The sky's the limit? (Getty)

As usual, the $4 million+ housing market in Manhattan stands strong—thanks in part to the record-setting $88 million dollar purchase a few months ago—but the rest of Manhattan continues to slump.

"For the first time since the recovery, the U.S. is growing at a quicker pace than New York City," Greg Heym, an economist at Brown Harris Stevens and Halstead, told the Journal.

Reports from the Department of Finance yielded troubling results to the housing market, further noted by the Journal:

The analysis for the year so far showed that sales of apartments selling for less than $1 million, the largest segment of the market, fell by the most, 7.9% overall, including a steep 14.9% decline in sales of co-ops at that price point.

At the same time, sales at the top end of the market, for apartments selling for $4 million or more, rose by 15.6%, as brokers reported a continuing influx of foreign buyers and strong sales in new condominiums.

Despite the clear drop, real estate firms remain optimistic:

Diane Ramirez, the president of Halstead Property, said: "It is a good, lively, active market across the board."

Jonathan Miller, an appraiser and president of Miller Samuel Inc., who prepared market reports for Prudential Douglas Elliman, said the sluggish figures reflect the fact that "people just held back" toward the end of last year because of economic uncertainty.

It just might be best to look at the glass half-full!

Though, the housing market isn't the only industry affected. The MTA takes a few blows on economic downturns.

mewing@observer.com

In establishments from the New York Times’s four-star-rated Del Posto to the Dream Hotel in Lower Manhattan, buttoned-up retail brokers will be wining and dining potential clients during a two-day orgy of after-hour soirees, dinners and suds-soaked meetings, all designed with the deal in mind.

Wheeling and dealing at Del Posto.

“It’s not like walking the floor in Vegas—you have to have appointments beforehand,” sniffed Faith Hope Consolo, a retail leasing executive with Prudential Douglas Elliman. “It’s a ton of networking, dinner and lunch and breakfast and cocktails with different landlords and retailers.”

The event is still the second-largest retail event in the country and draws top executives from most of the world’s major retailers, not to mention almost all of the city’s major retail players. With so many key people congregated in one place (at the New York Hilton), brokers work overtime to try to maximize the chance to arrange deals or plant seeds for potential transactions in the future.

The opportunity is of special importance to brokers like Richard Hodos, an executive at the real estate services company CBRE.  Mr. Hodos, a seasoned broker who has handled a number of major leasing deals in the city, is in the process of marketing one of the city’s marquee retail projects, roughly 90,000 square feet of stores that will be built at the base of a proposed 70-story tower that the CIM Group is planning to develop on the former site of the Drake Hotel at 57th Street and Park Avenue.

For Mr. Hodos, the show allows him to round up decision-making executives from major retailers who could be potential takers of the space and actually bring them to the site and show them the plans for the soaring tower, not to mention wine and dine them.

“For me, it’s a good way to connect retailers with landlords who have product that meets the retailer’s strategic needs,” Mr. Hodos wrote in an email. “It’s also a great way to introduce retailers to property in New York that we exclusively represent. Since most retailers I schedule ICSC meetings with are from ‘out-of-town,’ it is often one of the only opportunities during the year to physically get them here to actually see our properties.”

The event takes place on Monday and Tuesday, a much quicker schedule than in Las Vegas, which stretches a week and is widely described as a bonanza of networking and dealmaking that draws movers and shakers from all walks of the retail business.  Because the New York ICSC is shorter, many brokers work overtime to maximize the opportunity.

Mr. Hodos said that his week will begin on Sunday entertaining clients with a dinner at the Iroquois Hotel. On Monday, he is taking clients to Del Posto.

To maximize time at the show, where guests congregate on the Hilton’s ballroom floor and also have meetings in hotel rooms and private suites booked upstairs, Ariel Schuster, an executive at Robert K. Futterman, a retail leasing and sales brokerage based in the city, said he pushes space tours with clients to Wednesday and Thursday.

“Many retail executives stay for the week so after the show they can continue to meet with brokers and landlords,” Mr. Schuster explained.

