Two prominent developers have recently relaxed their requirements for 50 percent deposits from prospective buyers. Swire Properties announced it was lowering down payments for a condo at one of its Brickell City Centre residential towers, Rise, to 35 percent, while Kevin Maloney’s Property Markets Group is offering some foreign buyers deals that allow them to pay 50 percent deposits in installments prior to closing for units at Echo Brickell, Echo Aventura, Muse in Sunny Isles Beach, and Sage Beach in …
by Riccardo Ravasini Putting the hyper-luxury buzz to the side, the dependable segment of the Manhattan market is between $1.5 million and $3.5 million.
The segment accounted for a full 20 percent of the entire Manhattan market — or roughly 6,285 sales — between January 2013 and January 2015, according to an analysis by The Real Deal magazine of data from the listings website StreetEasy.
Just 1 percent of all Manhattan condo and co-op sales tracked by StreetEasy during that time pulled in …
by Riccardo Ravasini 
The Virgin Hotel New York that will soon be built at the corner of 30th Street and Broadway will change forever the stretch of Broadway that runs from Madison Square Park to Greeley Square. If the renderings are to be trusted, it will be a magnificent piece of work, says James Gardner of The Real Deal magazine.
But two things can go wrong in a building like this. First, it can be so poorly made that, even if technically it …
by Riccardo Ravasini One of the last remaining empty tracts of land near Biscayne Bay in South Florida will be auctioned off at a starting price of $19.9 million on March 31. The 8.16-acre property with an address of 11295 Biscayne Boulevard was once the site of the private Lear School and is now zoned for mixed-use development.
Interested bidders will have to put down a deposit of $2 million just to have a chance, and the winning buyer must pay the final …
by Riccardo Ravasini 
The Ocean Drive building known for the famous chainsaw scene in the movie “Scarface” sold for $15 million this month. A Miami-based company sold the building to an affiliate of New York-based Infinity Group. The property located at 728 Ocean Drive in Miami Beach is home to Johnny Rockets. The 6,500-square-foot site last sold for $8 million in May 2011.
by Riccardo Ravasini 
The rental market in Manhattan south of 96th Street is projected to expand in the next 20-24 months as the pipeline of projects developed over the past several years comes to market. In this area, there will be 4,152 new rental apartments this year (compared to last year’s 3,313); in 2016 the new rental units coming to market should be roughly 8,800 (forecast by Citi Habitats).
The near-term onrush could give way to concerns of a glut, but most experts …
by Riccardo Ravasini