Category : Blog

● mark zborovsky Patience pays off for Cheshire Group The Cheshire Group has sold 45 sponsor condos at 225-255 Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights to an unknown buyer for $16.5 million. The units, spread over two pre-war buildings, were converted into condos in 2005, but are occupied by rent-stabilized tenants...

A real estate firm that has dominated the Northeast is setting its sights on the Big Apple, with founder William Raveis at the helm. The company now has 3,500 employees in 108 offices throughout the Northeast, including Massachusetts, Connecticut, and its newest office which opened in midtown Manhattan last month. That office already has two dozen employees, including former Douglas Elliman managers Kathy Braddock and Paul Purcell. “I was waiting for them,” he said. “I wanted to make sure I had a good group set up before I went in. I wanted the right people.” He added that he spent three years searching for the right people, and even contemplated buying out the boutique city brokerage, Bellmarc, which last year merged with Coldwell Banker. Raveis is looking to eventually open three more offices in New York City and one in Brooklyn.

SJP Properties announced that the St. Louis-based tech powerhouse, Answers Corporation, has signed a new office lease to occupy the entire 11th floor at 11 Times Square, its state-of-the-art, 1.1 million-square-foot, LEED-Gold-certified office and retail tower. The building is owned by a joint venture of SJP Properties and investors advised by Prudential Real Estate Investors. “Answers needed a world-class, tech-forward space to support our high-performing New York operations and workforce, which has quadrupled since last year and continues to grow,” said David Karandish, CEO and Chairman of Answers Corporation.

● siras development / kuafu properties Full of Eastern promise A joint venture of Siras Development, a New York-based luxury real estate development group, and Kuafu Properties, the New York-based Chinese real estate investment and development company, have completed the acquisition of a Hudson Yards development site . The partners...

The Canadians might be America’s most prolific foreign real estate investors, but it’s the Chinese who are spending the big bucks. In its annual Profile of International Home Buying Activity, the National Association of Realtors reported that Canadians bought the most properties in the U.S. — 19 percent of all foreign purchases — but the Chinese led the pack in dollar volume by spending more money per purchase than all other countries. Chinese buyers spent $22 billion on US homes and apartments between April 2013 and March 2014 — some 16 percent of all foreign sales and an average of $523,148 per purchase, usually in cash. More than half of their purchases were in California, Washington and New York for a home they’ll spend at least six months of the year living in, according to the NAR survey.

Sometimes, in real estate transactions, the dead can come back to life. Often, a broker introduces a prospective buyer to a property and, for whatever reason, the deal falls apart, but is then resuscitated without the knowledge or participation of the broker. In a court case decided last month, a stricter standard appears to have been adopted by the courts to settle once and for all who is entitled to a commission check.