where to now ??, page-4

Lets hope that with all the love that our CEO is giving RXR - see below for the biggest commercial purchase of the year - that he doesnt forget his responsibilities to RNY. Hopefully the 25% interest that RXR has in RNY might prompt a bit of attention to its very sick younger, listed brother.

Comercial sales up 111% in the last year is great news however and i would suspect a significant re-rating of our portfolio.




RXR Realty's $920 million purchase of the Starrett-Lehigh Building was biggest deal of the year
January 09, 2012 04:00PM
By Guelda Voien

From left: 601 West 26th Street, 230 Park Avenue, 299 Park Avenue, Park Avenue Plaza and 450 West 33rd Street
Last year saw a number of notable commercial transactions, as the rising demand for Manhattan trophy office properties, coupled with a large amount of low-interest capital available to credit-worthy borrowers, propelled the total deal volume in the five boroughs. In 2011 quarters one through three, New York City commercial sales amounted to $19.1 billion — up 111 percent from the same period in 2010, according to a report from Massey Knakal Realty Services. The 10 largest transactions of 2011 accounted for $5.76 billion in volume alone, according to a list from PropertyShark.com of the top 10 biggest deals by price prepared for The Real Deal (see chart below).
A window of opportunity and optimism opened in 2011, according to Nat Rockett, executive vice president with Cushman & Wakefield’s New York Capital Markets Group, in part due to “pent-up” activity that had been stalled during the dark days of 2009. “That more positive environment existed through really the first half of 2011,” he said, but cooled later in the year in the year as fears of European debt woes, and uncertainty in our domestic political situation surfaced, putting a damper on the market. Still, trophy properties traded steadily, with transactions for three Park Avenue office towers in the top 10.
The biggest transaction of 2011 was the purchase of the Starrett-Lehigh Building, at 601 West 26th Street, by Scott Rechler’s RXR Realty for $920 million. The 2.3 million-square-foot property, between 11th and 12th avenues, was previously owned by Shorenstein Properties, one of the nation’s largest landlords. The 19-story building sits on an entire block between 26th and 27th streets in Chelsea, and represents the growing interest of commercial buyers in the area following Google’s purchase of 111 Eighth Avenue for $1.8 billion at the end of 2010.