Imagine having it all?

The late Howard Ronson and his family had a dream—a dream of making the mansion at 828 Fifth Avenue whole again, as it was in the glorious days when coal magnates commissioned Fifth Avenue manses and robber barons ruled the land. But sometimes dreams die.

After a buying spree that netted four of the nine luxurious co-op units in the building, the family is giving up, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The family has decided to give one lucky buyer—a "person with vision"—the chance to purchase their failed dream for $72 million.

So what does $72 million get this very lucky buyer? A handful of renovated apartments that Ronson, a developer of modern office buildings, and his estate purchased for $33.95 million between 2005 and 2008 (one must pay a premium, of course, in the off chance that he or she may be able to bribe the other tenants into budging from their apartments, thus reclaiming the entire house—though for god knows how much more money).

Built by coal baron Edward J. Berwind in the 1800s, the house on the corner of East 64th Street, has been called "nothing less than a palace," but it remains, as it has for many years, a vexingly multi-family dwelling.

Apparently, 72 is the lucky (or unlucky) number for this listing, as brokers say that the clan, which is based in Monaco, now owns 72 percent of the building.

The listing was placed with Corcoran brokers Sharon Baum, Leighton Candler and Deborah Grubman, as well as Stribling broker Alexa Lambert, according to The Journal.

It's unclear why exactly Ronson, a Brit living in Monaco who was seeking a pied-a-terre when he bought into the building, found himself so compelled to reassemble the original mansion. Was it simply the instinct to build and rebuild that made him so successful in business? Did he want more space to spend his limited hours in the city? Or was he simply unsatisfied by existing townhouses like the Stanford White mansion a few blocks down Fifth?

In any event, we know that Ronson first bought an apartment spanning two floors, followed almost immediately by two other purchases: a maisonette duplex and a full-floor apartment. Inspired by the beauty of Ronson's vision, his family refused to let death come between them and full mansion ownership, scooping up the penthouse (with terrace and rooftop garden) after he died.

Altogether, the Ronsons own 15,000 square-feet of space, plus some terraces and a wine cellar. (This puts the price into some perspective, which, while outrageous, is about $4,800 a foot, half what record-setting penthouses at 15 Central Park West and One57 are currently going for). Two co-ops were combined to form a triplex, which, with a 34-foot-long ballroom and wedding-cake ceilings, which would almost certainly be a hot commodity in today's market.

But unless one has an entourage (nudge nudge Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani—we also hear the building is very friendly to internationals), we're not sure what one would do, exactly, with a disconnected penthouse apartment and a maisonette. Of course, you could just persuade the other residents of the other two apartments to move out. Might we suggest all-night parties upstairs, all-day construction downstairs.

Because, you know, this isn't just any Fifth Avenue mansion, this is a mansion on a corner that gets really good light and it's directly across "from one of the better parts of Central Park," Corcoran Group president Pam Liebman told The Journal.

You know, as opposed to all those townhouses abutting mediocre parts of Central Park.

Right now is a very popular time to buy high-end real estate, but we can't help but wonder if anyone will drop a record-setting $72 million on 828 Fifth Avenue. After all, with buyers lusting after condos and all the full-service amenities that come with them, rebuilding a Fifth Avenue mansion seems like, well, something out of the coal age.

And if you really want an opulent single-family mansion, you could just purchase the Woolworth Mansion.

kvelsey@observer.com

Either way, you get the picture and it is not pretty. (And not surprising: These are the first market reports to truly reflect a post-Lehman Manhattan.)

And it isn’t just that sales are down. There has also been a pronounced shift in the prototypical Manhattan buyer. As recently as six months ago, the Manhattan market was driven by the luxury market; not so anymore, say Corcoran CEO Pam Liebman, who says that first-time buyers have become a larger slice of the population. And this is changing which apartments get sold, and which don’t. “We are seeing a lot more activity on the lower end of the market, the starter market, with a lot of action on studios and one-bedroom apartments,” Ms. Liebman said.

