News
Holiday Three-Fer
December 14, 2010
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| Now Bisnow knows how Santa Claus feels—but instead of house to house, we’ve been flying from holiday party to holiday party. We dropped by The Retail Network shindig at Foundation NYC last week where we snapped Sholom & Zuckerbrot’s Douglas Weinstein, Rosenbaum Consulting’s Lee Rosenbaum, and Real Estate Arts’Michael Goodgold. Michael reports his firm's working on the retail marketing at 1095 Sixth Ave and 120 W 42nd St with Cushman & Wakefield and Blackstone, and with Midtown Equities to promote a new 100k SF retail development on Bedford Ave in Williamsburg. REA also just hired new creative director Paul Dunn, who comes to the firm from the UK and just spent the last three years in Dubai working on world-class real estate projects. |
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| Holiday shopping has beat expectations out of the gate, which is a great sign for retail, reports CBRE’s Jayson Siano (right) with Farrell Fritz’ Bob Sandler, Kimco’s Josh Weinkranz, and The Fagen Group’s Stu Fagen. Interestingly enough, he points out luxury stores have seen slightly more sales growth than discount stores. Josh (his birthday's Saturday, so support retail and buy him a present) says tenants are very active and many retailers have busy pipelines for ’11 and ’12—he actually heard someone say the rare phrase “ground-up development.” Stu, normally a landlord rep, has been assisting tenants taking advantage of below-market rents with relocations. But Bob's seeing fewer rent-reduction programs, another healthy sign for the market. |
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| Real Capital Analytics celebrated in big-top fashion at Crimson, with a guest list that featured stilt walkers and contortionists (just another sign you have to be nimble). We snapped RCA’s Jihoon Kim, Sarah Buchwald, Jessica Weiss, Sam Chandan, founder Bob White, and Jessica Ruderman. Good news for New York: the firm reports prices for top office properties selling for $10M and more appear to defy gravity in our city (and London, Paris, and DC). A contingent of capital is focused on these markets, leading to competitive bidding that is driving prices up and yields down, it reports. NY and DC represent 35% of US office sales. |
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| This stilt walker towered nearly nine feet over PEI Media’s Neil Golub and RCA’s Dan Fasulo. RCA further reports that in these four favored markets, cross-border investors account for a large share of acquisitions and help keep prices aligned—foreign buyers account for a quarter of the deals in NY and DC. Overall, prime yields in the two US cities have ranged from 50 to 300 bps below the US office average, while maintaining the tight 50 bps trading band to London and Paris, which have seen prime yields below NY and DC for the past two years. |
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| YREPNY made merry at The Willow Lounge, where we met FTI Consulting’s Justin Sutter, Greenfield’s David Neveloff, YREPNY prez Erik Dowling, and Strategic Capital Solutions’ Tim Callahan. Instead of the ever-popular New Year’s resolution of slimming down, Erik says YREPNY’s goal is to become bigger and better in ’11—and will be adding educational events, roundtable discussions, and job-hunting resources to its offerings. |
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| This dapper group is Donovan & Giannuzzi’s Kevin Monaghan and Lee Edelson, and The Andy & Evan Shirt Co’s Evan Hakalir. Evan—a cap markets pro turned garment purveyor—started his shirt company a year ago to suit up the young professional from work to play. He’s spiffed up the David Archuleta Band, Billy Joel’s musical director Tommy Byrnes, and up-and-comer Cass Dillon (among others) and will be launching a women’s line next month. But he hasn’t left his real estate roots—he moonlights as a consultant for Blackrock Solutions. |
