Residential market
from page 14
“In every [area] of the city, there is a lack of inventory in three to five-bedroom apartments that has revealed a tremendous pent-up desire,” Forbes said, adding that this demand has prompted buyers to jump at the listings that do come on the market. “People buying at this level have a certain amount of security, and so they’re not afraid to bid above the asking prices.” Juliette Janssens, a senior vice president and associate broker at Sotheby’s International Realty who is listing a
975 Park Avenue penthouse for $25 million, noted a similar phenomenon. “We’ve noticed a lot of buyers ready to pay all cash for big-ticket apartments,” Janssens said. Meanwhile, the “double-dip” fears plaguing the rest of the country still seem far away to New Yorkers, though some expressed concerns about potential Wall Street layoffs. “Second quarter was positive for us, and we saw a lot of activity,” said Doug Perlson, the co-founder and CEO of Re-
alDirect, a New York City-based brokerage and real estate technology company. “I’m more concerned with the third quarter, especially if the financial sector, which bounced back quite strong, takes another hit.” If that does happen, most industry professionals expect the impact to be milder than the first downturn. “I am not worried about double-dip decline,” said Karen Berman, a vice president at Argo Residential. “I do expect prices to decline, but [less than] 10 percent.” TRD
into designs, and lenders start to recognize the potential economic drains of non-green buildings. Wilkes pointed to new educational measures and sources of revenue for commercial appraisals — like markto-market accounting standards, in which companies hire appraisers to assess the market value of their assets.
Yet each of these are outside the appraiser’s traditional meat-and-potatoes business — establishing valuations for lenders. That could be troubling for future growth. “In this post-Lehman credit crash, you’d think the value of collateral would be extremely important,” said Miller. “And it’s not. There’s an incredible disconnect.” TRD
2003, she was quickly drawn to new developments. Specifically, this self-described “data nerd” was fascinated with finding out which units sold the fastest and garnered the highest prices. “I have always been curious as to why things worked and why they didn’t, what people wanted and what they did not want,” Kafati-Batarse said. She started purchasing condo offering plans, and hired a team of people to help her enter the numbers into her own database. This growing stockpile of information gave her a leg up when it came to selling new developments, allowing her to unload properties faster than other brokers. “We essentially built a reputation on selling in the shortest amount of time,” she said. As the condo boom accelerated, Kafati-Batarse was recruited by Corcoran Group Marketing, the company’s new development division, which later became Corcoran Sunshine. In 2007, she moved to Elliman, where she is now an executive vice president. With her team of seven agents, project managers and researchers, she currently has 42 active residential listings in Brooklyn worth $24.4 million. That includes 500 Fourth Avenue, a full-service new condo on the border of Park Slope and Gowanus. KafatiBatarse said the building closed 65 units in 2010 and an additional 24 units in the first quarter of 2011, and has another 20 units in contract, leaving the project about 70 percent sold. Another one of her projects, the Pencil Factory in Greenpoint, is now nearly sold out after a year on the market, with only five of 93 units unsold, she said.
direct deal. The developer then converted the house into “an incredible two-family residence,” Buchman recalled. It was later purchased by actor Kiefer Sutherland in 2008 for $8.25 million, according to public records. Buchman currently has 25 listings worth $23.7 million in Brooklyn, and like most top Brooklyn brokers, she sells both new development and resales. For example, she’s currently listing a townhouse at 409 Eighth Street in Park Slope for $2.99 million, as well as handling sales at the 21unit Harbor Hill Condominium on 15th Street.
Appraisals from page 50 in the past. To that end, Schleider looks at weatherization, energy efficiency and other environmental claims a building may make to determine whether savings advertised by property owners or developers can be monetized. It’s a service he believes will become increasingly necessary as more buildings incorporate environmental components
Top Brooklyn agents from page 53 at Richard Meier’s On Prospect Park, one of the highest-profile new developments in Brooklyn. Nielsen-Saaf got the gig because she’d worked with the developer, SDS Procida, on several other projects, including 149-unit be@Clinton at 516 West 47th Street in Manhattan, which she sold out in only eight days in 2006. Of course, that was before the downturn. Despite its starchitecture pedigree, On Prospect Park has sold slowly in the recession. Still, 75 percent of the project — including two penthouses — is now sold and occupied, NielsenSaaf said. Three penthouses currently on the market are listed at $2.75 million, $4.9 million and a whopping $5.1 million — pricing some say is too ambitious for the building’s location on the border of Park Slope and Prospect Heights. “I can understand people saying that because they’re not used to seeing those numbers,” Nielsen-Saaf said. But she said that the price per square foot — around $1,400 — is comparable with other sales in the area.