For these first-time buyers, it’s nothing if not a very good time to buy in Manhattan. But for how long?

Manhattan’s inventory of unsold apartments on the market reached 10,445 in the first quarter, according to the Miller Samuel-Douglas Elliman report, which is a 34.3 percent spike from last year. There are a lot of apartments out there, and there aren’t a whole of buyers, simply put, with just 1,195 sales in the first quarter. Advantage: buyers.

Buyers wary of missing the market need not be, according to the experts. “I think that it is a multi-year process,” said Jonathan Miller, CEO of appraisal firm Miller Samuel and the author of the Douglas Elliman report. “We probably aren’t going to see heavy or significant sales volume for a few years.”

So it's not as if all that excess inventory is going to be gobbled in the spring or summer, even with the seasonal boost in sales activity. What to do if you're a first-time buyer? Buy now, while prices are low, or wait to see what happens and buy this time next year when prices are still likely to be low. There’s still a ton of stuff out there (around 10,500 apartment, in fact) and a quick recovery is unlikely.

The message? It’s all about value: Things are terrible, but also kind of great, with a universe of possibilities out there for someone in a position to buy.

“New Yorkers are bargain hunters,” said fellow panelist Pam Liebman, president and CEO of the Corcoran Group, who cited John Jacob Astor’s regret that he hadn’t bought every inch of Manhattan when he could. “Never fail to take advantage of a good crisis.”

The fifth annual high-level real estate panel, moderated by former Douglas Elliman president Paul Purcell, crystallized what has happened in the market over the last six months and had some recommendations for a half-full crowd of elderly landlord types, which—as determined by a show of hands—had more buyers than sellers in attendance.

The panelists came with a barrage of numbers. Transactions are down by half.  Inventory is up 38 percent from this time last year. Homes are selling for 20 below asking price, on average, and spending 142 days on the market. Credit is seriously hard to come by, but if you can wrangle financing, now might be the best time to buy in years—and people are getting the message.

Alan Rosenbaum, head of the mortgage brokerage GuardHill Financial, was perhaps the most upbeat on the stage. He’s doing a brisk business in refinancing houses as well as helping people find loans when they’ve been turned down by the big banks, and he said he sees the tide beginning to turn. “Things are starting to come around. There’s great opportunity,” he said. “The purchase market is starting to come back.”

Of course, the activity isn’t in the mega-listings, which spend months on the market. Most of the action is in deals under $2 million, said Ms. Liebman, who is shifting her firm’s marketing strategy to focus on value and encouraging her brokers to aim low. “Do the kids, do the grandkids of the people you’ve been dealing with,” she said. Heck, do rentals for a while.

The real problem, Mr. Rosenbaum said, is “public psychology”—the doom-and-gloom media reports that have people thinking the market has further to fall. Ms. Liebman agreed, calling out specifically a Times article from last week about the rising frequency of auctions, which she said contributed to the “fear factor.”’

Of course, buildings will get auctioned. But, Ms. Liebman said, those are the ritzy condo projects that maybe “shouldn’t have gotten built in the first place.” Without naming names, she called out buildings in the financial district with hundreds of units that are now going begging.

“They were marketed on sex appeal, rather than the bread and butter,” she said. “We can talk about pet spas and wine bars, but at the end of the day, do you have a good floor plan? Do you have a good price?”

Mr. Miller struck perhaps the most sobering note of the night, emphasizing that although affordability was at an all-time high, success in a sale all comes down to credit—which could still take one or two years to loosen up.

What won’t help, Ms. Liebman said bluntly, are tax increases that hit the higher-earning New Yorkers, who could easily pick up and move to Connecticut.

“There’s a big movement in the real estate industry not to be supportive of these increases in taxes,” she said. The others nodded in agreement.

Could it be that the worst of the whole sordid mess had finally passed by?

According to a study of preliminary January foreclosure numbers provided by PropertyShark.com, the answer is no.

