Hoboken / Manhattan Real Estate Blog

By Brian Louis

March 15 (Bloomberg) — Pulte Homes Inc., the fourth- largest U.S. homebuilder, said the housing market is unlikely to have a quick recovery as buyers wait out the drop in prices.

“We’re not projecting anything to bounce off the bottom at this point,” Chief Financial Officer Roger Cregg said at a UBS conference in London. “There’s been a lot of buyers that have moved to the sidelines.”

Profit at homebuilders has plunged since the five-year housing boom ended a year ago. Rising inventories of unsold homes and hesitation by potential buyers on concern that the price of their house will drop has sent the housing market tumbling.

“We don’t think it’s repeatable,” Cregg said of the high profit and sales of 2004 and 2005 for builders.

Homebuilding executives have turned bearish on the prospects for a recovery this year after earlier forecasting that buyers would return in 2007.

Donald Tomnitz, the chief executive officer of D.R. Horton Inc., said at a Citigroup Inc. conference on March 7 that his company would miss its projections for closings this year, and that “2007 is going to suck, all 12 months of the calendar year.” The company is the second-largest home builder by revenue.

`A Bust’

Robert Toll, CEO of Toll Brothers Inc., said today at a Citigroup Inc. conference in Las Vegas that the spring selling season has been “pretty much a bust” and he can’t predict when the housing recovery will begin.

The forecasts, along with a crisis in the subprime lending market, have sparked a decline in homebuilder shares this year. The stocks had gained from July to February on expectations of a housing recovery this year and comments from some industry executives that the market was stabilizing.

Part of the fuel for the housing boom was the availability of mortgage loans to buyers with poor credit histories. Investors are now concerned that tightening lending standards will reduce the number of buyers for houses and keep the housing market weak.

A Standard & Poor’s measure of home construction companies tumbled 15 percent from Jan. 1 through today, erasing much of the gains achieved after rebounding from a July low.

Homebuilder Shares Sink

Eight of the 16 stocks in the index have lost at least 15 percent of their value this year. The worst performer is Scottsdale, Arizona-based Meritage Homes Corp., which has fallen 31 percent this year.

Shares of Pulte rose 11 cents to $26.63 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The stock is down 20 percent this year.

Pulte, like other builders, has tried to prevent investors from buying houses by making prospective buyers attest they are not speculators and that is helping the market, Cregg said.

“We think we have taken a majority of them out,” Cregg said of the investors.

Increasing numbers of speculators expecting to make a quick profit by “flipping” houses helped fuel the housing boom. When demand started to ebb and house price appreciation slowed, many investors put their houses on the market, increasing inventory.

Sorry, We’re Booked. But Just Across the River …
By ALISON GREGOR

VISITORS to the New York area may not readily think of Long Island City, Queens, when looking for luxury accommodations.

Besides having mostly limited-service or budget hotels, the area has pockets that remain gritty and industrial. And one of the last times any Long Island City hotel was in the news was last summer, when the alternative rock band Dinosaur Jr. reported that its gear had been stolen from a trailer outside a hotel where members had stayed.

But the neighborhood — just a short subway ride from Manhattan — is changing, and so is the hotel market there. A decades-long vision of urban planners to turn Long Island City into a business center is becoming a reality after a major rezoning about six years ago. Included in the mix of residential and commercial projects are several new hotels, including two upscale boutique properties on the East River waterfront as well as more moderately priced hotels.

The 23-room Q-Plaza Motel — the site of a 2002 protest against what demonstrators called prostitution in the area — is being converted and expanded into an upscale boutique hotel. To be called the Ravel Hotel, it is scheduled to open this spring with 78 rooms.

The architect Steven Kratchman has designed the expanded building so that all the rooms will have views of Manhattan, many through bay windows; some rooms will open onto French balconies or terraces. The three-level rooftop will be used for a bar and lounge area, along with a spot for local artists to display their work, according to Ravi Patel, who bought the property in 2005.

Mr. Patel said he chose Long Island City largely because Manhattan was too expensive. The total cost of redeveloping the former Q-Plaza will be about $4 million, he said, adding that he expects to attract an overflow of visitors from Manhattan. Rates will start at around $350 a night.