No. 6: Frank Castelluccio and Aaron Lemma, the Corcoran Group New development specialists Frank Castelluccio and Aaron Lemma, who call themselves the CastLe Group, have worked together for three years. Based out of Corcoran’s Brooklyn Heights office, they are listing 31 Brooklyn homes worth $27.8 million. Recently, they’ve been recruited to jumpstart sales at several previously troubled projects. For example, the two were brought in last spring to re-start sales at stalled condo be@Schermerhorn in Downtown Brooklyn, where construction delays had forced the developers to let the original buyers out of their contracts. With prices cut, 245 of the building’s 246 units have now been sold, Lemma said. The CastLe Group was also hired to take over sales at Clermont Greene in Fort Greene, which had originally been a Prudential Douglas Elliman project. Twenty months later, that project is 75 percent sold, Lemma said. Now, the two are shifting their attention to two new projects, both of which hit the market last month, Lemma said. One, 233 Pacific Street, is a new 30-unit condo with a projected sell-out of $37 million. In addition, 75 Clinton Street is a 74-unit condo in Brooklyn Heights with a projected sellout of $64 million.
No. 7: Joyce Kafati-Batarse, Prudential Douglas Elliman When Joyce Kafati-Batarse started working at Corcoran in 88 July 2011 www.TheRealDeal.com
No. 8: Jessica Buchman, the Corcoran Group When Jessica Buchman first moved to Park Slope, she was a new mom focused on staying at home with her daughter. But when she decided to become a real estate agent several years later, she drew on her sales background as a fashion buyer at Barneys. “I found the transition quite easy,” recalled Buchman, who started at Corcoran six years ago. Of course, there was hard work involved. Buchman worked “seven days a week for three years” to get her business off the ground. It paid off: She’s been named the top broker in Corcoran’s Seventh Avenue office in Park Slope for the last four years straight. But she has ventured outside of Brooklyn. In fact, her first year on the job she sold a $6 million house at 763 Greenwich Street in the West Village to a developer in a
No. 9: The Kleiers, Gumley Haft Kleier Big-time Manhattan broker Michele Kleier and her two daughters, Samantha Kleier Forbes and Sabrina Kleier Morgenstern, usually work on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. So it was a bit surprising when, in April, they began marketing Brooklyn’s priciest listing: David Walentas’s legendary triplex in the ClockTower Building. Walentas, who converted the ClockTower into condos in 1998, later struck a deal with the condo board to create a 16th-floor penthouse in a tower atop the building. The resulting apartment first hit the market for $25 million in 2009 with Raphael De Niro (another top broker who works mostly in Manhattan), and has been on and off the market since then. However, the Kleiers have recently shot to fame, thanks to starring on the HGTV show “Selling New York.” So when Walentas put the ClockTower triplex back on the market after a hiatus last year, he was likely hoping their star power would help sell the apartment, which is now listed at $23.5 million.
No. 10: Deborah Rieders, the Corcoran Group Deborah Rieders, who has lived in a townhouse in Boerum Hill for 19 years, is a former landscape and architecture photographer. Using this artistic background, she personally “art-directs” the marketing of each of her listings, she said. Rieders takes so much pride in the presentation of her listings, she said, that to her, “the best compliment is, ‘it looked better online.’” Her aesthetic sense appears to translate into dollar signs for her sellers. She’s currently marketing 40 Brooklyn listings worth $23 million, and she said she recently sold a townhouse at 421 12th Street in Park Slope for an impressive $900 per square foot. She also recently finished the sellout of 44-unit Park Slope condo C-560. TRD