After hours he too takes the time to entertain clients. Every year, Mr. Schuster says he hosts a private dinner with the retailers and landlords he works closely with. On Monday, he says he’ll be doing the event at A Voce, a high-end restaurant at the Time Warner Center. While the conversation during an event as important as ICSC never strays too far from business, the point of the dinner is to also have fun.

“After working with these people for years, you’re also friends and we all have a great time getting together,” Mr. Schuster said.

Though the ICSC show features numerous speaking panels throughout the day, most brokers pass on the scheduled program to network and meet with clients. Mr. Schuster said that he has about 25 meetings scheduled heading into the conference, some of which are dedicated to pitching tenants he otherwise would have trouble connecting with, such as out-of-town retailers and those from overseas looking to come to the U.S.

For him, the conference goes beyond just spurring new business and reconnecting with those he already works with. Mr. Schuster said that he uses ICSC as a convenient place to also cinch up deals that have already been in the works.

“Everybody is there so you can finally get people face to face,” Mr. Schuster said, explaining that he grabs landlords and tenants while they’re on hand and gets them together to get transactions he has been working on, or that have stalled, over the goal line.

“If you’ve been negotiating a deal, you’re trading paper, having conference calls,” Mr. Schuster said. “But when you get people together all of a sudden you can get all the issues out of the way and get the deal done. People are more focused, they’re here for two days to do deals, it’s intense. Vegas is the Super Bowl but this is close to it.”

For some, the event is not always so structured.

“Every year I usually unexpectedly bump into people on the floor of the conference that inevitably leads to something,” Jeffrey Roseman, a top retail broker from Newmark Knight Frank, wrote in an email.

Chance encounters may be particularly helpful to Mr. Roseman. Among the projects that Mr. Roseman is working on is the marketing of space at the Limelight on 21st Street and Avenue of the Americas, a location that has been unsuccessful as a boutique mall with over a dozen tenants and that Mr. Roseman is aiming to lease to one or two tenants.

dgeiger@observer.com

Despite the business mogul's dissatisfaction with the TSA, he and wife Jocelyn will likely be submitting to more frequent security checks at airports in the greater New York area. According to city records, the Briton who was also chairman of Liverpool Football Club until last month, purchased a $2.9 million apartment in the Schwab House on Riverside Drive from John and Tania Secor.

Mr. Broughton, who stepped down as chief of the favored football team when Boston Red Sox chairman Tom Werner took over, may have fared better than his successor. While Mr. Werner's nascent tenure is tarnished by heavy losses and low scoring, Mr. Broughton managed to score a "sprawling, pristine, 4 bedroom home," according to the Douglas Elliman listing with Ann Cutbill Lenane and Deidre DeRisi. The unit is a combination of two apartments at the full-service Upper West Side co-op, which includes doormen, a concierge and an on-site managing agent--sounds like British Airways isn't the only one that will take more care of you.

cmalle@observer.com

According to city records, the identical-twin franchise has finally sold the oft-price-zig-zagging West Village apartment—which they never lived in—for $7.7 million, only $300,000 more than they paid for the "twelve room trophy" in 2004. Listed with Prudential Elliman's buzzed-about broker Jared Seligman, the apartment sold to a Two BB LLC.

The designer duo, whose Elizabeth & James clothing line took advantage of fashion week traffic with a pop-up shop nearby Morton Square on Horatio and Hudson, first tried listing the nearly 6,000-square-foot apartment for $11.995 million in 2007. After three brokerage swaps and a final asking price of $8.43 million, the $300,000 the twins made on the investment probably won't even cover the broker fees.

cmalle@observer.com

"Cottage" is perhaps a misleading descriptor for the 10,000-square-foot, 10-bedroom home with a fireplaced entry foyer, a sun room and six-bedroom suites on the second floor, including the "sumptuous" master wing with a private sitting room, double dressing rooms and baths. An "expansive" patio and covered porches overlook the bucolic bundle of manicured gardens and century-old trees within which is nestled an elegant swimming pool, poolhouse and children's playhouse.

