5 Million NYC Property Records Available Via Startup's API

Back in the fall, we told you about NYC's BigApps competition, which encouraged technological innovation to benefit government and civic engagement. Public voting for the submitted applications opened this week.

One of the submissions to come out of this competition is Blocks and Lots, an interesting app and API that essentially expose all the property records - more than 5 million records, total - for New York City. For site owners, there's a customizable widget that can be embedded in just about any kind of site.

Blocks and Lots' API allows developers to integrate detailed property information into any web or mobile application. Sample code is available in PHP and JavaScript.

Blocks and Lots comes from BlankSlate, an NYC startup offering a web platform and set of read/write APIs for making, sharing, monetizing, and monitoring web apps. The company provides capabilities such as data, file, user and payment management through REST APIs.

NYC sues Nigeria for up to $16 million in unpaid real estate taxes on Manhattan building

NEW YORK (AP) — New York City says the government of Nigeria owes it millions of dollars in unpaid taxes on the Manhattan building that houses the Nigerian Consulate.

According to a city lawsuit filed late Monday in federal court, Nigeria owes $4.1 million to $16 million in real estate taxes and interest.

Diplomatic offices are tax exempt. But New York City says parts of Nigeria's 22-story building near the United Nations have been used for commercial purposes, including for Nigeria Airways offices. Those uses are taxable.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Tuesday that the city will go after every dollar that is owed to taxpayers.

Consular officials did not immediately respond to a phone call and an e-mail seeking comment.

Manhattan Residential Real Estate Now 'Reasonable'

NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--The weather in Manhattan may be in deep freeze, but the real estate market continues to thaw. With prices falling--co-ops have hit 2005 levels--buyers are pounding the (frozen) pavement hunting deals.

Median prices in the fourth quarter were down nearly 15% from a year ago. The average price per square foot fell 17%. Buyers defied the typical seasonal slowness and pounced, sending closings soaring by nearly 50% from a year earlier, according to fourth-quarter data from brokerage The Corcoran Group and PropertyShark.com.

Several market reports expected Tuesday detail a once high-flying market trying to recover from a housing crash and credit-crisis paralysis. While homes are taking longer to sell, there are early signs of improvement: Properties are receiving multiple bids, less inventory is hitting the market and, in the latest quarter, fewer sellers cut prices. International buyers, absent for much of last year, are returning.

"I just can't deny the improvement that we've had," says Noah Rosenblatt, a broker and publisher of UrbanDigs.com, a blog focused on Manhattan real estate. "There's been so much action...The risk of systemic failure has been priced out of the market."

Guilty plea on tax charge in $1.8 billion NYC property sale

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A project director who helped broker the 2005 sale of Riverside South Properties, one of New York City's largest real estate transactions, has pleaded guilty to a tax evasion charge but is not expected to face prison time.

U.S.

Barry Gross, 46, on Wednesday admitted to failing to file unincorporated business taxes, a Class A misdemeanor, the office of Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau said.

The Lawrence, New York resident will be sentenced on February 16, 2010 to a conditional discharge if he pays an estimated $119,000 to $135,000 of state and city taxes, interest and penalties on his $1 million bonus for the transaction.

Prosecutors said Gross had disguised the bonus as a fee made payable to a shell company he controlled, Itamar Capital.

A condition of the plea is that a Hong Kong finder involved in the transaction pay $5 million in state and city taxes on a $17.5 million finder's fee.

Benjamin Brafman, a lawyer representing Gross, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Manhattan’s Apartment Market Stabilizes

EW YORK CITY-As a gauge of the multifamily sector’s health, a trio of new reports on Manhattan apartment-unit sales offer some encouraging indicators and dovetail with a recent report on the island’s rental market and Real Capital Analytics data on apartment property transactions nationwide. The fourth-quarter 2009 Prudential Douglas Elliman Manhattan Market Overview shows volume up 10.9% over the prior quarter, while both Brown Harris Stevens Residential Sales and the Corcoran Group say Q4 closings showed a year-over-year gain. Inventory levels have also dropped, says the Douglas Elliman report, which is prepared by Miller Samuel.

“This quarter, there is reason to be hopeful that the significant devaluation we have tracked since the demise of Lehman Brothers is coming to an end,” writes Corcoran CEO Pamela Liebman in her firm’s report, prepared in partnership with PropertyShark.com. Although Q4 prices ebbed on both a year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter basis, “the rate of decline has slowed,” says Hall F. Willkie, president of Brown Harris Stevens, in a release.

the manhattan bleeding slow!

The aughts are in the past, but it's not time to close the book on one of the craziest decades in New York City real estate history quite yet. The major brokerages have issued their fourth-quarter Manhattan sales reports, and at first, things look predictable: Elliman, Corcoran and sibling brokerages Halstead and Brown Harris Stevens all pegged the average price of a Manhattan apartment at around $1.3 million, and the median price at around $800,000, both down from last year. But the pace of the market's free fall in the wake of Wall Street's apocalypse has slowed, according to the brokerages, when comparing those numbers to the third quarter of '09. In fact, Halstead/BHS even showed increases in average and median sales prices in Q4 when compared to the prior quarter. We certainly didn't see that one coming. Other encouraging signs for our frienemies in suits: All of the brokerages reported increases in sales over both last year and last quarter. In essence, when compared to recent market history, the fourth quarter saw more sales for less money. A stabilization, or a plateau before a double-dip? That's the $64,000 question, which, by the way, still won't buy you anything on this dastardly island

What NYC Real Estate Can $1.2M Buy?

With a budget of $1.2 million, space and amenities are on the increase as we continue our search of properties currently on the market in New York City. NY1's Shazia Khan filed the following report.

As we continue to house hunt across the five boroughs, our first stop is in the Riverdale section of the Bronx.

664 West 232 Street
Riverdale, Bronx

One of six red brick Georgian style townhouses, this property offers a good deal of space with modern amenities.

"This house is huge. It's 3,664 square feet and its arrayed over five floors," said Brad Trebach of Trebach Realty.