“A lot of hotels are going condo in Manhattan, so the supply of hotel rooms has been slowly diminishing in the city, and there was, and still is, huge demand,” he said.

Mr. Patel says he was first met with resistance from the local community. “It was very hard to convince people that we weren’t putting up a huge brothel here,” he said. “But we’re actually putting up something nice.”

Nearby, another boutique hotel is in the works. Developers plan to break ground this spring on the Z Hotel. Designed by the architect Andre Kikoski, who created Suba, a restaurant on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the hotel will have 11 stories with 100 rooms. Like the Ravel Hotel, the Z will have rooms facing Manhattan, along with colorful light-emitting diodes on a facade designed to evoke the United Nations building.

Henry Zilberman, the hotel’s developer, says he believes that there is a strong market for travelers seeking an alternative to Manhattan, where rates are often steep because of rising development costs.

“Today a room in a hotel in Manhattan costs easily $1 million if you want to build,” he said.

Mr. Zilberman, who also owns several limousine businesses in Long Island City, said he plans to provide myriad amenities. His limousine service, for instance, will transport hotel guests free to places like the theater district or Bloomingdale’s in Manhattan, every hour on the hour.

Rooms will be around $200 a night, or roughly half the rate of comparable hotels in Manhattan.

“There’s no reason that Hoboken would do better than Long Island City,” he said. “I never got it. We have much better transportation, much better proximity to Midtown.”

Some hotel developers, however, expressed concern that there may be too much development planned for a rather concentrated area of Queens.

“We’re going to see a couple thousand hotel rooms in Long Island City in the next three to four years,” said Sam Chang, one of largest hotel builders in New York City, who in 1999 constructed a Holiday Inn Express in Long Island City. “That’s just going to be too many.”

Mr. Chang says he now has more than 20 hotels under construction in New York City and no plans to develop additional hotel sites in Long Island City, although he is finishing a 75-room Days Inn there that is set to open in April.

His former business partner, John Lam, another active New York City hotel developer, is building a 150-room Fairfield Inn by Marriott nearby.

Still, hotel consultants say that the hotel market in Long Island City may prove to be robust because of demand from business travelers and not only because of an overflow of tourists from Manhattan.

Substantial commercial projects are springing up throughout Long Island City, with more planned over the next few years.

Completed last year was Court Square Place, a 16-story, 275,000-square-foot building owned and operated by the United Nations Federal Credit Union. Tishman Speyer Properties, which developed that building, is also constructing a 486,000-square-foot office tower for Citigroup, near that company’s 48-story tower that was, for years, Long Island City’s sole skyscraper. Tishman Speyer also has plans to redevelop the substantial Queens Plaza Garage site, located in the neighborhood.

And then there is Silvercup West, a planned 2.2 million-square-foot mixed-use development by Silvercup Studios along the East River. It will include 650,000 square feet of office space, 270,000 square feet of studio space and 150,000 square feet of retail space, along with about 1,000 apartments and parking for 1,400 vehicles. The company plans to break ground in about a year, according to Stuart Match Suna, the president of Silvercup.

Nolan Hecht, the director of the hospitality transactions group at Cushman & Wakefield, a commercial real estate brokerage firm, said, “The silver lining here in Long Island City is now you can take advantage of the strong hotel market in New York City and feed off of that, and then five years from now you’ll probably see an influx of commercial demand that will fill a hotel.”

Ankur Shah, the general manager of the Comfort Inn in Long Island City, which his company bought in 2005, is cautiously optimistic about the neighborhood’s hotel market as well.

“I would not say that every hotel in Long Island City is going to make money in operations,” he said. “There are people investing who are anticipating a boom in the real estate pricing around this area. They’re expecting it to be the next Hoboken or something.”

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Hoboken’s Monroe Center, on the 700 block of Monroe Street, is finally getting off the ground, albeit much slower than most officials expected.

The site’s first visible commercial ground-floor tenant - the restaurant Shades of Hoboken - opened its doors shortly before the new year, marking the first upscale eating establishment to set up shop on the city’s west side.

Besides a $75 Kobe beef steak, the restaurant boasts free parking in the rear and live music seven days a week, says head chef Larry Kemet.

