Eventual sale of housing complex looms over Starrett City tenants

On the other side is a large group of investors, including Donald Trump, who have made millions in one of the sweetest real estate deals in New York City. Many of them want to cash out - and make, at a minimum, another $500 million. The investors' desire to sell has tenants of the sprawling Brooklyn housing development, with its 5,880 apartments over 140 acres, fearing that a sale at a high price will mean evictions or big rent hikes.

The Coming Death of Smith Street

A few years ago chefs in Manhattan with dreams of opening their own restaurants and finding enough kitchen space to do a proper job were turning to Smith Street in Boerum Hill for what they needed at reasonable rents. Smith Street has now become so celebrated as a strip for good eating that the chains are moving in, upping the rents to unaffordability for local operations and transforming a place of distinctive character into one more agglomeration of the usual that you can find everywhere else.

Real Estate Developers Accused Of $27 Million Fraud

Two individuals, purporting to be working through a Manhattan real estate development company, have been arrested in connection with an elaborate scheme to defraud approximately 70 individuals of over $27 million. Working through The Kingsland Group Inc. and related entities, the duo allegedly fraudulently induced approximately 70 individuals to loan them, in the aggregate, over $27 million, purportedly to fund the renovation of approximately 16 multi-family apartment buildings located in upper Manhattan, according to federal prosecutors. As part of the fraud, Hershkowitz and Woolf-Turk allegedly falsely represented that the investor victims would hold, as collateral for the loans, interests in bona fide first mortgages in the various properties in which they thought they were investing. In fact, the investor victims did not hold recorded, first mortgages in the properties.

HOME PRICES CONTINUE STEEP CLIMB THROUGHOUT

Condominium and co-op prices rose 8 percent in citywide sales for the second quarter of 2007, according to a report by the Real Estate Board of New York. Unsurprisingly, Manhattan came in first with a $1.2 million average apartment sales price – up from $1.14 million last year – while Brooklyn was a distant second at $484,000, up from $443,000. Meanwhile, the median sales price for city apartments climbed 16 percent to $525,000. The average price per square foot for a Manhattan apartment increased 5 percent to $1,083, while Brooklyn and Queens came in second and third at $524 and $357. “The report clearly demonstrates that, while everyone knows the Manhattan market continues to be strong, the boroughs outside Manhattan are bucking the trend in the rest of the country and seeing solid increases in home prices.