Bubble Wrap

Law under consideration would let brokers pay real estate clients

NJ.com reports on an impending law which could give brokers and agents the right to pay a portion of their commission to buyers at the closing table. This practice is currently allowed in all but 11 states, and will go to the full Senate for consideration now that it has passed the assembly. Sen. Nicholas P. Scutari (D-Union) is one of the bill’s sponsors.

“We’re trying to help the real estate market and to allow real estate agents and brokers to make deals happen,” Scutari said.

The Strangest Landlord-Tenant Relationship In Town?

Last month the Village Voice reported on 81 Bowery, one of the oldest and last remaining lodging houses in New York that has been home to a generation of Chinese immigrants, living in tiny cubicles. Elizabeth Dwoskin tells of the building’s history, the tenants living conditions, and battles with the landlord.

The fourth floor is very different. The rooms crammed inside are tiny, with walls about eight feet high but no ceilings, and each one about the size of an office cubicle. The dozen or so residents who live on this floor pay about $100 a month to live in what amounts to a broom closet, and all of them share a bathroom with two shower stalls, a urinal, and four toilets. The cubicles are jam-packed with possessions the residents have been piling up for decades. There is no kitchen on the floor.

20 Bayard condo files for Chapter 11

As reported by The Real Deal, the sponsors of 20 Bayard unexpectedly filed for bankruptcy protection of their new condominium, surprising residents and the real estate community. According to court documents, over $10 million is owed by North Development Group to more than 50 creditors.

North Development Group had previously parted ways with the Developers Group and Prudential Douglas Elliman at the Karl Fisher-designed property, after the brokers argued for lower sales prices at the building.

“We sold close to half the building, then we had differences with the developer and we parted ways,” said Lior Barak, a senior vice president at Elliman, who represented the building in 2007.

Luxury condo units at Riverdale's Solaria sell for discount at auction

AM New York reports on the initial results of the 54 units at Solaria that were put up for auction on Sunday. 200 people showed up to bid on these condos with many going for significant discounts.

a one bedroom, one bath, listed at $660,000, sold for $415,000. On the higher end, a four bedroom, four and a half bath, listed at $3.85 million, sold for $1.7 million.

The auction company, Real Estate Disposition, said it wouldn’t have the full data — how many sales and at what prices — until tomorrow, but it was on pace to close a majority of the units.

New York could see a double dip in residential market

The November issue of The Real Deal includes an article with an array of analysts predicting where housing in New York is going over the next year with many forecasting a second round to the downturn.

The biggest problem New York is facing is unemployment. According to the state Comptroller’s office, the city shed 115,700 jobs as of June and is expected to hit 328,000 jobs losses – 47,000 of them in the securities industry – by the third quarter of 2010, boosting an unemployment rate that has already hit 10.3 percent.

Jonathan Miller, the president of appraisal firm Miller Samuel, said there has never been an economic recovery in New York at the same time that the finance sector was suffering.

Property Taxes in NJ an issue as always

Come election season, it’s no surprise that a lot of controversy and debate has been raised with regards to New Jersey’s high property taxes, the highest of any state in the country. Bloomberg reports on the different policies on the issue by the two primary candidates, Incumbent Jon Corzine or his Republican challenger Christopher Christie. Meanwhile, attorney and property tax expert David Wolfe reports to the Star Ledger about the challenges with the state property taxes as a whole and whether reform will actually come.

“I think we’ll have some systematic change, but I don’t know that it will have a dramatic impact on the property tax burden. It will be difficult to achieve real change and success.

In New Jersey, we fund our schools through the local property tax. If we reduce the property tax burden, the funds will have to come from somewhere else. Ultimately, I think the taxpayers will demand some sort of reach change.”

Sharp Drop in Building Residences in the City

The Times writes about the huge drop in new construction with both the residential and commercial sectors as reported by the New York Building Congress. The report contends that the downturn may have bottomed out, while some industry experts are more pessimistic. There are currently only 2 commercial buildings under construction and housing has dropped from 30,000 units per year to about 6,300 this year.

The residential market is more bleak. More than 460 residential projects have been delayed, nearly a third of them in Brooklyn, according to the latest figures from the city’s Buildings Department. Many analysts say it will take several years for the market to absorb all the luxury apartments that have been built recently.

Hamptons market report shows mixed bag

The Real Deal reports on the 3rd Quarter 2009 Homes Sales Report from Town & Country Real Estate. Amongst the findings is that volume of sales in the Hamptons has dropped only 2.5% from the previous year, from 257 to 251 transactions.

Five of the 11 East End markets analyzed in the report (all on the South Fork but for Shelter Island), Amagansett, Bridgehampton and East Hampton Village, Shelter Island and Westhampton, saw an increase in sales, with East Hampton Village showing the steepest climb in sales volume at 169 percent.

Three Cents Worth: Moving Sideways?

Jonathan Miller charts inventory and inflation-adjusted median sales price for Curbed, noticing better stats than previous quarters.

The combination of these metrics suggest that things are not deteriorating as quickly as they had been since the 9/15/08 Lehman tipping point, but it still doesn’t show that we have found some sort of bottom for the Manhattan housing market. With high unemployment, shadow inventory and tight credit, I would think we have a while to go before things stabilize. Still, it’s better news than we have received as of late and I’ll take it.

O Stuy Town!

The Observer looks at the Stuy Town sale to Tishman Speyer as a possible stroke of good fortune for tenants of the mega-complex as their bid to buy the property was rejected three years ago.

In a new twist, it’s now at least conceivable that the tenants—along with other former bidders—might just have another crack at Stuy Town, this time at presumably a much less inflated price. Tishman Speyer is on pace, before the end of the year, to exhaust the reserve fund that has been helping it to make debt payments, as Realpoint reported the fund had just $33 million left as of September, down from $400 million in 2007. Since June, the report said that between $7 million and $19 million has been taken out of the reserve fund each month.