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 For the next several weeks, many New York City families will be in a state of apprehension as private schools begin sending out their acceptance letters, as the New York Times reports.
With many of the city’s private schools on the Upper East Side, the opening of acceptance letters can lead some families that live elsewhere to wrestle with whether to uproot themselves and relocate closer to school. Many answer in the affirmative, and their next step is to call …
by Riccardo Ravasini 
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