But like all restaurants, Shades of Hoboken needs a successful first year and it does not appear to be getting help from the developments in the area, including the Monroe Center.

I attended a groundbreaking last May for the proposed 435 condos, but the dream of a mixed-use centerpiece for the neighborhood has yet to really move forward since Mayor David Roberts and others flipped ceremonial dirt.

“It’s pre-construction certainly, but we are moving ahead, determined to produce a superior product in that neighborhood,” said Michael Turner, spokesman for Monroe Center Development.

Nearby, the 128-unit Velocity is also moving slower than expected, dragged down by the repeated breaking of windows at the construction site.

The good news, said Kemet, is business has been good at nights, especially on the weekends.

“We are getting a lot of neighborhood people and the band is bringing people in,” said Kemet. “When I went up to Washington Street to eat, I never picked a place. I would just eat where I could park, so it’s a plus we have free parking available.”

Rumors are swirling that entertainment behemoths Disney and Viacom are considering leasing office space in Jersey City after New York City rents soared.

These billion-dollar entertainment companies would be a welcome addition to the city’s office market, providing job diversity to a market that’s flooded with companies from the financial sector, not too mention a little corporate prestige. .

New York City officials recently made some changes to their “421A” tax abatement program that officials on this side of the river should take a hard look at.

Recognizing there’s little need to spark development on some of the most lucrative land in the city, Big Apple politicos are now requiring developers to include a large percentage of affordable housing in order to receive the tax carrot, while continuing the more liberal abatement program in areas of the city that still need a push.

If this sounds familiar, it should.

New York City tax abatements are typically offered for five years and the recipient pays little taxes on the property.

Meanwhile, in Jersey City, tax abatements are issued for 20 to 30 years. The recipient pays substantially more in “payments in lieu of taxes” and the city’s cut is substantially more than it would be under traditional taxes, which must be divvied up with schools and the county.

Residents and local conservationists gathered at Sixth Street and Willow Avenue last week to hold a candlelight vigil outside Hoboken’s Church of the Holy Innocents, hoping to draw attention to a nine-story project proposed for part of the historic site.

If approved by the Zoning Board, the project would consist of a 50-unit residential and school complex in the area surrounding the church.

The church itself would be untouched, but the nine-story building would replace the 118-year-old rectory, where the priest lives.

According Rev. Geoffrey Curtiss, rector of the All Saints Episcopal Parish, which owns the property, the goal of the development is for the parish to better serve the community and the Episcopal Diocese of Newark.

He said that just as the All Saints Episcopal Day School and Trinity Church at Seventh and Washington streets has been serving school children and doing outreach to the housing projects, the Holy Innocents parish can do similar things.

Curtiss also stressed that the development plans were not final and that the parish was open to suggestions from members of Hoboken’s Historic Preservation Committee. They are scheduled to appear before the committee on Feb. 13.

They will present the project to the members of the Zoning Board on Feb. 20.

History and new development

Holy Innocents was completed in 1874 and added to the New Jersey State and National Registers of Historic Places in 1977 for its architectural and structural significance.

For many Hoboken residents, the church is known for the Christmas trees that are sold off the property every December.

The construction of the proposed complex will require the demolition of the 118-year-old rectory, unless someone is willing buy the property for only $1 and remove it from the site.

The current plans include the future school being located on the first three floors of the building and accommodating 190 students. The parish is currently considering whether to house Pre-K through fourth grade or kindergarten through eighth grade.

The plan will also include offering a pre-school program to working families in the area.

Current estimates for developing the site range between $24 and $26 million, according to Curtiss. He said that another developer would build the site, but the parish has already come up with a design.

If the Zoning Board approves the plan in February, construction on the site likely would begin within a year and is estimated to take between two and a half to three years to complete.

Additional parking

Except for some restoration efforts, the church will remain untouched, and the parish intends to keep the Parish Hall intact.

According to Curtiss, additional parking will be provided at another site in the city, although the exact location has not yet been determined. Previous plans of including parking on the site were rejected by the zoning officer, who did not want a parking garage on the site’s street level, said Curtiss.

The candlelight vigil

The candlelight vigil held last Thursday, Dec. 28, brought senior Hoboken natives together with Jersey City youths who hoped to alter the parish’s current plans for the site.

