Yesterday, august real estate brokerage Prudential Douglas Elliman celebrated its 100th birthday. By order of the mayor, yesterday was declared Douglas Elliman day, in honor of the broker who founded the firm at 412 Madison Avenue and is often credited with making uptown chic. Firm owners Dottie Herman, Howard Lorber, even the ghost of Elliman Read More
Microcosm alert.
During the heady days of the real estate bubble, James Cummings came to town having had a successful career developing properties in Greenwich, Conn. Mr. Cummings and his Aberdeen Properties had a clever idea and set about buying up rundown townhouses and converting them into luxurious mini-condos. There would be automated doormen, Read More
Is Dolly Lenz, the only broker in the world with her own BlackBerry commercial, the single biggest real estate agent in the nation? Or is the quieter 39-year-old Serena Boardman?
Ms. Boardman, a Sotheby’s senior vice president, takes the top spot in the annual list of the nation’s top brokers that a group Read More
If Dolly Lenz did not exist we would have to create her. The woman is a real estate mega-broker of mythological proportions: She has said that she has done $7 billion in sales, has personally owned 70 to 80 properties, and currently keeps 12 BlackBerrys; her name is in the news weekly, especially in the Read More
After two heirs to the Seagram liquor fortune sold their townhouses last summer for 11 times what each had paid a decade earlier, or after a hedge funder set a co-op record twice this year by buying a penthouse for $46 million and selling it for $2.9 million more, brokers nodded their heads and repeated Read More
The story was reported by Max Abelson, Eliot Brown and Dana Rubinstein; and written by Ms. Rubinstein.
New York’s real estate community doesn’t just love Mayor Bloomberg. It lurves him. And it’s greeting the news of his third-term bid accordingly.
A sampling:
"Love him," said developer and landlord Alex Sapir. "Let’s keep him forever." Read More
