News
Real Estate All-Stars; Empire Strikes Back
September 25, 2009
| We haven't seen so many real estate stars in one room since REBNY’s annual banquet, but the Metropolitan New York chapter of the Appraisal Institute’s September conference provided a mini-reunion yesterday at Club 101. |
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| The esteemed group addressed the road to recovery and its nagging question: “Are we there yet?” The first panel, with chapter president Matthew Mondanile of Cushman & Wakefield (center) and event chair John Katinos, C&W (right): C&W’s Bruce Mosler, Studley’s Woody Heller, Grubb & Ellis’ David Arena, Jones Lang’s Peter Riguardi, CB Richard Ellis’ Mary Ann Tighe, REBNY’s Steven Spinola, and Massey Knakal’s Bob Knakal. Woody says compare this market year-over-year, and we’re better; there’s some sense of normalcy, versus last year’s freefall. Bruce adds that people will benefit from large amounts of capital, and now’s the time for corporations to lock in and trade up. |
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| Matthew, Steven, and John with the developers/investors panel: Malkin Holdings’ Tony Malkin, Vornado’s David Greenbaum, Time Equities’ Francis Greenburger, Witkoff Group’s Steven Witkoff, and Wharton Realty’s Jeff Sutton. David says despite what we’ve been hearing about financial industry consolidation acceleration (say that five times fast), it’s nothing dissimilar to the past three decades. Although not good for NYC real estate, Francis adds, it’s left room for entrepreneurial players to offset missing lenders. Tony says there are three people in this market—the can-dos, the survivors, and those who are going to fail—and some of those can-dos may become survivors. |
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| Also at the 200-person event: JPMorgan’s Private Bank and Private Client Services chief investment officer Michael Cembalest. His keynote was off-the-record, so all we can tell you was that it was funny and insightful—and judging from the crowd, incentive for you to mark next year’s September conference on your calendar. |