Many of the local residents present argued that the additional 50 units would add further stress to the district’s infrastructure, which they claimed is already plagued by floods and septic system problems due to overpopulation.

“The infrastructure can’t handle another building,” said Hoboken native Jim English, who lives a block away on Willow Terrace. “Developers should be obligated to pay for improvements to the infrastructure.”

Another Hoboken native who wished to remain anonymous echoed English’s sentiments, saying, “We don’t want to see another tower go up in Hoboken. What’s gone on in the city in the past 20 years is good for the city, but now it’s too much. It’s been overdone.”

Along with the residents, representatives from local organizations such as Hoboken’s People for Open Government, Jersey City’s Landmark Conservancy, and the conservationist youth group called SAVE, which stands for Sustaining Architectural Vitality in the Environment, based out of Jersey City’s McNair Academic High School, also attended the vigil.

“How many more condominiums does the city need?” said 16-year-old Janita Sawh of SAVE.

Not everyone at the vigil was opposed to the idea of developing the area. Some suggested alternatives for the parish to consider, rather than the market-rate condominiums currently being proposed.

“I understand money drives everything, but there’s got to be something better,” said Peggy Fallon, who lives on the same block as the church at Five Church Towers. “We should be thinking about those who have less and have some sort of spiritual awareness about the project.”

She suggested constructing an affordable, assisted living housing facility for seniors.

Michael Mullins can be reached at mmullins@hudsonreporter.com.

Church came from a typhoid case

Construction on the gothic, shingle-style Church of the Holy Innocents began on Aug. 11, 1872, two years after 7-year-old Julia Stevens, the daughter of Edwin Stevens who founded Stevens Institute of Technology, died of typhoid during a trip to Rome.

The church received its name from the day of Julia Stevens’ burial, which was on Holy Innocents Day.

The church was financed in large part by Martha Bayard, Stevens’ wife, who hired the renowned architect Edward Tuckerman Potter to design the church. Potter used as a model for Holy Innocents the famous Roslyn Chapel near Edinburgh, Scotland.

The church was purposely situated near Hoboken’s then tenement house section in order to service the city’s poor.

Due to the declining condition of the building, Holy Innocents stopped holding regular services in 1984. During the last 22 years, the church has been used once a year for a worship service and occasionally for other events of the parish’s ministry.

Curtiss said that if development is approved, the future site would serve the community by providing space for public events in a multifunctional community room, and possibly a children’s theater.

“How many more condominiums does the city need?” - Janita Sawh

Sunday, January 7, 2007

By MARY AMOROSO
SPECIAL TO THE RECORD

Mark and Teri King had been looking for a house in North Jersey for almost two years.

“It was a long two years,” said Teri King. “I had to take a break from house hunting somewhere in there. I thought I was having a nervous breakdown.”

Their story — which has a happy ending — is good news for all those home buyers who have despaired of finding anything in their price range because they have been continually outbid by other fevered buyers. It turns out that the cooling-off real estate market could help make some home buyers’ dreams come true.

Both husband and wife work in college bookstores. They lived with family in Hoboken. Teri King had been working at the bookstore at Seton Hall University. Then she got a promotion to run the Ramapo College bookstore all the way up in Mahwah.

“I was coming up Route 17,” she said. “And the traffic was killing me.”

The Kings started by browsing online. Then a family friend who was a part-time real estate agent showed them some houses. But it quickly became apparent that they needed an agent who could devote large chunks of time to house hunting. Enter Betty Nugnes.

“We would look at three or four houses at a time,” said Nugnes, who works for Coldwell Banker in Rutherford. “I think we had exceeded over 100-and-something homes. I know Elmwood Park like the back of my hand. I think we went to every block humanly possible there.”

The Kings’ price limit was $350,000, and they had no illusions. They were looking for a fixer-upper, because Teri’s father and husband can do rehabbing.

“Anytime we did find something in our price range, we were being outbid by the contractors who were coming in and putting up little ‘McMansions,’ ” she said. “We had to find a situation where the people wanted to sell and were negotiable on price. I kept saying back then I wish we had an extra $10,000 to $20,000 so we could compete.”

