- Deutsche Bank Agrees to Return $140M in Vegas Condo Deposits
- Chicago Condos Move Quickly After Prices Slashed
- Las Vegas Prices in Freefall
- South Florida Prices Down 88 Percent
- Brooklyn, NY Sales and Prices on a Roll
- Harry Potter Star Daniel Radcliffe Shells Out $6.4M for West Village Unit
- Los Angeles Dodgers Manny Ramirez Drops Price of Boston Penthouse
- Orlando's Gitta Urbainczyk Rides Wave of Short Sales
(LAS VEGAS, NV) -- In one of the largest and unorthodox condominium lawsuit settlements of its kind, Deutsche Bank AG has agreed to return about $140 million in down payment deposits to purchasers of homes at the 1,322-unit, $3.9 billion, under construction Cosmopolitan Resort & Casino West condo-hotel tower in Las Vegas.
The tentative settlement still has to be approved by the Clark County District Court. The bank is settling for about 70 percent of the total $200 million cash deposits paid by buyers.
The suit alleges the buyers were financially damaged when developer Ian Bruce Eichner never specified a completion date for Cosmopolitan West. The seven-million-square-foot, 600-foot-tall tower is now tentatively scheduled to open in late 2010, according to the Las Vegas Business Press.
Eichner defaulted on construction loans in January 2009. Deutsche Bank then bought the tower at 3700 Las Vegas Blvd. at a foreclosure sale for $1 billion. The site is between Caesars Resort and MGM's $11 billion CityCenter project.
Meanwhile, the planned 800-unit, 600-foot tall Cosmopolitan East Tower faces the same fate as Cosmopolitan West, according to Las Vegas brokerage sources following the development's construction pattern. Buyers are depositing down payments averaging $140,000. A total sellout of the project would generate about $112 million in deposits, local brokers estimate.
(CHICAGO, IL) -- Chicago condos are moving quickly after developers slashed prices. For example, Mesirow Financial Real Estate Inc. has sold 100 units at its new 237-unit R+D 659 on the Near West Side.
Smithfield Properties LLC sold 40 condos in July and August at SoNo, a 200-unit tower at 860 W. Blackhawk St., Michael Golden, co-founder of @properties and marketer for Smithfield, told ChicagoBusiness.com. Golden lowered prices by 13 percent.
"It's all about price now," Golden says. "Buyers in this market are attracted to value," not to high-dollar incentives as in past markets.
Brian Gordon
Condos like Streamline, Juhl, Luxe Lofts and Turnberry Tower Two are all hurting. At Turnberry Tower, for example, 256 of the building's 318 units are unsold. That's 80 percent of the asset.
"There is still a significant number of units on the market with very little sales taking place," says Brian Gordon of Las Vegas-based Applied Analysis.
(MIAMI, FL) -- South Florida condo prices are down 88 percent from their 2006 peak and dropping steadily, according to Deerfield Beach, FL-based real estate consultant Jack McCabe.
Condos that sold for $1,000 per square foot in 2006 are down to a range of $125 per square foot to $350 per square foot, McCabe tells Bloomberg. The price could drop to as low as $100 per square foot before the market bottom is reached, McCabe says.
The Florida Association of Realtors reports that in the past 12 months, condo prices in Miami fell 31 percent to a median $144,700. In the West Pal Beach-Boca Raton market, the drop was 15 percent to a median $112,200. In Fort Lauderdale, the slide was 36 percent to $85,100.
(BROOKLYN, NY) -- Brooklyn shelter categories are on a roll, according to the latest reports from Prudential Douglas Elliman, headed by CEO Dottie Herman, and the Real Estate Board of New York.
Third-quarter condo sales volume totaled $25.2 million; co-op sales $16.5 million; and one-family to three-family houses, $58.7 million.
Condo prices of existing units rose by 4.5 percent, or almost $20,000 per unit. New condo prices increased by about 2.25 percent, or about $10,000 per unit.
More than 70 percent of all residential sales in North Brooklyn, or Williamsburg and Greenpoint, were condos.
In Park Slope, the perennial sales leader, the average condo price was $716,000, up 14 percent over third quarter 2008.
(BRONX, NY) -- Fifty-four unsold units at the 64-unit, three-year-old, multi-million-dollar Solaria in the affluent Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx, go on the auction block Nov. 22 at the Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers.
Only 10 condos have been sold since the building was developed by Joseph Korff, president, Arc Development. The developer says the project is not in financial straits but is only auctioning the unsold units because he is frustrated with the market.
"...Buyers seemed to like the project but were uncertain where the market was headed and how much the apartments were worth," Korff told The New York Times.
The minimum auction bid will be about 55 percent of the current asking prices. The lowest-priced unit, a lower-floor, one-bedroom condo, will be offered at a minimum $299,000. The same unit was previously priced at about $660,000.
Riverdale, a community of about 50,000 residents, is just north of Manhattan's west side on the Hudson River.
Daniel Radcliffe
Celebrity publications report Radcliffe now owns more than $16 million in Manhattan area condos and apartments, plus a luxury condo in his home United Kingdom neighborhood of Fulham in London.
(BOSTON, MA) -- Los Angeles Dodgers left fielder Manny Ramirez, a former Boston Red Sox slugger, has dropped the asking price of his 37th floor Boston penthouse condo to $7.9 million from $8.5 million.
The four-bedroom condo at the Ritz-Carlton Residences has been on the market for six months and failed to attract a single buyer, according to Carmela Laurella of Aotis & Ahearn, who is marketing the unit.
The unit is located near the Boston Common and has a private master bedroom suite, six bathrooms, 10-foot ceilings and three valet parking spaces. Boston city tax officials assess the unit at only $4.4 million.
(ORLANDO, FL) -- Short sales of condos, townhouses and single-family houses will overtake the current crush of foreclosures over the next five years, according to Gitta Urbainczyk, an agent for Keller Williams Heritage Realty and head of her own 12-person staff called Gitta's Real Estate Team.
In her online newsletter, the Lake Mary, FL-based agent says her team has closed 50 short sales over the past 15 months and is processing 15 others.
"The federal government is now exploring the short-sale process to be streamlined and used as a preferred method over the traditional foreclosure" route, she says.
Her team serves Orange, Seminole, Volusia, Lake and Osceola counties.
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