Mr. Chase, who currently lives in Bedford, N.Y., sold the historic home to Peter Terian and wife Juliana for $10.1 million in 2001. Mr. Terian, who resided at the Dakota when not summering on the East End, was a French émigré and prodigious art collector who founded Rallye Motors (one of the nation's leading car dealerships); tragically, he succumbed to prostate cancer in the fall of 2002. However, in 2004, his family went on to purchase 18 Lily Pond Lane (which abuts the back of the Lee Avenue address) for $6 million from Walter J. Fried, a prestigious real estate lawyer responsible for the conversion of Manhattan buildings such as the Beresford and the Ritz Tower into co-ops.

The above described Lee Avenue address is offered for $25 million through Douglas Elliman agent John Golden, while the adjoining 1-acre property with a closer-to-the-ocean 18 Lily Pond Lane address and a "charming" 1940s four-bedroom home, plus its own pool, can be purchased separately for $8 million.

However, the entire property can be scooped up for a bargain $33 million. Which gives buyers two options: Buck up, be the ball and buy the whole thing for an estate bigger than Bushwood Country Club, or be a tremendous slouch and only buy one of the two; but make sure to get some hedges growing soon—you never know who your $8 million (or $25 million) neighbor might be. If you're deciding between the two properties, you could take a tip from Mr. Rogers and decide who you want to be your neighbor: Sydney Lumet across the street on Lee Avenue, or Martha Stewart four doors down on Lily Pond (personally, I'd go with Martha; I love Dog Day Afternoon but it never baked me any pies).

cmalle@observer.com

The 17-story building has a cascading glass and Chamesson limestone facade—the limestone was quarried and hand-cut in Burgundy as it was the only place Mr. Pei's desired hue could be found, which, the building's Web site assures, will differentiate it from other Manhattan condos, which tend to use the more common "grayish Indiana limestone." Tapering upward from the square base in accordance with the neighborhood's setback laws, The Centurion boasts 48 luxury apartments, three of which are penthouses just coming on the market.

Open since last spring, about 50 percent of the units are sold, according to Ilan Bracha, the eponymous muscle behind Douglas Elliman's Bracha Group, which is currently taking over sales for the building. The condo's developer, Roy Stillman of Stillman Development International, was handling sales on his own,  including a trio of neighboring apartments bought by Nigerian business oligarch, Tunde Folawiyo, for a combined sum of $10.1 million last April. However, he has decided to pass the torch to Mr. Bracha, who told The Observer confidently, "We have a few offers in contract. It is showing a lot of activity, especially with international buyers; our buyers are about 90 percent international, it's a wonderful place for a pied-à-terre."

cmalle@observer.com

The possibility was first reported in Thursday's New York Post, in a story about the Ungaro fashion house's search for a buyer. The French house famously hired Lindsay Lohan as an artistic adviser last year, to the immense scorn of fashion insiders.

Here's an excerpt from the just-issued press release:

Big News on Madison Avenue! Gary and Rick Dana, Executive Vice-Presidents of The Dana Commercial Group at Prudential Douglas Elliman, have arranged a 15 year lease with Michael Kors to build a new Madison Avenue Flagship Location at 790 Madison Avenue, the Southwest Corner of Madison Avenue and 67th Street. The location, formerly occupied by Ungaro, features 50 feet of avenue frontage containing selling area of 4000 square on two floors, plus a finished lower level. Gary Dana represented both the Landlord and the Tenant in the transaction. The deal is an example of traditional brokerage—Gary Dana repeatedly attempted to contact Michael Kors about the former Ungaro store until they agreed to a meeting. All of the business terms were agreed to in a one hour session. The deal was signed within 90 days.

drubinstein@observer.com

According to a deed filed Tuesday in city records, Mr. Olson and his wife, Candice Carpenter Olson, sold their 19^th- and 20^th-floor apartment to Essie Nail Polish founder Esther (Essie) Weingarten and her partner, Massimo Sortino, for $4.5 million.