Teri King wanted to shave some time off her commute, and be near family in South Bergen. So they looked at homes in Hackensack, Maywood, Rochelle Park, Hasbrouck Heights, Rutherford and East Rutherford, and ventured up to Hillsdale, Wayne, Mahwah and West Milford.

“Betty was a trouper,” said King.

“But every time Teri found something in their price range, she would be outbid by $5,000 to $10,000 because contractors were paying that kind of money,” Nugnes said.

And then, in the last four to six months, prices started coming down. King saw a home online in Wood-Ridge and called Nugnes.

“This house was originally listed at $429,000, then $409,000 and then $399,000,” said Nugnes.

It was a three-bedroom, two-bath home with hardwood floors under the carpeting. The basement has a dirt floor and the kitchen needs to be redone completely. But all in all, said King, it was in a lot better shape than many fix-uppers they’d seen.

And, with the fix-up-and-flip contractors having largely evaporated, the Kings were able to bid successfully in their price range. They’ll rehab the house before they move in.

“My father is going to help us upgrade the kitchen, which isn’t functional now,” said King. “I’m really big on entertaining, and I want to make sure the kitchen works. We’ll put in a brand-new basement, which will be a playroom for my husband.

“The bathroom upstairs needs to be updated, but I can live with that.”

King figures living in Wood-Ridge will reduce her 90-minute commute by 30 or 40 minutes. She’s excited about being able to pull her car into her own driveway, rather than hunt for a parking spot on the streets of Hoboken.

And Nugnes is happy that her long association with the Kings will end with a sale.

“My manager says, ‘You don’t let your people go.’ I said, ‘No, I don’t.’ I believe there is a home for everyone.”

Her advice to frustrated house-hunters? “Keep looking,” said Nugnes. “The market is becoming favorable for first-time home buyers.”

Wednesday, December 27, 2006
By JARRETT RENSHAW
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

To my loyal readers:

These past couple of months, I’ve attempted to give you everything I got, and all I asked in return was for a few minutes of your time each week and perhaps a few less insulting e-mails.

It’s a tough crowd here in Hudson County, but I am hoping a generous one as well. So, how about throwing me $500,000 so I can buy a condo. See, I really want a new set of wheels and there’s a chance the developer might throw that in if you buy me the apartment.

Young Chu and his wife Young Soon Chu gave me the idea. The Hoboken nail salon owners recently bought two investment properties at 1100 Adams St.

A week after inking the deal, the developer, Tarragon Corp., called Young Chu and told him he won a two-year lease on a BMW X3. Tarragon raffled off the $40,000 car to the first five people who bought condos in October.

“I was surprised,” said Young Chu. “I knew there was promotion, but I really didn’t think I would win. I guess buying two properties helped my odds.”

Developers, reluctant to drop their prices, are now offering a boatload of goodies. Perks range from home upgrades to eight-hour plane rides to luxury cars.

“When we don’t get as much traffic as we want, we try to spark interest, and it works,” said Tarragon spokesman Christopher Winslow.

If you want to buy at the Hudson Tea House, Toll Brothers is throwing in a free kitchen or bathroom upgrade.

Manhattan Place Realty is offering a 5 percent discount on pre-construction sales at the Cliffs in Hoboken, and Tarragon will pay your first six months of maintenance fees.

As luck would have it, the new car opportunity has left the garage.

Other less generous developers label such tactics as “gimmicks.” For the record, telemarketing is a gimmick; a new car is a prize.

It’s not just homebuyers getting in on the action.

Toll Brothers recently handed out gift certificates to brokers for showing their condo units. Sell a couple properties, the brokers were told, and you could be eligible for an all-expense-paid vacation.

So, you can see why I need the money. I could lose out on a new toaster for my brand new $500,000 Jersey City condo if you don’t hurry. Thanks in advance.

[solid box] The Jersey City Redevelopment Agency is anticipating a report from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey that will help resolve the future of the historic Powerhouse.

The report is expected to suggest ways to move the transformers that power the PATH system across the street, as well as who will foot the bill - the developer, Cordish Companies, the Port Authority, or both. The $400,000 report is due early next year.