This January there have been an estimated 278 first-time foreclosures in the city, a 63.5 percent month-over-month increase, indicating that the subprime monster lives on into the New Year. Rather than some sort of permanent (and positive!) new trend, the sharp reduction in foreclosures was a one-off anomaly, a red herring, if you will, likely caused by a statewide, three-month-long foreclosure moratorium that expired at the end of November.

In New York, the locality of foreclosures has followed fairly consistent patterns since they started picking up in the second half of 2007: a heavy concentration of foreclosures in central and southern Queens, parts of Staten Island and east Brooklyn, and considerably fewer foreclosures in other parts of the city, particularly Manhattan, where there have been almost no foreclosures to speak of.

The foreclosure-rich neighborhoods tend to be the sorts of places attractive to subprime lenders; like a moth to a flame, the ultimately destructive creative financial packages were drawn to places like Jamaica, Queens, by the cheaper property values and less-qualified mortgage applicants. The question now: What is going to happen to borrowers in 2009?

Is all of New York going to morph into Jamaica, with a seemingly endless supply of foreclosed homes? Probably not, but the ongoing financial crisis and the pitiful job market might affect the foreclosure market in different ways. The city’s unemployment rate jumped to 7.4 percent in December.

“There is going to be a definite correlation between the job market and home foreclosures,” Bill Staniford, the chief executive of PropertyShark.com, said. “There is going to be more standard ‘I’ve lost my job and can’t afford to pay the mortgages’ sort of thing.”

THUS FAR, Manhattan has avoided the foreclosure plague. In the second and third quarters of 2008, there were 57 home foreclosures in Manhattan; Queens had 254 in the month of August alone.

Even with massive layoffs on Wall Street and a worsening economic climate, it’s unlikely that mortgage defaults will increase in Manhattan. Because of stringent co-op regulations and the exclusive nature of Manhattan property, few buyers will have the sorts of dramatic equity problems that led so many outer-borough borrowers to default. But there will still be people looking to downsize, cut down on costs and scale back on their living expenses.

With that in mind, real estate executives are closely monitoring the number of distressed sales in Manhattan. “I don’t think you will see transparent distress, but I think you are going to see properties in Manhattan trade down,” Mr. Staniford said. “People may not go into liens pendants or foreclosure, but some people may have to sell.”

Much as home foreclosures have helped diagnose some ailing outer-borough neighborhoods, the distressed seller could become the weather vane of Manhattan’s residential market in 2009.

“What’s troubling is that there’s already a trickle coming in,” Pam Liebman, CEO and president of the Corcoran Group, said. “We’ve seen a couple of short sells, but nothing like a big trend.”

Ms. Liebman explained there are buyers waiting for cut-rate apartment prices, and, in that parlance particular to real estate execs, said there has been a steady stream of foot traffic at open houses around Manhattan.

Michael Goldenberg, an executive sales director at Halstead Property, was working in Manhattan the last time there was a foreclosure crisis there, in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Back then, he was running Halstead’s real estate owned division, helping banks offload their foreclosed properties to the nearest buyer. He remains optimistic that today’s market is in better shape.

“Back in those days, there was a real estate problem in Manhattan,” Mr. Goldenberg said. “Today, it’s a case-by-case basis where some people are just going to overextend themselves, but based on what we are seeing in terms of foreclosure notices and the indications from the government, I am led to believe that we should avoid having a similar problem.”

Meanwhile, the pace of foreclosures in the outer boroughs remains brisk. Brian Tracz, a real estate attorney, spoke to The Observer after attending a short sale of a home in Jamaica, Queens. About two years into a major foreclosure crisis, Mr. Tracz notices that banks and mortgage lenders are starting to reverse their strategies when it comes to resolving mortgage defaults.

“They’re more willing to listen now than they used to be,” Mr. Tracz, a native of Forest Hills, Queens, said. “They are much more likely to agree to a short sale now than they were a year ago, and they definitely don’t want to carry the costs of having the properties just sit around.”

Don’t expect home foreclosures to disappear anytime soon. Like something out of Shelley’s Frankenstein, the subprime mortgage crisis is a lot harder to kill than it is to create.

