In 2015 after a few boom years buyers had been consistently bidding an average of $685 per square foot for Manhattan land.
Then from 2015 to 2016 the total dollar volume for development site trades in Manhattan below 96th Street plummeted 55 percent to $2.6 billion from $5.8 billion. In 2017, the dollar volume dropped by another 34 percent, according to data provided by commercial brokerage Ariel Property Advisors.
Although land sale prices …
by Riccardo Ravasini 
NYC & Company, the city’s official tourism arm, announced that a record 65.2 million visitors came to NYC last year, the New York Times reports. Most of those visitors came from other parts of the United States, and the largest number of foreigners visited from Great Britain (1.24 million) and China (1.1 million).
That number is a jump from the 62.8 million tourists who came to the city in 2017, and is part of a larger …
by Riccardo Ravasini 
The penthouse at 220 Central Park South that billionaire Ken Griffin bought in January for a ridiculous $239,958,219 (that was the exact purchase price..don’t ask me why) set a record for the most anyone has ever paid for a home in the United States.
Griffin’s penthouse —a combination of two units— measures approximately 24,000 square feet, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Griffin went into contract for it back in 2015 and …
by Riccardo Ravasini 
The 2nd Quarter 2018 Miller-Samuel report tells us that the Miami Beach market had more overall sales activity with a lower pace of inventory growth and a shift towards larger units. There were more transactions, +10.7% from the year-ago quarter. There were more condo sales of three, four and five bedroom homes. Although listing inventory has been rising for more than four years, the rate of growth has slowed considerably in the past year (“only” + 3.9%), which is …
by Riccardo Ravasini 
When Governors Island was decommissioned and an organization appointed to oversee its redevelopment, Peter Mack, the CEO and founder of Collective Retreats, saw a golden opportunity.
He approached the organization with a compelling offer: create up to $700 per night accommodation with minimal building costs. How did he do it? By setting up luxury tents with a few shared amenities, as the Associated Press reported. The glamping experience features electricity, full beds with fine linens, an …
by Riccardo Ravasini 
In Manhattan, apartments priced below $1 million are piling up (Bloomberg News reports data from Streeteasy). Inventory climbed 27 percent in June from a year earlier — to the highest level for the month since 2013.
It’s essentially a buyers’ market across the board, and the total number of available homes in Manhattan is at the highest for the month since 2011. In Brooklyn and Queens, total inventory for June was the most since 2008.
by Riccardo Ravasini