Brown Harris Stevens broker Nicholas Palance.

Square footage was the first thing on our minds when we walked into REBNY's Residential Deal of the Year Awards. The Metropolitan Pavilion space was so cavernous that despite a sizable crowd of brokers chatting over cocktails it still felt oddly empty, with a cold draft drifting in from the entrance. Nor did the flickering candles grouped on the tables contribute much warmth or intimacy, but we appreciated the gesture—a nice reminder that we were among those who sold residential real estate for a living.

Shivering, The Observer walked into the scrum of darkly-clad revelers and found ourselves standing next to Halstead president Diane Ramirez. She planted a kiss in the air some ten inches to the left of our cheek and encouraged us to buy raffle tickets in support of REBNY's "residential member in need fund." The charity was the real point of the evening, she told us, gentling nudging us toward the table before flitting off.

Ann Ferguson of Klara Madlin Real Estate.

The anemic crowd at the raffle ticket table, however, suggested otherwise. The bar, on the other hand, was packed. Feeling somewhat thirsty ourselves, we plucked a cosmopolitan from a passing tray.

A diamond broach glinting in the low light caught our eye. It belonged, of course, to real estate doyenne Sharon Baum, the winner of the 2011 Henry Forster Award for Lifetime Achievement. Ms. Baum informed us that she would be presenting this year's Henry Forster Award.

And did she know who the winner was? Or would she only find out after opening a sealed envelope, Oscar style?

She did not know. Or maybe she was just keeping mum. Confidentiality agreement?

The Observer was eager to mingle more, but soon the lights flickered and loud thumping music made conversation all but impossible. It was time for the Cesar Galindo fashion show. The crowd settled into chairs around the runway, but not everyone was so eager to check out Galindo's 2013 collection. Broker after broker rushed to the bar in the hopes of securing a drink to carry them through this portion of the evening, but cruel world, they were turned away empty handed or with glasses of water. Cocktail hour was over.

After a long parade of models draped in Mr. Galindo's silvery white creations had finished their walk down the runway (an impressive show of staging if overlong), it was finally time for the awards. The Rookie of the Year prize came first with the honor going to Halstead's Elise Ehrlich who, we were told, managed to convince a buyer looking to spend $500,000 to drop nearly $2 million instead.

"And don't we all love that?" exclaimed presenter Barbara Fox to appreciative laughter.

Rental of the year went to William J. McBurney Jr. of Prudential Douglas Elliman. Mr. McBurney found a renter willing to spend $60,000 to renovate the dilapidated apartment of an elderly, ill artist who owned a townhouse with two other artists. "Empire State of Mind," played as he claimed his prize.

The next prizes came in quick succession, with evening's top award bestowed upon Brown Harris Stevens broker Nicholas Palance and Klara Madlin Real Estate broker Ann Ferguson, for co-brokering a complicated deal involving an impossible co-op board, a rejected billionaire and sellers who needed a last minute sublet in the building when the deal closed. Second place went to Halstead brokers Adrian Thompkins and Shebrelle Hunter-Greene and third to Elayne Reimer, also of Halstead.

And as for Ms. Baum's closely guarded secret? She presented the lifetime achievement award to Stephen Kliegerman of Terra Holdings Development Marketing. Altogether, the awards portion of the evening was over in a whirl, with brisk handshakes and quickly reclaimed seats. There were neither tears nor heartfelt speeches. Or any speeches at all. Maybe everyone was saving themselves for shoptalk over dinner, but we couldn't be sure as we ducked out before the stampede to the tables started.

kvelsey@observer.com

Mr. Macklowe has hired the Carlton Group's Howard Michaels to help him search for another partner for the deal (Mr. Michaels told The Observer a couple of weeks ago that a mystery European investor was the initial partner). So far, Mr. Macklowe has secured a $250 million mortgage, which is equal to the purchase price of the building, according to an email by Mr. Michaels, cited to The Observer by a source.

Mr. Macklowe has also offered to put in $30 million, according to the source. But he's on the hunt for a $75 million mezzanine loan or preferred equity partner. Mr. Macklowe did not respond to requests for comment; Mr. Michaels declined to comment.  

The pre-war building is currently configured as an apartment tower, and Mr. Macklowe is expected to convert it to a condo, requiring around $50 million of renovations. But here's the rub: 20 percent of the building is still occupied by rent-regulated tenants, who will either need to die or be bought out, slimming a developer's margins. 

That presents a challenge worthy of Harry Macklowe--the deft developer who brought us the Apple cube outside the GM Building and 510 Madison (not to mention, the forthcoming 70-story condo tower on the Drake site). Units will on average have to sell for $4,000 to $5,000 a foot, according to an expert source familiar with the building--surpassing reigning condo king 15 Central Park West.