“We created this monster, and now we are going to have to learn how to deal with it,” Mr. Tracz said.

ohaydock@observer.com

“Corcoran … is closing,” he wrote, “with its biggest producers moving over to Brown Harris Stevens.” But that wasn’t all. “Also closing after years in business is the high end residential brokerage Edward Lee Cave, with his biggest producing brokers also moving over to Brown Harris.” It was petrifying: Corcoran is one of the city’s two largest residential real estate firms, along with archrival Douglas Elliman; Mr. Cave, a man who takes his Carlyle martinis on the rocks, has the quintessential boutique brokerage.

“It’s all nonsense,” Corcoran CEO Pam Liebman (pictured) told The Observer around 10:15 a.m. on Tuesday. “There’s not an ounce of truth to it. Not an ounce of truth to it, and we’re going to have our attorneys do something about it.”

By 11:45 a.m., Mr. Columbia’s Web report had been revised to say both rumors were “simply false.”

Considering the double Brown Harris name drop, might his supposed news have come from that rival firm? “I think these rumors are being spread by Elliman,” a Corcoran source argued. “It’s ugly out there. They’ve been unable to successfully poach brokers from Corcoran in the past, so now they’ve turned to this tactic to scare them into jumping ship.”

“No, no,” Mr. Columbia told The Observer. He said the rumors had not come from brokers. “The reality is, whether people like to face it or not, we’re living in a time where financial waters are swirling.” After all, news just broke that Carl Icahn is suing friend and fellow billionaire Leon Black, whose firm Apollo Management paid $6.6 billion last year for Corcoran’s parent, Realogy. Mr. Icahn, who is suing over bond refinancing, claims Realogy is “deeply insolvent.”

Ms. Liebman said those quarrels have nothing to do with the effectiveness of her company: “It’s Business 101. … The Corcoran Group is very solid.”

Meanwhile, there will likely be some alterations at Edward Lee Cave’s immensely proper boutique brokerage. Mr. Cave, currently the sole owner, said that he, brokerage president Caroline E. Y. Guthrie and senior vice president Kathryn Steinberg may be changing the group’s corporate structure.

That means they may share ownership of the brokerage.

It’s been in the works for a year, according to the 60-something Mr. Cave. “I’m just not quite as active as I used to be. For the corporation to go on smoothly and efficiently, some new ownership is totally appropriate.”

Is that saddening? “No! I’m excited. I want my company to go on forever. I want in 50 years for someone to say, ‘Edward Lee Cave, Inc? What an unusual name! I wonder who he was.’”

 mabelson@observer.com

There will be no faux-Roman palaces this year.

"We decided not to have a holiday party quite a while ago," Corcoran CEO Pam Liebman told The Observer yesterday. "It's just not a responsible way to act right now."

But won't that be bad for morale? "You know what, we do a lot of things that are good for morale, but spending a fortune when the market's faced with some unprecedented numbers? By the way, my brokers literally applauded when we said we weren't going to have a party. It's not the way to act right now! People are losing their jobs, the economy is in a scary place; it's not the time to waste money on a celebration."

Ms. Liebman said the decision was made before the news that rival Prudential Douglas Elliman or commercial firms like CB Richard Ellis and Cushman & Wakefield had cancelled their parties, too. "I never, never ask them what they're doing. I think we operate doing what's best for us," she said.

When asked for an estimate on party costs, she said they're well over $100,000. "Everyone's having their own potluck dinner in their offices, or someone's hosting at a house."

Ms. Liebman: The Corcoran Report, which we started in the ’80s, was actually the first report to ever come out in Manhattan, so we had a great head start in market reports. Our relationship with PropertyShark was more about getting as much data as possible, because to me, the market report should have as much clear information as possible for any buyers and sellers, so we want to put forward the best data that we can. Now, our report is not really a subjective report, it’s based on closings; and since we have the most up-to-date closings as anybody, we think we provide the most comprehensive report out there.

Is your data any different?

