the most transactions in the 43-story building, located at 200 West 67th Street, during that time period. The prize was $1,000 for each agent who completed a transaction in the building, plus $5,000 for the firm. (The developer, Kalimian Properties, is also paying a one-month broker’s fee.)

New York Living Solutions management is using its prize money to host a celebratory cruise around Manhattan for all its agents, said Gannon Forrester, a managing director at the firm. Agents will receive their $1,000 bonuses then, he said.

The company is focusing special attention on lease-ups of new rental buildings, he said, so the contest fit with that goal. “We made sure all the agents knew about it,” Forrester said.

Forrester directed inquiries about how many transactions the firm did to win the contest to Rose. Bob Scaglion, senior managing director at Rose, would not disclose that number, but said during the period of the contest, about 50 of the building’s 310 units were leased. Three other firms were hot on New York Living Solutions’ heels, he said, adding that Kalimian is running a similar contest at the building this month.

The goal of the promotion, in conjunction with a recent broker party, was to create buzz about the new building, which started leasing in May.

“A lot of the brokers weren’t familiar with the building, so having the party and the promotion was very good,” Scaglion said.

At the Aire, studios range in price from $2,500 to $3,600, one-bedrooms range from $3,600 to $5,000, two-bedrooms range from $5,600 to $12,000, and three-bedrooms are $11,500 to $15,000 (that’s not including a one-month-free concession currently being offered to tenants.) There are also a few as-of-yet unreleased “trophy” apartments that will rent in the range of $20,000 per month, Scaglion said.

The Aire faces stiff competition from other new Upper West Side rentals, including the Corner at 72nd and Broadway (both buildings were designed by Handel Architects.)

But brokers say the high-end rental market is showing surprising strength.

“You would be amazed at the number of rentals above $15,000 a month all over Manhattan,” said Nancy Packes, head of the eponymous new development marketing firm, which handles both sales and rentals.

This is due in part to a pickup in relocations that started early in 2010, she said. “Our core industries are hiring,” she said. “These people are very often coming from far away from New York.”

These new hires, many of them families with children, tend to rent rather than buy when they first move to the city, she said.

And while lavish spending has become socially unacceptable since the financial crisis, wealthy renters are still out there.

After the Lehman Brothers collapse, “everyone was concerned about buildings like the Corner and the Aire,” Scaglion said. “Actually, the depth of the high-end marketplace is good. People are just quiet about it.”

The top end of the luxury rentals marketing is now pushing $80-per-square square foot, up from the $60s during the downturn, Scaglion said.

“If you build a better product, they will pay for it,” he added.

His new job: president of the Moynihan Station Development Corporation, the state agency charged (for at least the past decade) with expanding Penn Station into the Corinthian column-lined Farley Post Office across Eighth Avenue.

Mr. Gilchrist was the highest ranking member of the Spitzer administration left in the executive chamber. He initially served as deputy secretary for economic development and transportation; as his fellow deputy secretaries each left, he took on more turf, coordinating how to spend the state’s stimulus money received from the federal government

Full Article Here – Via NY Observer

They had little choice. Lenders typically will not offer mortgages to borrowers with down payments below 20 percent, unless the borrowers get insurance to indemnify the lender in the event of a default. And the federal government was the only entity willing to back many of these borrowers during the housing market slump.

Now private mortgage insurance, or P.M.I., could be making a comeback. Some mortgage insurance companies like Genworth Financial and Radian Guaranty have been easing underwriting standards — sometimes eliminating geographic restrictions, in the case of Genworth, for instance, and offering insurance to some borrowers with down payments of as little as 5 percent.

Rohit Gupta, the chief commercial officer for Genworth’s domestic mortgage insurance business, attributed the relaxed standards to a more stable housing market, along with improved financial conditions for the nation’s major mortgage insurance companies.

Full Article Here – Via NY Times

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — As Congress debates the new rules of the road for the U.S. banking industry, some lawmakers have an ambitious proposal: They want to cut ATM fees.

Last week, a trio of Democratic senators led by Iowa’s Tom Harkin proposed capping automated teller machine fees at just 50 cents.

