By Kim Velsey 8/28/12 11:15am

Class Warfare

At least luxury homes are selling well. (technorati)

Good News! Foreclosures Still a Problem, but Loans for Luxury Homes Are on the Rise

The American people don’t stand united on very many causes these days, but the recovery of the housing market is one of them. After all, failure was tied to the unhappy fate of so many households that most of us would like to think that its good fortune would signal similarly widespread prosperity.

Well, the housing market is now limping again, although the signs of a total return to health are a good deal more promising in the upper than the lower echelons. The Wall Street Journal reports that jumbo loans—larger, higher-cost loans used to purchase luxury properties—are doing really, really well. A lot better than the rest of the housing market, which is still bogged down by foreclosures and underwater mortgages in many parts of the country. Read More

By Tom Acitelli 9/06/11 8:14pm

Our City Since

The Fresh Direct fridge goes here.

Glass Action: The Condo Since 9/11

One winter evening in 2006, host Martin Bashir’s voice intoned over the opening of Nightline: “Meet the brash, young real estate assassin, selling lavish dream apartments to clients with money to burn.”

The TV screen bled to an earnest-looking Michael Shvo. “When you see a photo of the New York skyline,” the 32-year-old informed us, “these are buildings I made happen.”

And what made Mr. Shvo happen? Read More

By Tom Acitelli 5:03pm

The Lab

Boomism Immortal

On Feb. 8, the city’s biggest building-sales brokerage, Massey Knakal, blasted a press release announcing the sale of a narrow, four-story, red-brick building along First Avenue, a block southwest of Stuyvesant Town. The walk-up rested snugly between a larger building cloaked in mesh and fronted by scaffolding and a similar-sized, white building. A chicken joint Read More