One World Trade Center Gains First Tenant

After three years of negotiations, the Beijing Vantone Industrial Co., Ltd., a Chinese real estate investment company, has officially signed on as the first tenant at One World Trade Center, New York’s tallest and perhaps most important building currently under development.

The Port Authority of New York said Thursday that it signed Vantone to a 190,810-square-foot lease with a 20-year, nine-month term set to commence upon the building’s completion in 2013. The Chinese developer plans to build out the 64th through 69th floors of the 70-story building as a business/cultural space known as the China Center.

The Center will serve as a hub for Chinese companies establishing operations in the United States, as well as U.S. companies seeking to expand into China. Businesses that choose to locate in the China Center will receive assistance in relocation, real estate, finance and investor relations. Chris Ward, executive director for the Port Authority, called the lease a "clear signal that the World Trade Center site will once again be a global capital of commerce."

Whining Rich Person of the Day, NYC Real Estate Edition

Every time I come across another one of these stories of rich peoples' innate sense of entitlement it riles me a little more. Dr Beitler is obviously smart enough to know what a deposit is -- but somehow he reckons that a nonrefundable deposit should, in fact, be refundable if and when he can't get a 10%-down, no-income-check mortgage any more. What's more, if he doesn't get his deposit back, he thinks it would be a jolly good idea were US taxpayers to club together to give him back his $173,000 (or more than three times median household income in the US). After all, he did suffer "an unfortunate confluence of events", the poor dear.

I do wonder whether Dr Beitler, who has bought and sold property before -- in what was surely a healthy up market -- might be willing, in return for $173,000 from taxpayers, to return to those selfsame taxpayers all of the profit he made on flipping property in the past. After all, the "confluence of events" which caused property prices to rise was no more his doing than the confluence of events which caused property prices to fall. But somehow I doubt he sees it that way.

Lost Bonuses Mean Manhattan Home Prices to Drop Most Since ‘80

A 50 percent reduction in bonuses would push down prices by about 24 percent from their peak through mid-2010, said Sam Chandan, chief economist at property research firm Real Estate Economics LLC in New York. That would mark the biggest slide since 1980 when appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. started tracking Manhattan prices.

“This will probably be the worst price correction the city has seen,” said Marisa Di Natale, senior economist at Moody’s Economy.com in West Chester, Pennsylvania.

When bonuses climbed 114 percent between 1998 and 2000, Manhattan co-op and condo prices followed, rising 51 percent during those years, data compiled by Miller Samuel show.

AIG Evaluating Sale of New York Headquarters Building

March 18 (Bloomberg) -- American International Group Inc. the insurer that received a $173 billion U.S. bailout, is considering a sale of its New York headquarters and another tower in lower Manhattan to help repay the government.

AIG is evaluating the sale of 70 Pine St. and 72 Wall St., spokesman Mark Herr said in an e-mail today. Two years ago the properties were likely worth about $315 million, said Dan Fasulo, managing director of Real Capital Analytics Inc., a New York-based firm that tracks commercial real estate sales.

“This is part of AIG’s divestiture strategy and effort to maximize operating efficiency,” Herr said in a statement. “Market interest received will help determine the best course of action.”