Posted by Leonard Steinberg of URBAN COMPASS on July 20th, 2014 Limestone, a facade material most associated with tony Park Avenue and Fifth Avenue uptown buildings has emerged in……of all places….West Chelsea, Downtown New York! Very few buildings Downtown boast this beautiful material: 15 Central Park West clad its entire facade in Limestone to emulate… [Read More]
NEW YORK SIDEWALKS ARE ABOUT TO CHANGE
Posted by Leonard Steinberg of URBAN COMPASS on July 19th, 2014 It is just a matter of time before the sidewalks of New York will be lined with charging stations for electric vehicles: I have always resisted the urge to get a car and driver as the thought of a car idling in front of… [Read More]
MANHATTANIZING THE WORLD
Posted by Leonard Steinberg, Urban Compass, on July 18th, 2014 The other day while observing the views from the West Side of Manhattan across the Hudson River to New Jersey, it was striking to see how similar the New Jersey skyline looked compared to Manhattan’s. Does Manhattan dictate the ‘look’ of a large city throughout… [Read More]
NEW YORK OBSERVER – AGENT OF DISRUPTION – LEONARD STEINBERG
This week’s profile in the NEW YORK OBSERVER…… http://observer.com/2014/07/leonard-steinberg-urban-compass-profile/
LIRR STRIKE? IS $87K SALARY NOT ENOUGH FOR CLIPPING TICKETS?
Posted by Leonard Steinberg of URBAN COMPASS on July 16th, 2014 A Long Island Railroad strike is looming and at the core of the problem is a simple truth: commuters who use the LIRR cannot afford to pay more for the service in raised fares, there is a budget, and salaries cannot be raised in… [Read More]
$106 BILLION FEDERAL TAX DOLLARS MIS-MANAGED
Posted on July 13th, 2014 It amazes me how large organizations such as the Federal US government are grossly mis-managed: A government watchdog agency said an estimated $106 billion in payments were made in error last year (thats about $ 350 per American, and much more for those paying Federal taxes): meaning they were the… [Read More]
ARE LONDON BUYER-BLUES BEING MIRRORED IN NEW YORK?
Posted by Leonard Steinberg, President of Urban Compass, on July 8th, 2014 London is experiencing some BUYER-BLUES on the very high end and today its reported that home-price gains in London’s most-expensive neighborhoods are trailing the rest of the city because buyers are deterred by high asking prices and the possibility of new taxes. Values in… [Read More]
THE CURSE OF REAL ESTATE RANKINGS
Posted by Leonard Steinberg on July 7th, 2014 In the past few months all sorts of rankings have come out showing how real estate brokers fare next to one another in either the number of transactions they close, the total volume of sales, or the total volume of exclusives they have on their books. I… [Read More]
GOOD NEWS RELATED TO DEBT
Posted by Leonard Steinberg on July 1st, 2014 Alexander Bank on my team brought this Bloomberg article to my attention: Landlords are paying off more boom-era loans early, chipping away at $316 billion of debt maturing through 2017 that has loomed over the commercial-mortgage backed securities market since the credit seizure six years ago. Owners… [Read More]
NEW YORK AVERAGE PRICES SOAR 20%: THE 'PLAZA EFFECT' AGAIN?
Posted by Leonard Steinberg, Urban Compass, on July 1st, 2014 In this morning’s NEW YORK POST: “The sale price for Manhattan apartments has skyrocketed 20 percent this year, a market report has found. Manhattan home buyers paid an average $1.69 million in the second quarter of 2014, compared with $1.41 million for the second quarter of… [Read More]