We all get the same data, but we get it at different times. We may get the new development closings earlier than someone else, and other companies may get other things sooner than we do, but this information has become a lot more transparent now, so I think over time that the reports should be just more and more similar. I have a great respect for Jonathan Miller, and he and I talk every quarter about reports and market information in general. I don’t look at our report as a marketing tool; to me, it is a service. I’m just trying to give people the best report they can get. And I also want my agents to have the best data possible. So going to a company like PropertyShark that is a data aggregating company only enhanced our report. And to a certain extent I think it adds credibility to the report because PropertyShark is a disinterested third party.

Tough times likely lie ahead for the real estate industry. As head of a company with thousands of employees, are you taking any steps to anticipate what is coming?

We’ve been preparing for quite a while now. During 2007, we realized this was potentially at the market’s pinnacle and we took steps to act responsibly, and we will continue to do that. We never really got fat in the best days, so it’s not like we have all this shedding to do, but we certainly look at all avenues of our business and where we can enhance revenues. Where we can drive revenues we will do that, and if there is areas where we can alter spending, we will do that as well; it would be foolish not to.

Are there any specific branch closings or broker layoffs in the works?

Every year we look at all of our offices in Long Island and New York City; and if it makes sense to do a consolidation or not have an office in a certain place, we will do it. Recently, we closed our office in Hampton Bays, which was a very small office. Most of the deals we did were in areas that had other offices anyway, so it just didn’t make any sense to be there. We don’t foresee closing any offices in Manhattan; all of our offices are extremely strong performers and we have very strong brokers. We have always held our brokers to a very high standard, and we don’t keep brokers around who don’t cut it.

How are your brokers doing? I would imagine it’s difficult out there in a slower sales environment.

Well, I think it is our responsibility to help these brokers meet the changing market. We have a lot of seasoned brokers at Corcoran, and they have been through shifting markets before, but it never hurts to give them a refresher and also to help train some of the new people. We are doing a lot of things. We are saying that the volume of sales in Manhattan is down, so there is going to be a smaller pie out there, but we want you to get a bigger piece of it.

Not every broker is going to make it through this market, that is for sure. If the reports are showing 20 percent less deals, then not every broker is going to do as many deals, but some will end up doing more; and it is my job as leader of this firm to make sure it’s the Corcoran brokers that gain market share during this period.

Why haven’t prices dropped yet?

I think it’s important for people to understand that these reports are based on data that has happened in the past. None of the reports are reflective of what is going on today. Many of those numbers are from new development closings that were done a year ago or 18 months ago, or sales that were done in the spring.

But even by last spring the economy was starting to slow down.

Well, I think you see that in the volume of sales, which is down. But nobody was giving anything away. I mean, this is New York; typically values don’t just drop overnight like they do in the stock market. What I have explained to a lot of people is that a rising tide carries everyone with it, so any apartment—regardless of quality or even location—was dragged along in this great real estate upswing. Today, every property has to stand on its own, and the less attractive apartments are no longer going to benefit from this upswing in real estate, and that is where you will see prices really start to come down.

Do you have a timetable for when this might happen?

I think you are going to see some softening in the next quarter, in the fourth-quarter reports. There has already been some, if you look quarter over quarter. But remember, there are so many trophy apartments that closed this year, and this has really pushed the average sales price up. Everyone talks about 15 CPW and the Plaza, and there were lots and lots of deals above $10 million that have really driven up the average sales price. It was a record-setting year for that; 2007 and 2008 were huge years for these super-luxury apartments, and we won’t see that volume of sales above $10 million in 2009 that we have seen in the past. The mix of apartments will switch, and that will pull the average price down.

What do you think will happen in the luxury market?

I think that market will still do very well. The brokers who work that end of the market are all saying that there is a lack of really good inventory, but no shortage of clients who would happily write that $20 million check. They just can’t find anything to buy. So a great number of luxury properties will still trade, but we don’t tend to see more than a handful at a time; 15 CPW, the Plaza and 995 Fifth being on the market at the same time was very unusual. I think if the product is there, the prices will remain strong and the buyers will be there.