The reason the transaction was unexpected? It was never listed! Neither the website StreetEasy, nor the other brokers representing properties in the 21-story, white brick building knew anything about the sale. When asked if she had the listing for apartment 1920B, Fox Residential Group broker Ellen Monness—who represents both a buyer for one apartment in the building and a seller for another—replied to The Observer, “Ha! No, I wish!” And Diana Ponzini & Associates broker Jaka Skrlj was also surprised to hear about the sale, telling The Observer, “Wow, I wasn’t aware the transaction was taking place at all.”

Prudential Douglas Elliman broker Claire Ratusch, who also lives in the building, knew the real story. Ms. Weingarten, who currently resides in apartment 19C—which is "a three-bedroom with a beautiful terrace"—knew that the Olsons had, “moved to Boston, or somewhere in Massachusetts,” and asked Ms. Carpenter Olson if she wanted to sell her the duplex. “It was never listed so she spoke to her and said she was interested in buying; and she said, ‘Well, alright!’”

Ms. Olson is a co-founder and former CEO of iVillage.com--an online network for women in New York--and author of Chapters: Creating a Life of Exhilaration and Accomplishment in the Face of Change, which, according to one Amazon reader review, “successfully helps you navigate the inevitable career ups and downs.”  The couple, who wed in 2001, have seven children between them—both were married previously but then divorced. 

The four-bedroom duplex has two terraces and four bathrooms, but, according to Ms. Ratusch, the nail polish numero uno, who was a buyer for Bendel's before beginning her eponymous nail polish line, will complete “huge, huuuge renovations” before moving into the combined mega-apartment.

On her Web site, Ms. Weingarten writes, "Your hands make such a statement about how you want to be."

So too, do your duplexes.

cmalle@observer.com

“One of the great killers of all time,” Donald Trump called her at the firm’s awards ceremony five years ago, when Ms. Lenz fought off her slick-haired ex-protégé Michael Shvo, who had threatened to leave if he wasn’t named top broker.

On Feb. 12, after seas of silk-scarved, shiny-shoed, power-suited real estate brokers shuffle into the Pierre’s ballroom, the colossal real estate brokerage Prudential Douglas Elliman will name its broker of the year. Just as it’s been since Dottie Herman and Howard Lorber bought the company in 2003, and as it will be until the day onyx bathrooms and heated-floor kitchens all cease to exist, the award will go to Dolly Lenz.

“One of the great killers of all time,” Donald Trump called her at the firm’s awards ceremony five years ago, when Ms. Lenz fought off her slick-haired ex-protégé Michael Shvo, who had threatened to leave if he wasn’t named top broker. He left. Last year, Jackie Teplitzky, an Israeli Army sergeant–turned–broker, complained publicly that the ceremony’s rules had been changed to give the award to Ms. Lenz.

But her biggest problems these days are these days themselves. Back in the bubbly autumn of 2007, Ms. Lenz was reported to have sold $748,319,000 of real estate the year earlier, four times higher than the country’s second-biggest broker. Since then, as the luxury housing market has fizzled gruesomely, she’s been replaced at her three biggest projects: the gargantuan white-brick Manhattan House; the New Age–branded Miraval Living; and Wall Street’s Cipriani Club Residences, where, the brokerage confirmed, Elliman’s Raphael De Niro, the actor’s son, has been the main broker for over a year.

But everyone’s fallen. There are no super-powered super-brokers in the recession. It’s made mortals of all, even the woman who once said things like “I don’t go through a lot of tirades, because I kind of just say, ‘That’s it. It’s over, O.K.? Sorry, can’t do that, goodbye.’” Even the agent whose ex-client Dennis Kozlowski called “Jaws.”

“Who’s to say you go from ’07 and do more? The market is not the same. And it may never be the same,” Mr. Lorber, Elliman’s chairman, said this weekend. “No one’s very happy. Developers aren’t happy, brokers aren’t happy, customers aren’t happy.” He pointed out that it wouldn’t be a disgrace to have sold a little less last year. “It’s like you buy a stock at $1 and it goes to $100—and then to $50. Did you make $49, or did you lose $50? What do you measure from ... Didn’t we all like ’07 better than ’08?”

