Category : Featured

CBRE Group, Inc. arranged the $307 million sale of a 10-property, 2.1 million-square-foot retail portfolio owned by a New York-based real estate private equity firm. Kite Realty Group (NYSE: KRG), a publicly traded REIT headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, purchased the portfolio, which spans four Southeastern states. CBRE’s Cliff Taylor, a Jacksonville-based member of CBRE’s Private Capital Group, and Dennis Carson and Casey Rosen, Miami-based professionals with CBRE’s National Retail Investment Group, advised the seller.

One month ago, observers were worried that the federal government shutdown could halt job growth in Manhattan and hit commercial real estate hard. But newly released job data show that it takes a lot more to derail New York’s recovery — much to the relief of landlords and brokers. Seasonally adjusted, New York City added 8,400 jobs in October after losing 4,800 in September. Since October 2012, the city’s job count has grown by 85,100.

Brookfield Office Properties has paid $200 million to buy the headquarters of the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) and integrate the building at One North End Avenue into its Brookfield Place. Following months of unconfirmed reports, the company announced yesterday (Tuesday) that is has closed on the purchased of the 15-story, half million square-foot office building.

After a career spent building a real estate portfolio, investors of a certain age start thinking about legacy. You can’t take it with you, but it’s not enough to trust that the next generation will take care of itself. This was the topic of the Mortgage Bankers Association’s recent breakfast panel, “Generational Real Estate.” Tax and estate planning advice was provided by Ken Weissenberg of EisnerAmper and Glenn Kurlander of Morgan Stanley, who delved into umbrella partnership REITs, intentionally defective grantor trust and parking transactions — an often-overlooked deal structure totally unrelated to vehicle storage, which Weissenberg compared to “diamonds on the beach.”

ABS Partners Real Estate announced that Valar Ventures, a tech venture fund founded by Peter Thiel, a founder of PayPal, has signed a five-year, 2,739 s/f lease at 915 Broadway. The space is the firm’s first East Coast office – it is currently located in San Francisco.