When the Forbes 400 list of richy rich Americans came out last month, the richest New York developer was, as it’s long been, Richard Lefrak, with a net worth in excess of $5 billion. That is as much oil and natural gas wealth as it is development wealth—it’s all real estate, when you think about it—but perhaps Mr. LeFrak is feeling nostalgic, because he has decided to return to his home turf of Queens, according to The Journal. Read More
A frequent theme at today’s Bloomberg Real Estate Briefing was just how great New York City real estate is. But there is one other place that all the machers look fondly on–perhaps making them the only people in the country who do so: Washington, D.C.
Even the politicians don’t like it, at least not Read More
Amid increasingly apocalyptic prophecies about the fate of New York’s commercial property market, more than a dozen “Masters of Real Estate” convened at the Metropolitan Club on Tuesday for an eponymous conference hosted by The Observer devoted to making sense of the market’s troubles. The major players appear to have emerged from the Read More
The vulture in angel’s wings is coming.
Forgive us. “A vulture in angel’s wings” is how one broker describes private equity—all those investors with piles of money that lurk in the recessionary shadows of the commercial real estate marketplace, patiently waiting until the prey has ripened and the bottom has come … so that they Read More
18. Richard LeFrak (64 last year)
Chairman, President and CEO of The LeFrak Organization
Durability is power. The billionaire’s family has been developing in New York since 1901, and now the family portfolio includes 5,000 apartments in Queens’ LeFrak City (a former swampland) and 14 million square feet in Newport, N.J.
West 57th Street is to its easterly counterpart what a deer-hunting, RV-driving homeowner is to his McMansion-owning neighbor—an embarrassment.
“There’s no question there’s a disconnect between the retail value on 57th Street east of Fifth Avenue, which is some of the highest in the city, and that which is west of Fifth Avenue, which Read More
