By Jotham Sederstrom 3/02/12 9:00am

Investment Sales 2012

J.D. Parker. (Illustration by Joao Maio Pinto)

Marcus & Millichap’s J.D. Parker on the Multifamily Investment Sales Market

The investment sales market, most brokers agree, has been heating up over the past 12 months. Approximately $25.8 billion in commercial properties changed hands last year, a turnaround that represented an 88 percent increase over 2010. But while the positive uptick is easily verifiable, what happens next for Manhattan’s investment sales market is still up in the air.

Accordingly, The Commercial Observer set out to speak with the real estate industry’s most accomplished capital markets and sales practitioners to learn what’s in store for 2012. Over the next several days, we’ll post interviews with heavy hitters like Richard Baxter of Jones Lang LaSalle, Darcy Stacom and William Shanahan of CBRE, Woody Heller of Studley and Peter Hausperg of Eastern Consolidated. But, first, after the jump, none other than J.D. Parker of Marcus & Millichap.

Read More

By Carl Gaines 2/29/12 2:41pm

Investment Sales

Illustration by Peter Lettre.

Medium Cool: Investment Sales Volume Spiked in 2011, but Future’s Still Cloudy

A self-described car guy, Woody Heller, executive managing director and head of the Capital Transactions Group at Studley, sees parallels between automobiles as hard assets and commercial real estate investment sales velocity in New York. Apart from the obvious luxury to be found in cars and Class A buildings alike—his 33-million-square-foot transaction volume likely doesn’t include a jalopy—both markets have also lately been bolstered by similar factors.

“With debt available and with interest rates so incredibly low, it encourages one to buy because money is so cheap,” he said. “If the asset class is in favor compared with what much of the alternatives are—if borrowing costs are incredibly low—it continues to steer people to want to invest in hard assets like real estate.” Read More

By Daniel Edward Rosen 10/25/11 9:59am

power broker

Mr. Riney, a navigator of Brooklyn's shifting landscape.

The Multifamily Guy

To look at the buildings neighboring it, 567 Vanderbilt Avenue is a typical four-story, mixed-use apartment building in Brooklyn. From the bricks it was built with to the upwardly mobile professionals and strollers it presumably houses, the structure is nearly identical to the other assets in that corner of Prospect Heights.

With a recent shift on the ground—characterized by relatively new restaurants like James, Cornelius and, inevitably, the Vanderbilt—sales prices in the neighborhood are rising.

But over on Vanderbilt Avenue in particular, where trendy bars and cafés pop up each week, prices are absolutely surging, in part because of Nostradamus-like predictions of basketball fans flooding the zone once the Nets start playing inside the proposed Atlantic Yards arena and, ultimately, exiting en masse from doors leading directly to the street. Read More

By Jotham Sederstrom 3/08/10 7:29pm

The Dutiful Niece

It was at the Soho building that now houses Dos Caminos—that high-concept Mexican cantina to the stars—that Marcus & Millichap associate vice president Adelaide Polsinelli discovered her career path.

Ms. Polsinelli’s uncle had owned the five-story building until his death, in 1983, and had rented the ground floor to the owner of Read More

By Dana Rubinstein 2/26/10 4:54pm

Manhattan Apartment Buildings: How Much and How Many

If this time last year you wanted to know much a multifamily building cost in your neighborhood, you were, as they say, out of luck. That’s because this time last year, there were next to no building sales. And mid-turmoil Great Recession, with no points of comparison, or comparables, it was kind of impossible to Read More