In 1938, after flying around the world in a record three days, legendary tycoon Howard Hughes Jr. was greeted with a ticker tape parade in Lower Manhattan to mark the triumph. Three-quarters of a century later, David Weinreb — CEO of the eponymous Howard Hughes Corp. — is not getting the same adoring reception. The company has already won approval to revamp the famed South Street Seaport, but its development plans for some of the surrounding sites have generated intense …
by Riccardo Ravasini While Miami may boast a Little Havana , Little Haiti and Espanola Way, it currently doesn’t have a Chinatown. This may change in the future.
In past reports, I’ve written about how Miami is increasingly appealing to Chinese investors and buyers. While Miami still attracts to Latin American buyers who made up 62 percent of purchases last year, led by Venezuelans, Argentines, Brazilians and Colombians, the city is now looking as far as Beijing to sustain the growth.
According to …
by Riccardo Ravasini The strength of the U.S. dollar against other currencies is not weighing down foreign interest in New York real estate. Instead, the opposite is occurring as international investors are increasingly seeing the brick-and-mortar assets in the Big Apple as a protected place to store capital.
Last year, the dollar gained modestly on the Chinese yuan and the British pound and logged low double-digit increases against the euro and Japanese yen. But foreign investment in New York City commercial real estate totaled …
by Riccardo Ravasini In the past few years, the Brooklyn Navy Yard has quietly become one of the busiest places in the borough. It is now home to tenants ranging from traditional manufacturers like Sweet’N Low to the Kings County (whiskey) Distillery, and from film producer Steiner Studios, to the Brooklyn Grange rooftop farm.
And according to David Ehrenberg, president and CEO of the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation, “the most important thing for our mission is jobs. At the core, we are …
by Riccardo Ravasini The temptation to build up, to maximize the profits from one’s real estate, continues unabated to this day. And the Meatpacking District in Lower Manhattan is no exception. In fact, that area seems to be one of the main sites where penthouse additions keep sprouting. This makes some sense since much of the area is landmarked, there is a limit to how much new building can occur, and how high it can rise over current structures.
There are two new …
by Riccardo Ravasini Home prices in the metro Miami area rose 9.5 percent in October from a year earlier, the biggest gain among 20 big cities tracked by the S&P Case-Shiller index.
That far outpaced the S&P Case-Shiller national average, which gained 4.6 percent in October from a year earlier.
With the last quarter gains, Miami-area home prices are at their highest levels since May 2008. Still, according to the index, the prices are 32 percent below the December 2006 peak.
Nationwide, home …
by Riccardo Ravasini