Carnival Countdown

It is a little early but I am announcing a Carnival of Real Estate for July 20th. I will be accepting all links as of now till the 19th. Please email them to propertygrunt (at) yahoo.com.

I have two requirements.

1. Please do not spam. Write something that has some type of relevance in this market and send me the link to your blog.

2. Please be patient with me. Last time I did this a bunch of emails got caught in my spam filter. So I will be watching everything very closely.

Thank you. See you on the 20th.

The Woman in Red

After partaking the fireworks, together with an amigo we sauntered over to the local bijou to enjoy the visionary genius of Michael Mann's Public Enemies which details the final days of John Dillinger and Melvin Purvis's hunt for the infamous bank robber.

Michael Mann painstakingly assembles these bank robbery scenes which allows the audience to appreciate Dillinger's professionalism.

If you look past the fact Dillinger was a bank robber, you can appreciate the effort he put into his work. His bank robberies were military precise K.I.S.S simple operations in order to limit the body count and to minimize the overall risk of being caught.

Dillinger was mentored by Walter Dietrich another master bank robber who impresses several rules upon Dillinger. One of them is never work with desperate people. Which unfortunately Dillinger has to break in order to do a job. The irony is that a desperate person plays a role in his demise.

Dillinger was killed because of Ana Cumpănaş AKA Woman in Red. The screws were put into Ana real tight because she was on the verge of being deported as being alien of low moral character".

Desperate to stay in America, she turned on Dillinger in hopes of sticking around, she contacted the Feds to set Dillinger up for a take down. The irony is that despite her cooperation she ended up getting booted out of the land of the free.

In this real estate market it is imperative for everyone to keep a cool head. This is an environment where one slip up could be fatal. Spot a deal, make sure it is for real. If you can get financing, make sure it is rock solid. Due diligence is now your mantra. Desperation only attracts weakness and just excites the predators that will come for you. Play it close to the vest and keep walking with your head up high and the vultures will fly to the next carcass.


The Woman in Red stalks the real estate industry and she pops up in the most inopportune times. Keep an eye out for the Woman in Red by being aware of the wants and needs of others and how far they are willing to go. Then take measures to protect your interests.

Someone gets offended? F**k em. The world we live in is short on politeness but long on pain. Do not be afraid to walk away if you get that funny feeling about someone or something. Listen to your gut. Lose a deal? So what. There are plenty of deals out there. Sit on the sidelines? Go ahead. Everyone else is.


Just beware the Woman in Red.

Unless it is Kelly LeBrock.

Yellow Alert

In a past entry I wrote about Scarsdale entering the foreclosure arena staying stable at green. Well it appears that Scarsdale has gone from green to yellow. According Hotpads color codes that means foreclosures have increased in Scarsdale.

For what it's worth which isn't much these days it was recently reported that Scarsdale received a triple A bond rating from Moody's.

Go home early folks, eat a hot dog and have a beer. Just forget everything this weekend.

Happy Forecl....4th of July

It looks a little better but it's still bad. Below is the summary sent to me by Propertyshark.

*New foreclosures in New York City (892) down 7% compared to Q2 2008 (962) and up 3% over Q1 2009 (869).

*Compared to Q2 2008, new foreclosures were down 57% in Brooklyn, down 39% in Manhattan and down 5% in The Bronx and Staten Island. Queens (up 9%) was the only borough recording an increase over the same time period.

*Compared to Q1 2009, new foreclosures dropped by 26% in the Bronx and decreased by 17% in Staten Island. Brooklyn recorded the highest increase, going up 92%, while foreclosures in Manhattan went up 35%, and Queens saw a 5% increase in new foreclosures.

*Queens had the highest rate of foreclosures per household in Q2 2009, with one in every 1,270 homes scheduled for auction, followed by Staten Island with one in every 1,435 homes scheduled for auction. The rate in Manhattan was the lowest, with one in every 31,826 homes scheduled for auction.