[solid box] Pre-construction sales at the Schroeder Lofts in the Hamilton Park neighborhood are going well, reports developer Paul Silverman. Roughly 23 of the 58 loft-style condos have been sold, and a large percentage of the sales are from Jersey City residents. “I think it’s good when we see people moving within the city,” says Silverman.

© 2006 The Jersey Journal

Published Fri, 8 Dec 2006 12:00:00 GMT
Explore art of negotiation, buying home with bad credit, timing market

Robert J. Bruss
Inman News

Each week I read and review at least one new real estate book. At the end of each year, it is my honor to select from these 52 books the “top 10″ real estate books. 2006 was an especially difficult year to select the best because there were so many new, high-quality realty books.

All of these excellent real estate books are available in stock or by special order at local bookstores, public libraries, and www.Amazon.com. Here are the 10 best real estate books of 2006, plus five Honorable Mentions:

Purchase Bob Bruss reports online.

1. “Trump-Style Negotiation,” by George Ross (John Wiley and Sons, Hoboken, NJ), $24.95, 259 pages. This unique book offers insights into Donald J. Trump’s big-thinking negotiation style, which leaves the contract details to his trusted adviser, George Ross. Only serious real estate buyers, sellers, real estate agents and investors will study this extremely well-written book that reveals negotiation tactics not found elsewhere, illustrated with many actual examples from Trump acquisitions.

2. “The Automatic Millionaire Homeowner,” by David Bach (Broadway Books, New York), $19.95, 244 pages. If you could read only one real estate book, whether you are a renter considering a home purchase, a current homeowner, a seasoned realty investor or a real estate agent, this is the book for you because it shows how home ownership can lead to wealth. The book’s two themes are (a) renters can become millionaires by investing in their first house or condo and (b) that residence can become the foundation for a better home or more investment property in future years.

3. “Buy Even Lower,” by Scott Frank and Andy Heller (Kaplan Publishing Co., Chicago) $18.95, 238 pages. Aimed at real estate investors and real estate sales agents, this book, by two full-time corporate executives and part-time realty investors, shows how they buy single-family houses at targeted below-market prices and then either buy and hold, buy and flip, or (their favorite) buy and lease-purchase. The authors favor “ugly and awful” three-bedroom, two-bathroom houses in middle-income neighborhoods.

4. “Real Estate Debt Can Make You Rich,” by Steve Dexter (McGraw-Hill, New York), $21.95, 156 pages. The two audiences for this book, which explains why real estate debt is good, are (a) home buyers and realty agents who want to understand the inner-workings of the mortgage industry and (b) investors who need to know how “good debt” can be created to maximize realty profits. The mortgage-broker author reveals how avoiding “inexperienced and inept loan hacks” can obtain the best mortgages to buy a home or investment property. The book includes the best compilation of real estate Web sites available.

5. “Bubbles, Booms, and Busts; Make Money in Any Real Estate Market,” by Blanche Evans (McGraw-Hill, New York), $16.95, 167 pages. This extremely well-researched and up-to-date book explains the signals of local rising, falling or neutral local home sales markets, and how to profit in any situation if you take a long-term perspective on home sales. “Except for local economic shocks, like the collapse or exit of a major employer, home prices nationwide have not gone down since the Great Depression,” the author reminds readers.

6. “Success as a Real Estate Agent for Dummies,” by Dirk Zeller (Wiley Publishing Co., Indianapolis, IN), $21.99, 350 pages. Whether you are a new real estate agent, a longtime “old pro” agent or an individual thinking about becoming an agent, this basic book by a real estate “coach” explains what is involved in selling real estate for sales commissions, how to use sales time management profitably, and how to get started fast by contacting expired listings and “for sale by owners.” The book includes an invaluable list of Web sites for realty agents plus the author’s advice how to gain competitive advantages by obtaining a “slice of the market.”

7. “Everything You Need to Know Before Buying a Co-Op, Condo, or Townhouse,” by Ken Roth (AMACOM Publishing, New York), $18.95, 197 pages. The real estate attorney author shares his many legal and real-life personal experiences so readers don’t make costly mistakes when buying into the unique lifestyle of these properties. Heavy emphasis is placed on the pros and cons of homeowner associations, including “condo commando” members who seek to take charge of the “mini-democracy” members.