Currently, banks and other ATM operators are free to charge consumers whatever they want for using their machine. And backers of the amendment maintain that those who tend feel the brunt of those fees are lower- and middle-income Americans, precisely those who can’t afford it.

Full Article Here:

Today I speak with Chris Williams, President and Chief Technology Officer of AIMSdashboard,

“Williams is a 15-year veteran of the IT industry, having served stints with Cisco Systems and PolyServe, a software startup acquired by HP. At one time he was co-owner of Carolina Appraisers, a real estate appraisal firm based in Raleigh.”

AIMS stands for “appraisal independence management system,” and “dashboard” is a software term meaning a control panel housing two or more applications.

His venture was enabled by introduction of the May 1, 2009 agreement between Fannie Mae and NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo known as the Home Valuation Code of Conduct.

AIMSdashboard is intended to help financial institutions take back control of the mortgage process through a software solution. Chris was very quick to point out that his company is a software company, NOT an appraisal management company, NOT an appraisal management company.

Helix Podcast Here:

By BOB TEDESCHI

MOST borrowers are facing a much tougher mortgage environment than a few years ago, but for those who are self-employed or own small businesses, maneuvering through a loan application can be even more arduous.

Before 2008 these borrowers, many of whom have difficulty documenting their income, often used what are known as stated-income loans. Lenders focused on credit histories and earnings estimates, circumventing the need for pay stubs or W-2s.

But during the mortgage crisis, stated-income loans became known as “liar’s loans,” because some borrowers falsely inflated their incomes, and qualified for more than they could afford.

Today, stated-income loans have nearly disappeared. Those still available through regional lenders like Hudson City Savings Bank come at a cost: interest rates around a quarter of a percentage point higher than conventional loans and down payments of at least 30 percent.

The self-employed borrower’s only choice, mortgage brokers say, is to submit two years’ tax returns and hope that they qualify for a conventional loan.

Full Article via NYTs

FOR three years, some of the most powerful forces in New York real estate — including the federal and city governments, developers, preservationists and community advocates — have fought over the fate of a cluster of historically significant turn-of-the-last-century houses known as Admiral’s Row in the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Last month, the parties finally arrived at a compromise that seemed to strike a balance between preservation and development, in a $60 million project that would add a large supermarket to an underserved neighborhood, while also salvaging some buildings of deep architectural and cultural significance.

But it now appears that those historic buildings may be in such precarious condition that they cannot be saved.

“This is one of the worst cases I have ever seen in terms of neglect,” said Alex Herrera, the director of the technical services center at the New York Landmarks Conservancy. “It is a disgrace.”

Full Article via NY Times

In a city where cramped studio apartments generate six-figure bidding wars, it’s hard to imagine a place where real estate is even pricier. But there are cities out there that can make Park Avenue look like a bargain. According to data from London-based brokerage Knight Frank, $1 million would buy you only about half a studio in Monaco.

This month, The Real Deal took stock of how New York real estate compares to other major international and U.S. cities, from London to Los Angeles. We chose 25 preeminent cities, in different geographic regions, that compete with New York for real estate buyers and tourist dollars, and pored through real estate data from each one.

Complete Article Here

WHEN Lori Berger began looking for a Manhattan pied-à-terre three years ago, she came armed with a list of priorities. The West Side was preferable to the East because it would simplify the drive into the city from her family’s primary residence in Fairfield, Conn. She wanted outdoor space, which took most prewar buildings off the table. And because she and her husband had lived through kitchen and bathroom renovations at home, they wanted an apartment that they could move into right away.

It wasn’t unbridled love when Ms. Berger first saw 165 West 66th Street. But then she remembered her father’s pet saying: “You live inside the house, not outside.”

Which is how Ms. Berger came to buy a one-bedroom in a white glazed-brick building. Long seen as a consolation prize in the real estate sweepstakes, with neither the time-burnished details of prewar nor the sparkling newness of the latest glass-walled condo, boxy white-brick structures were built for the striving middle class in the ’50s and ’60s, when about 140 inserted themselves into the brick and brownstone fabric of the city. But these days, their more-for-less prices are attracting wallet-watching buyers, and their less-is-more-aesthetic is drawing fans of mid-century design.

Full Article Via NY Times