By Stephen Jacob Smith 6/04 4:39pm

Manhattan Transfers

Good luck finding a $1.8 million one-bedroom at 432 Park.

Former Sales Chief Richard Wallgren Cashes Out of 15 CPW

Given that 15 Central Park West has made headlines for its record-setting sales (and, lately, some unrealistic asks), it’s good to see that the little guys can still make a buck at the limestone money printing press.

Little guys like Richard Wallgren, executive vice president of sales and marketing at Macklowe Properties. Mr. Wallgren, a former investment banker, knew when to buy: at the trough of the real estate cycle. He picked up his eighth-floor one-bedroom, 1,079-square-foot sponsor unit in April 2008 for a bit over $1.8 million, or just $1,685 a foot—a sizable discount off of the more than $2.5 million ask. Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 2/18 5:43pm

Manhattan Transfers

The priciest condos at 737 Park were hiked 15 percent, after sitting on the market for less than three weeks.

Price Hike for Prewar Park Avenue Condos

A Park Avenue co-op may be the ultimate in old New York style, but what happens if you don’t want to (or can’t) put up with the hassles of proving yourself to a co-op board? For the paparazzi-tailed celebrities, Slavic-accented oligarchs and Gulf emirs among us, there’s always 737 Park Avenue.

And by the looks of the recent price increases at the stately 1940 apartment house at Park Avenue and East 71st Street, the celebs, oligarchs and emirs are desperately in need of accommodations. Developer Macklowe Properties just put the sponsor units on the market on January 11, but those prices didn’t even last three weeks before they were raised, according to StreetEasy. And it isn’t the first time that the developer has demanded more—Bloomberg News reported that Macklowe jacked up prices in the building twice last November. Then again, the price hikes could be a publicity ploy—in which case, it’s working! (As far as we can tell, nobody managed to scoop up an apartment before any of the recent price hikes.) Read More

By Daniel Geiger 1/03/12 3:00pm

power broker

Baxter, Richard NEW 6 31 11

Richard Baxter Dishes on the Drama Behind the Deals at Casa Lever

It was lunchtime at Casa Lever, the high-end restaurant in the iconic Lever House, and Richard Baxter was on his BlackBerry negotiating.

It was a busy year for Mr. Baxter and his colleagues at Jones Lang LaSalle. His four-man team comprised some of the city’s most prominent brokers of large-scale commercial office buildings, and as the Manhattan sales market’s post-recessionary thaw continues, Mr. Baxter estimated that the group had tallied an impressive $1.3 billion in deals this year.

Three days before Christmas, however, it wasn’t one particular skyscraper Mr. Baxter was bargaining over from his plum seat at Casa Lever. In a year-end rush, his group had loose ends to tie up, deals to close and transactions still in the works. And so, on this particular Thursday amid a bustling lunch crowd, Mr. Baxter was not negotiating with a buyer or a building owner, but rather one of his own assistants, whom he was asking to stay late to receive critical documents and to help get the team through the rest of the day. Read More