The New York Times Announces Online Luxury Real Estate Ad Program

The Great Homes site has a searchable database of more than 250,000 real estate listings located in desirable second-home destinations such as Manhattan, Napa Valley, the Hamptons, Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard, Miami and Florida's Gulf Coast, as well as select locations in Europe. The site features extensive luxury and second-home listings, Web-exclusive content with original articles written for the site, destination and lifestyle guides, videos, slide shows and interactive maps. The listings environment, powered by Gabriels, accommodates a variety of searches and has been recognized by the NAA and Inman as the leading media luxury real estate site.

Manhattan real estate firm buys second Albany office building

The Heights Real Estate Co. of Manhattan has bought another office tower in downtown Albany, N.Y., this one a 10-story building at 100 State St. that cost $3.5 million.

The deal closed today. The seller was Galesi Management Corp. in Rotterdam.

The property is located between the headquarters of the state Comptroller's Office and the former National Savings Bank building at 90 State St. A FedEx Kinko's store is on the ground level.

St. Albans, Queens

St. Albans is a quiet middle-class neighborhood in eastern Queens, but just beneath lies a level of culture, politics and heritage that not all New York neighborhoods can boast.

Once home to some of the greats of jazz and sports – Count Basie, Jackie Robinson, Billie Holiday, John Coltrane and Ella Fitzgerald to name a few – St. Albans is now home to modest working-class families, mostly African Americans and Caribbean Americans. But some residents believe the neighborhood is coming back.

New York City’s uncertain real estate market

Jonathan Miller, the executive vice president and director of research at Radar Logic, a real estate research company, said that such apartments make up more than half of the Manhattan sales market. In the fourth quarter of 2007, 55 percent of the 2,518 apartments sold in Manhattan were studios and one-bedrooms.

That, in turn, is good news for many sellers, who are happy to find purchasers not obliged to sell their own home before buying a new one.

Conversely, first-time buyers who run into snags and delay closings can hold up the sellers. “It plays a very important role in the health of the real estate market,” Mr. Miller said. If first-time buyers are “having a hard time, then all segments are having a hard time.”

Manhattan real estate lawyer pleads guilty in $2.1 million theft

Manhattan prosecutors say a real estate attorney has pleaded guilty to stealing $2.1 million from clients to pay his personal expenses and run his law office.

Sixty-six-year-old Mount Kisco resident Ira Berman pleaded guilty Thursday to grand larceny in exchange for a sentence of three to nine years in prison. He also agreed to sign a document acknowledging he still owes victims the money.

Prosecutors say the funds Berman stole were real estate down payments deposited into the escrow account of his Manhattan firm.

Brooklyn Real Estate Trends Hit Spotlight

“This just shows that we don’t need to schlep to Midtown Manhattan to talk about real estate,” said David Kramer, principal of Hudson Cos. Inc. and member of the roundtable’s Steering Committee at the event. “I think today highlighted all the things going on in Brooklyn: the Navy Yard, new condos in Prospect Heights and exciting office renovations on Court Street.”

Gregg Winter, president of Winter and Co., said that “the market isn’t dead. I was looking for much worse numbers.”

Manhattan Real Estate Finally Turning

NEW YORK — The Real Estate Group, a brokerage firm, found in its most recent monthly report that Manhattan's real estate market, so far impervious to the subprime mortgage crisis, may finally be turning—a potential boon for renters and buyers, but not so good news for property owners.

"While the market often sees a January rebound from December's historically weaker prices, this month, average citywide rents continued to cool across all apartment sizes and service levels," reads a letter from Daniel Baum, C.O.O. of The Real Estate Group.

South Korean investors to return to the Big Apple

New York City, a super-real estate market that seemed immune to any outside economic threats, has lately been spotted with more vulnerability. But this is actually signaling South Korean investors to return to the Big Apple.

``We're seeing a comeback of investors who want in at Manhattan, once again,'' said Kim Joon-sung, a Seoul-based senior consultant at Map Realty, a real estate consultancy specializing in overseas investment.

Harry Macklowe has reached control of seven Manhattan office buildings

Coupled with a deal that has put his ownership of the trophy General Motors Building on Fifth Avenue at risk, Mr. Macklowe's capitulation is one of the most dramatic signs so far of how the credit problems caused by the subprime crisis in residential real estate have spilled over into the world of office buildings, stores, apartment buildings and other commercial property. Other investors who acquired commercial real estate at the top of the market are facing similar problems because values have fallen and they can't refinance the debt they placed on the buildings in rosier times.