But we are all not Dolly Lenz. She has her own BlackBerry commercial and, she says, 12 BlackBerrys. Her name is all over the real estate gossip pages—and her face is on real estate ads (next to Grace Kelly’s on one Manhattan House piece). When she’s on the Fox Business Channel, anchors say: “The No. 1 real estate agent in the country—this lady is just printing money!” Or: “Let us ask the Dolly.”

“RIGHT NOW, everyone’s losing a few things. She might be losing more because she had more to begin with,” said Claudine De Niro, whose husband and associate, Raphael, took over at the 106-unit Cipriani Club Residences in September 2007. When first asked about the condo, she denied that Ms. Lenz had left the project, pointing out that the broker’s name was still on listings. Later, Ms. De Niro said, “We’re all hurting. No one’s doing great. If they are, tell me who they are. I’ll hire them.”

Even though the Wall Street condo’s Web site says its units are 90 percent sold out, Mr. Lorber puts the figure at 70 to 75. “We said, ‘Maybe try something a little bit different.’ She was busy starting work at Miraval at the time, so we just said, ‘Look, Raphael’s a downtown broker.’”

But Miraval, the condo at 515 East 72nd Street that promises “massage centers, aroma-therapy spas, in-house sex therapists and skyline views,” hasn’t gone perfectly, either. In November, when Ms. Lenz was replaced, only 107 of 365 units had reportedly been sold. “Miraval is now on its third marketing team,” Mr. Lorber said. “So whatever those issues are, they are.”

“She’s a gifted dealmaker, but she’s not a marketing person,” said a source at Corcoran Sunshine, which took over from her at Miraval. “Good at marketing herself: Dolly Lenz as an institution, an epic, mythological figure. But not as far as laying out a strategic vision.”

Then there was the massive Manhattan House, a pale gray, glazed-brick emblem of the bubble’s gigantism. Not only did the Truman-era rental sell for a record $625 million four years ago, but the new owners aimed to turn the thing into a $1.1 billion condo. Besides the project’s sheer size, its furious old tenants, its hefty financing problems and its tepid location between Second and Third avenues, the new co-owners, Jeremiah O’Connor and Richard Kalikow, had a brutal falling-out. Mr. Kalikow left in October 2007.

In late January, the New York Post ran a feature about Ms. Lenz’s personal office in the Manhattan House, with its white silk roses and spotless glass desk. Later that day, according to The Real Deal, she was notified of the decision to remove her. Only a quarter of the 583 apartments had been contracted to sell, and only a third of those had actually closed.

“When they start talking about 25 percent, it’s bullshit,” said Mr. Lorber, pointing out that a chunk of the 583 units had rent-stabilized tenants or simply hadn’t been put up for sale yet.

“Look, as a company, would I have rather not lost it? Obviously,” Dottie Herman, Elliman’s CEO and co-owner, said later. “But, by the same token, if something is not going to sell at a certain price, you might as well stand on your head.”

“It seems Dolly’s timing was bad since it coincided with the financial crisis that no one anticipated or could stop,” said Joseph Aquino, an executive in Elliman’s retail real estate division, and a Manhattan House condo buyer. “The crisis was and still is global, and it was our 21st-century tsunami. It affected all of us.”

“I admire her,” he said later. “They use the following parable when the stock market tanks: ‘When the prostitution house gets raided, they even take the piano player.’”

BUT MS. LENZ has a Gatsby-like knack for transcendence. In a 2003 television interview, she and her husband said they spent, “swear to God, all the cash we had in the bank” on an $8,800 fur coat and nice dress so she could look the part of the power broker, back when she was just starting out. Four years later, asked by The Observer if she ever suffers envy, she said, “I’m just so busy doing ‘it.’ To covet you have to be outside ‘it,’ coveting.”

When she goes on, say, CNBC to tell the post–Bear Stearns world, “I think we’re actually going to be perfectly O.K., if not possibly better off,” she doesn’t just look like a mega-agent, golden hair swooping down just so, perfect nose tilted up toward the camera; she looks like a mega-agent in a Robert Altman film. Even in print interviews there’s an air of ascendancy: In December, when brokers were starting to scamper around with their arms in the air, she told the Post, “I don’t see panic at all.”