*Queens accounted for fourteen of the fifteen zip codes with the highest number of new foreclosures in Q2 2009.

They also sent me some links to maps and some funky graphs.

Queens

Brooklyn







If you are looking for some type of dramatic insight, well I got nothing. All I know it be awhile before things shake out. Honestly folks, this is one of those situations where you have to roll with the punches, no matter how many are thrown your way.

Peer Pressure

Beginning of the month and everyone else is doing it. Since I am really lazy I am just going to link the news to Curbed.


Thursday AM Linkage: Market Report Misery Edition

Here's Jonathan Miller's take.

Mr. Miller said that at best, the market would move sideways. “We will probably get a little worse before it is going to get better,” he said, “because unemployment is likely to continue to rise after the recession ends this year.”

I do not know where the bottom will be but from what I understand once it hits, it won't just bounce right back up. As I have stated before, try and wait it out, but if you see a great deal go for it.

London Calling, calling for money.

It is no surprise that the British economy appears to be reliving the American Revolution.

UK economy suffers its biggest quarterly decline in 50 years

And I can confirm that this is having some type of impact on certain segments of the Manhattan real estate market. Last weekend the Grunt was literally dragged off the streets by a hard charging broker to see a desperate listing. The broker explained to the Grunt that the owner lived in England and was in desperate need of cash. They were so desperate that they needed to sell their apartment within 48 hours. In order to entice sellers took a 30% cut price cut. After seeing the apartment, I realized that the owners must be in serious financial straits because in a normal market their apartment would probably go for at least twice the asking price.

So check if the sellers are from England or living there. It might provide you with extra leverage during the negotiations.

Time to make the money

Like clock work.







Remember my diatribe about Citigroup? One of the reasons why Citigroup has taken advantage of the TARP money for raising salaries is that they do not want to them to jump ship for other competitors or setup their own shops.

From what I have heard the finance industry is going into overdrive to raise funds because of 1/3 of their competitors have been wiped out. Therefore it presents a unique opportunity to gather capital. And the money is out there. There are very rich people out there who are up to their necks in liquidity and want to put it somewhere.

So it makes sense that Citigroup wants to make sure their employees do not ride off with that liquidity but they need all hands on deck to scarf up as much capital as possible. What makes this particularly more pressing is the next event in this depression.

So the finance industry has to run and gun.

Obligatory Madoff sentencing post

Madoff Is Sentenced to 150 Years for Ponzi Scheme


Big f**king surprise.

Commerical real estate chatter

Greetings folks got some info regarding the commercial real estate scene.

NYT did some coverage on the the Union Square space where Zen Palate was formerly located. Already has been a target for copper thieves due to the enormous amounts of copper that was used as an exterior. As many of you may know it is still vacant. Perhaps it is due to the asking rent which is $12 million dollars a year.






According to Rackedm there is a variety of candidates vying for the space that heralded the once great Virgin Megastore. However those tenant or tenants are going to have to work like whores to pay the current asking rent which is $22 million dollars a year.

A very well know nationwide real estate company that encompasses leasing and development, laid off 100 employees which included their commercial brokerage group stationed in New York City. The kicker is that the brokerage group set up their own shop and took their exclusives with them. Apparently the contracts were written so that the brokers that signed the deals could take the over 50 exclusives with them wherever they go.

Another indication of how bad things are.

This was passed along to me.



Apparently business is so bad for this Chinese restaurant that they have to offer free wine and 20% off for a meal. What concerns me the most about this advertisement is that Chinese restaurants have a reputation of great profitability in this town since the overhead of the making the product is so low and these places make money by moving high volume at low prices.

It just goes to show how bad things are for the restaurant industry.

Overheard in a hallway

Two days agao I was walking down a hallway when I overheard this conversation between a girl and guy.

Girl: "So what are you doing this weekend?"

Guy: "I am going to the Hamptons. You know what that is right?"

Girl: "Yeah, I do."

It gets a little disconcerting when people can't name drop properly.