Why Are There 1,723 Vacant Buildings in Manhattan?

Abandoned housing in Manhattan? Really? Tell me where, I've got my hot plate ready.

It’s hard to believe there are vacant buildings in New York's still insane real estate market, but a recent survey by the self-advocacy organization Picture the Homeless and the Manhattan Borough President's Office found 1,723 vacant buildings and 505 unused lots right in the heart of the Big, rent-gobbling Apple.

Deutsche Bank Sells Midtown Building

Deutsche Bank AG sold its 31 W. 52nd St. office building in Midtown Manhattan to Paramount Group, a spokesman for Deutsche Bank confirmed yesterday.

The terms of the sale for the 30-story tower, housing roughly 700,000 square feet, were not disclosed. The agreement for the building sale was signed November 13, the spokesman said. According to an article in Real Estate Alert in October, the building was expected to attract bids of about $1 billion.

Trump not bidding on Garden City Hotel

Bids for the Garden City Hotel were supposed to be due Wednesday but the owners said the property has inspired such widespread interest that they decided to keep the door open.

The hotel, which was put on the block following the death of hotelier-patriarch Myron Nelkin, has been toured by potential bidders including Scott Rechler, of RexCorp Realty, to Manhattan-based magnate Donald Trump.

New York penthouse fetches record price

A Russian-born oil tycoon is about to pay a record $150 million for a three-story penthouse on New York's Upper East Side.

Leonard Blavatnik, 50, reportedly signed a letter of intent to purchase a private residence in the Mark Hotel designed by the French decorator Jacques Grange, The London Telegraph reports from New York.

"The price is startling," says Michael Slattery, a senior vice president at the Real Estate Board of New York. "New York is a city that can easily attract buyers for multi-million dollar residences, but such a high value is not the norm."

Foreign Buyers Take Manhattan

The increase in demand comes as a new tide of high-rise condominiums is hitting Manhattan. Buyers from other countries who don’t have credit histories in the United States or who do not intend to use their apartments as primary residences have historically had trouble passing muster with co-op boards. But condos pose no problem for foreign buyers, and they often find that buying in Manhattan is less expensive than buying a comparable house or apartment in cities like London.

Jonathan Miller, an executive vice president and the director of research at Radar Logic, estimates that foreign buyers have bought about 1,000 newly constructed or converted condos in Manhattan in the last 18 months, which is about a third of the condo sales in Manhattan in that period.

A French Star Reinvents a New York Classic

In spite of his protests, Mr. Grange, 63, seems content with efforts to trumpet his role in the redevelopment of the hotel, which closed in January and is scheduled to reopen next summer. The Mark is the latest New York luxury hotel to go hybrid —one-third of the building is being converted into 42 co-op apartments — and Mr. Grange is doing it all, designing the lobby, the hotel’s bar and restaurant, the 118 hotel rooms that will remain, and 32 of the new apartments, from moldings and coffered ceilings to custom fabrics and furnishings.