And when the Daily News ran a story last year that not only vaguely alluded to an oft-rumored affair between the broker and Mr. Lorber, but asked if she would leave the firm, she shrugged and said, “I don’t know why this starts every year.”

“I guess that’s cute for the bloggers,” Ms. Herman said this week. “But at the end of the day, you know what counts? You know what buyers and sellers care about? They don’t really care what they did or didn’t do. They care about results.”

So what exactly have Ms. Lenz’s results looked like since the November 2007 list put her sales at $748,319,000? She wasn’t included in the most recent list in November 2008—because, it turned out, Elliman declined to submit its agents’ stats.

On Monday, Feb. 9, Ms. Herman was in an office with Elliman’s Manhattan president, Steven James, working on the upcoming award ceremony. When asked, Mr. James said that Ms. Lenz’s total commissions last year were her best ever: “Over $7 million.” He said some of that money had come from deals that were signed before 2008, but took a while to close. When this reporter called back to point out that Ms. Lenz has said her annual commissions have been as high as $9 million or $10 million, Mr. James hung up. “Then don’t use the information,” he said. “I’m going into my meeting. Goodbye.”

“Tell her to show her 1099. All top brokers are curious to see,” one of the best agents in New York emailed this week, referring to the income tax form. Rivals don’t believe, for example, that one year’s sales could have been three-quarters of a billion dollars.

“I don’t know how people think I make it up. They’re out of their minds,” Ms. Herman said later, going over the awards stats in her office. “You know what? It’s just ignorance, I’ll tell you that.”

“Two thousand seven was lower, and 2008 was a bit higher,” she said about the firm’s top broker. In separate interviews, she and Mr. Lorber both offered to find specific dollar figures for Ms. Lenz, though Ms. Herman later apologized and said they were private.

“THIS IS A problem when you’re No. 1: You can go only one way, right? You can’t go up,” said Leonard Steinberg, a colleague who recently got a batch of townhouse listings with Ms. Lenz and Mr. De Niro. “It’s not possible. Sometimes when I don’t sell anything after 12 months of trying, I feel like I’m the biggest loser on the planet. But guess what? I’m not. It’s not me, it’s the market.”

Brokers obsess about other brokers, especially the aggressive ones, and they tend to get practically giddy at the thought of Ms. Lenz falling. “Think Madonna. When Madonna was at the height of career, everyone wanted to tear her down. And they did. And then she came up again. Let’s face it, American culture is cyclical,” Mr. Steinberg offered. “Dolly, for many people, has provided that sick entertainment where they want to see her fail.”

Even Ms. Teplitzky at Elliman argued in interviews that she’d been robbed of last year’s top broker award, thinking she’d done better than Ms. Lenz. “I’ll give it to you straight: Jackie did not know there were a few things Dolly had done that she hadn’t turned in,” Ms. Herman said. “There were a few personal sales that Dolly made.” But which broker beat which didn’t make a difference: Ms. Teplitzky, who has her own team at Elliman, was put in the running for the brokerage’s top group award. She got it, just like Mr. Shvo got it back in 2004.

But Dolly Lenz was still named top individual broker, just like she’ll be named top broker again on Feb. 12.

“The true test is to watch what happens. Dolly’s not perfect, nor am I, nor is anybody. People are good, but we’re all human,” Ms. Herman said. “But I think the test is yet to come.”

Ms. Lenz did not return several calls and emails, and representatives for Mr. Shvo, Ms. Teplitzky, Manhattan House, Miraval and even BlackBerry had no comment about working with her.

On Feb. 6, she was walking near Central Park when another major Manhattan real estate figure, one of the several she’s publicly feuded with, walked by.

“I’ve been told,” the associate said a few hours later, voice genuinely quivery, “that when you’re walking down a hallway, do not make eye contact, because it will remind her to get you. I swear to God, I’ve had a number of people tell me that.”

But this figure’s eyes went up to meet Ms. Lenz’s. She went by without noticing! Or did she? “Something will happen in the next month, guaranteed. I don’t talk this way about other people. There’s something wrong with her. And she scares me.”

mabelson@observer.com