As someone involved in the real estate industry, what do you make of how the press is reporting on the economy and real estate right now? Is the press a problem?

It’s not a help, that’s for sure. The problem with the press is that they like to report negative stories. I remember after 9/11 when the press was jumping on stories about people running from the city and fleeing to the suburbs—New York was over, Tribeca was over. And it simply wasn’t true. After 9/11, the city’s real estate market stood still for about four weeks and then it just took off.

I was doing a story with a reporter from The New York Times about how many sales we were doing, and I had to actually bring her up to my office and show her the files in my computer and show her the positive trends that were going on in the real estate market. It’s very easy to get depressed, believe the negative and overlook the positive. Nobody wants to read good news.

Is the press missing anything?

I think they are missing that it is a great opportunity for buyers to get in there, although some people are writing about it. I just think that the press has been talking about a real estate bubble for years now, and we are just now starting to see some softness in New York, and they are just piling it on.

ohaydock@observer.com

The heftiest brokerage in the city just lost three hefty senior vice presidents (and a VP too). Uber-broker Wendy Maitland (whom you may remember from this weekend as Madonna's broker) is one of the recently departed (she's at the top, on the middle left).

"Sometimes issues come up that make it better for the brokers and the company to part ways," Corcoran CEO Pam Liebman told The Real Estate on Monday afternoon. "In this case, that's the path we chose to take." (Ms. Liebman was using the royal we.) "They're good brokers, we wish them well."

Those good brokers include Wilbur Gonzalez (on the far left above), who brought in $200 million for Corcoran in 2004 and 2005 alone--and who had the honor of representing Courtney Love's Soho loft. Another departed SVP, Erin Boisson Aries (above, far right), has been one of the firm's top-producing brokers. Then there's vice president Reid Price, who had already produced "more than $800 million in sales" in a decade.

All that information comes from Corcoran's Web profiles of its brokers. Eerily, those pages have been taken down from the Internet.

Why the exodus? "Maybe you should get that from them," Ms. Liebman said. "I don't feel comfortable speaking on internal politics." But the four brokers couldn't immediately be reached for comment--so, naturally, there's more soon to come.

- Max Abelson

Monolithic real estate firm NRT acquired Bridgehampton's Allan M. Schnieder Associates this afternoon. (Sales prices, sadly, were not disclosed). Schneider will be absorbed into the Corcoran Group, thus combining the East End's two biggest real estate brokerages.

We talked to the young couple, including Corcoran CEO Pam Liebman and Schneider principals (now Corcoran senior managing directors) Peter Hallock, Timothy Davis and Peggy Griffin.

Mr. Davis on today's dour Times Hamptons piece: "We've actually experienced a record year so far--and 2005 was a 30% boost over the year before. People like to report on negative news."

Mr. Hallock on Hamptons negativity: "One house not selling doesn't make or break the market." (And earlier: "We're happy campers!")

Mr. Hallock on the Hamptons allure: "To have the pristine beaches and the wonderful zoning and being a hundred miles from the best city in the world? It's a world class wateringhole."

Ms. Liebman on Corcoran's future Hamptons growth: "We never pass up a good opportunity. But it doesn't get much better than this. Certainly there may be some small boutiques, though. We always look for new business opportunities."

Mr. Hallock on hip Hamptons 'hoods: "You know for years we've been watching Hampton Bays, and wondering when to jump in. We jumped in about a year and a half ago, when Starbucks opened. We thought: 'You know what? We're taking the place next door'... Now the waterfront is on fire. And the Flanders area, which people thought twice about, is very hot."

Ms. Liebman on Hamptons expectations: "I think our market share will continue to grow, and I hope we expand our number of listings. I think this is a great opportunity for us to add some new brokers... I'm looking forward to getting bigger and better."

- Max Abelson

We're actually not sure if Babs ever made it, but from the sound of this "event report," Corcoran CEO Pam Liebman was definitely in control of the festivities.

Yes, this is where all those broker commissions wind up at the end of the year. (BizBash via Gawker)

-Michael Calderone