But combining Mr. Macklowe's development acumen and the building's status as a rare pre-war condo is enough to pull it off, said another source familiar with the transaction. "I know that there are a lot of investors interested," the source said. "It's a pretty unique situation to have a pre-war condo on the market. Co-op boards are difficult and a lot of people who are going to be very excited that it's like a pre-war co-op, but it's a condo."

The deal is expected to close in July—if all the pieces fall into place—and the potential sky-high sale price could set the benchmark for a new boom. 

lkusisto@observer.com 

Recall, Bruce Menin and his partners bought the 20-story office building for a dime in the late '90s, before converting it into rental towers and selling it to our pal Kent Swig for $200 million. The Big Swig turned the FiDi palace into the world's largest bachelor pad, with a night club, health spa and decor that would make Hugh Hefner cringe. Meanwhile, he never got final approval for the conversion and not a single condo ever closed, while a few of Mr. Swig's pals hung out in the units for bargain rates, while the Menins maintained a residence in the penthouse upstairs. 

Mr. Swig defaulted on the mortgage in 2008, and Lehman foreclosed. They've appointed LCOR to manage the turnaround, investing about $40 million in converting it back to rentals, fixing the plumbing and disposing of the more unsightly decorating touches. 

One-bedrooms start just above $3,000 a month. The owners have just received approval to begin renting units this week, and, behold, have already taken 10 baby steps toward filling those 300 units, LCOR's David Sigman told The Observer this afternoon. All of the tenants who've signed so far are couples or families--befitting of its over-sized units. But, really, we're just waiting for Anna Wintour's minions to come calling. 

lkusisto@observer.com 

The firm has taken 5,500 square feet for 10 years at the Kaufman Organization's 100-104 Fifth Avenue. The brokers who hawk high-priced apartments with a certain Miami Beach flair also have a retail location at 127 Seventh Avenue. 

Speaking of glamorous real estate transactions, Kaufman acquired the Flatiron building with Invesco in December 2010, and recently signed a lease with Apple's iAd innovators. Other tenants, telegenic and otherwise, include architects, small investment firms and cheeky Virgin Mobile.   

The asking rent for the deal was $45 a square foot. Grant Greenspan represented the landlord in-house, while Core was also represented in-house. We're still waiting for comments from both. 

lkusisto@observer.com 

Mr. Burger was talking about the third-quarter Manhattan housing reports from various brokerages that came out last week, and he didn't have much good to say about them. "They don’t separate out pre- and postwar architecture and there’s a huge difference between how those two perform in markets,” he said.

Mr. Burger is not alone in his view. While in years past the reports received lots of publicity—both in reporting the health of the Manhattan housing market and in their ability to create buzz—New York's top brokers echo his unfavorable sentiments. It's not that the reports are especially inaccurate or inartfully done; it's just that they're more for the folks at home and not for people who make a living in the market day-to-day.

"The reports are targeted at the consumer—it’s old news for brokers and forecasters, but it supports what we knew was happening,” said Sotheby’s broker Nikki Field. The statistics of the report are based in deals “which happened during the second quarter, but were finalized and transferred in the third,” said Ms. Field, who was the subject of The Observer's latest Sit-Down. "They are not the pulse of the market; those are the deals being negotiated today.”

Michele Kleier, a broker who runs her own firm, found that the reports don’t attest to the daily and weekly fluctuations in the market, affected by myriad factors including the volatile stock market. “I peruse them, but the truth is that I only care about my own business, and my own business changed radically in the last quarter,” she said. "With the stock market not having a good week, things can all change quickly. So I read them, but do I take them as gospel? No.”

It is true that brokers keep the reports around, usually to rattle off statistics to clients. Bruce Ehrmann, an executive vice president at Stribling, said that his team did review the reports in a meeting, but that they are “always lagging—real estate is always day-to-day, an almost ephemeral thing.”

Some buyers like to hear the numbers and past history, but it's not the most useful information for someone who's looking to buy or sell an apartment right now. A good broker will know actually useful and dynamic information: what's really going on with prices at a particular time, neighborhood, and type of property.

“They are not put out by people who are in the marketplace," Mr. Burger said, "but people who analyze the marketplace through computer screens."

editorial@observer.com

A poster for the nearby Hunters View condos took a more practical approach. “Commute like a rocket,” it said, next to a stock photo of a business guy in a train station.

It takes 16 minutes to get from Hunters Point to Grand Central.

Brokers at Long Island City’s glut of condo developments can tout their finishes, their amenities, their hesitantly gentrifying neighborhood. But convenience remains the most surprising—and compelling—factor in the area’s favor. All hail the Vernon Boulevard 7 stop.

At 2-40 51st Street, the Foundry offered one- to three-bedroom homes in a variety of layouts, priced from $525,000 to $987,000. The duplexes and townhouses in particular offered ample space and light.

A broker said that weekend open houses had been chaotic since February or so—there had been 10 visitors Sunday, but other weeks saw as many as 30, and they tended to be serious prospective buyers rather than idle shoppers. Real estate, perhaps, is no longer a recreational pursuit.

