By Daniel Geiger 3/02/12 9:30am

Investment Sales 2012

Richard Baxter. (Illustration by Joao Maio Pinto)

Jones Lang LaSalle’s Richard Baxter on 75 Rockefeller Plaza and 10 East 53rd

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 Darcy Stacom and William Shanahan of CBRE, J.D. Parker of Marcus & Millichap, Woody Heller of Studley and Peter Hausperg of Eastern Consolidated. But, first, after the jump, none other than Richard Baxter of Jones Lang LaSalle.

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By Daniel Geiger 1/03/12 3:00pm

power broker

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Richard Baxter Dishes on the Drama Behind the Deals at Casa Lever

It was lunchtime at Casa Lever, the high-end restaurant in the iconic Lever House, and Richard Baxter was on his BlackBerry negotiating.

It was a busy year for Mr. Baxter and his colleagues at Jones Lang LaSalle. His four-man team comprised some of the city’s most prominent brokers of large-scale commercial office buildings, and as the Manhattan sales market’s post-recessionary thaw continues, Mr. Baxter estimated that the group had tallied an impressive $1.3 billion in deals this year.

Three days before Christmas, however, it wasn’t one particular skyscraper Mr. Baxter was bargaining over from his plum seat at Casa Lever. In a year-end rush, his group had loose ends to tie up, deals to close and transactions still in the works. And so, on this particular Thursday amid a bustling lunch crowd, Mr. Baxter was not negotiating with a buyer or a building owner, but rather one of his own assistants, whom he was asking to stay late to receive critical documents and to help get the team through the rest of the day. Read More

By Staff 1/31/07 7:00am

70 West 36th Street Sells for $62.5 Million

In dorky commercial news, SL Green has two announcements.

First, it has sold 70 West 36th Street for $62.5 million. The buyer is not disclosed, but SL Green brags that it will have a $50 million return on the sale. A pair of Cushman & Wakefield dudes, Richard Baxter and Ron Cohen, handled the deal Read More