Of the Foundry’s 57 units, 50 percent have been sold, and almost as many are occupied. Most of the building’s remaining stock is made up of the smaller units.

A few blocks away, at the inexplicably Germanic L Haus, brokers greeted a steady parade of visitors. The yet-unfinished building’s location at 11-02 49th Avenue placed it at the entrance ramp tangle of the Pulaski Bridge, making it rather pedestrian-unfriendly. But there had been 10 visitors so far on Sunday, and as many as 20 some previous weekends. Ten percent of the building’s units are in contract; one-bedrooms start at $385,000.

At both buildings, brokers were adamant that their clientele was “a mix.” This seems like the go-to response when a neighborhood is still establishing itself, when one can’t yet conjure a ready stereotype of young professionals or hipsters or stroller moms. Surveying the businesses along Vernon Boulevard, it was hard to tell what exactly the neighborhood’s emergent personality might be. There were brunch options, but also an odd abundance of dentists.

Maybe, though, personality doesn’t matter when Manhattan waits 16 minutes away.

mfischer@observer.com

Last month, neighboring apartments were bought under a trio of limited liability corporation names at the new Centurion condo on West 56th Street, the first New York residential project for lordly architect I. M. Pei since his massively underappreciated Silver Towers. In city records, the buyer for all three is listed as Tunde Folawiyo, whose father, Wahab, was called an icon of Nigerian industry when he died last year. The deals add up to $10.1 million, which bought a total of five bedrooms and 3,530 square feet.

But the paper trail is murky. For all three apartments, Mr. Folawiyo’s name is crossed out with a thin line and replaced with the handwritten name of a New York attorney, who did not respond to messages by deadline. The broker who represented the corporation, Corcoran’s Linda Schlang, did not respond, either.

Her Web site shows rental listings for apartments that seem to be these three—two cost $11,000 per month, one $15,000.

Mr. Folawiyo has been described as a London School of Economics graduate who plays a major petroleum industry role in Nigeria—one of Africa’s largest oil producers but a corruption-addled country continually short of gasoline. Centurion sales director Michele Conte wouldn’t disclose specifics about the apartment deals, though she said her impression had been that the three condos were bought by a group.

Bigger apartment sales have closed in the building recently: According to records, Long Island pharmaceuticals executive Ronald Steinlauf paid $15,275,000 for several units four floors up. And yet Ms. Conte offered that the Centurion is only about half-sold, though she said no buyers who’ve signed contracts have tried to wiggle away: “Nobody. Not one person. And the only concession I made was a free storage room or something. One free storage room, that’s all. And we did it for a specific reason: To be nice.”

mabelson@observer.com

“The most optimistic thing I heard today is we won’t be like Japan. It won’t be 20 years,” said Jan Jekielek, the Epoch Times’ director of human resources. “What the Fed did now, it took [the Japanese] six to seven years to do.”

In one panel, Mr. Jekielek recalled, people asked whether China can pull the world out of the recession. Panelist Joel Holsinger, managing director of Fortress Investment Group, said that since China is now undergoing their own Industrial Revolution, it is going to take them another 15 to 20 years to move from a manufacturing economy to a consumer-based economy.

The conclusion? “They’re not going to pull anyone up,” Mr. Jekielek said.

Forum organizer Edgar Perez said that same panel gave a dire forecast for the American economy: It would either enter deflation or hyper-inflation. There would be no middle ground.

“The mood in all the panels was that this recession is going to take a bit longer than expected,” he said. “In general, I would say it was a negative mood.”

Investors at the day-long event generally agreed that the American economy is going to take several years to recover.

Congress Investor Group’s owner, Alvin Puentevella, said that the recovery will take another five years, and largely depend on the upper class’ level of sacrifice. “The people with the wealth—it’s really up to them to bring the money back down and take the hit. You have to keep putting money into the fire,” he said.

Terrace Capital’s managing director, John Dragone, said that this summer, he has been making about two commercial real estate deals a month—as opposed to an average of five to 10 deals per month before the market crashed.

In the end, said EvestMAC’s managing director, Elonna Ashurova, the ones who dragged the economy down are the ones who will have to bring it back up again—and she was not referring to rich people.

“Residential [real estate] is going to start the recovery because it started the downturn,” said Ms. Ashurova, who herself specializes in residential real estate. “I think in a couple of years it’s going to be fine—once the credit crunch is finally over and people have access to finances to get money.”

Though she said that the economy is “still reaching to the bottom,” she maintained a more firmly optimistic outlook than most. “There is no bad product. There is always a bad price,” she said. “There is always opportunity.”

Mr. Puentevella voiced similar cautious optimism.

“I see a lot of excitement for the green economy and a lot of excited people buying distressed stuff. It’s an interesting parallel,” Mr. Puentevella said. “It’s like the maggot effect—how maggots eat through the sores and fix it.”

bkavoussi@observer.com