8. “Who Says You Can’t Buy a Home?” by David Reed (AMACOM Publishing, New York), $17.95, 182 pages. This mortgage-broker author is on the side of home buyers and real estate agents as he explains how mortgage lenders look at borrowers in this “tell all” book.” “Anyone with steady income, no matter how bad their credit rating, or even with no credit, can find a mortgage to buy a home,” the author reveals.

9. “Confessions of a Real Estate Entrepreneur,” by James A. Randel (McGraw-Hill, New York), $29.95, 256 pages. This book’s theme is “add value” to real estate, whether you invest in raw land, houses, run-down factory buildings with rezoning potential, or fixer-upper apartments and offices. The self-deprecating author shares his mistakes and his successes, along with his advice to invest with as little of your own cash as possible so profits can be maximized. Negotiation strategies are heavily emphasized throughout this unusual book.

10. “The Reverse Mortgage Advantage,” by Warren Boroson (McGraw-Hill, New York), $21.95, 169 pages. Virtually all the key aspects of senior-citizen reverse mortgages are thoroughly explained in this detailed but easy-to-read book that emphasizes the potential pitfalls as well as the major benefits. The author shatters the reverse-mortgage myths, such as “the bank owns the house,” the supposed high costs, and even the scary stories of early reverse mortgages, which are no longer possible.

HONORABLE MENTION:

11. “Trump: The Best Real Estate Advice I Ever Received,” by Donald J. Trump (Thomas Nelson Publishers-Rutledge Hill Press, Nashville), $19.99, 273 pages. This is the most unusual real estate book of 2006 because it has 100 successful real estate investing, brokerage and marketing co-authors (including me) who contributed 100 chapters revealing the best realty advice ever received. What do all these realty entrepreneurs have in common (other than being very diverse individuals)? “Apprentice” Bill Ransic said it best: “Learn to recognize value.”

12. “Find it, Fix it, Flip it!” by Michael Corbett (Plume Books-Penquin Group, New York), $15.00, 323 pages. This author, host of the TV Extra program “Mansions and Millionaires,” created a technique of changing a fix-up home’s lifestyle from dull routine to upscale, but without high renovation costs. The before-and-after photos are amazing. The “profit calculator chart” shows readers how to spot the potential profit by purchasing problem houses and correcting drawbacks to add value. This book is unique because the author shows how to add market value by improving the lifestyle of the buyer.

13. “Landlording on Auto-Pilot,” by Mike Butler (John Wiley and Sons, Hoboken, NJ), $19.95, 190 pages. Both “old pro” residential landlords and beginner novice property managers will profit from this unusual book about how to profitably manage the tenants in your properties. “Your tenants are your employees” is the philosophy of the retired, no-nonsense cop author who shares his basic belief that most tenants would own their own homes if they had adequate income and good credit.

14. “Two Years to a Million in Real Estate,” by Matthew A. Martinez (McGraw-Hill, New York), $21.95, 182 pages. This is the success story of an ex-dot-com employee who got tired of working long hours at a great job for 10 years and watching his fellow workers lose their jobs. He accidentally discovered real estate’s market-value appreciation, leverage, tax savings, cash flow, reliability and freedom from a 9-to-5 workday. In the process, he became a multimillionaire, and he shows readers how they can have the same result.

15. “Home Buying for Dummies, Third Edition,” by Eric Tyson and Ray Brown (Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, IN), $21.99, 328 pages. Because of its ultra-complete coverage of virtually every home-buying topic, this 600,000-copy best-seller in prior editions is still the best “how to buy a home” book. The new edition adds extensive coverage of Internet resources for home buyers, where more than 75 percent of today’s buyers begin their quest. This ultra-honest book even takes a few swipes at inept real estate agents who make the home-buying process more difficult than it needs to be.

By ANTOINETTE MARTIN

When New Jersey’s office vacancy rate, stuck around 19 percent for several years, dropped 1.4 percentage points in the third quarter of this year, to 17 percent, analysts at Cushman & Wakefield, the big commercial real estate brokerage firm, called it a stellar performance “fueled by tightening options for prime space in Manhattan.”

Analysts at CB Richard Ellis, another big firm, highlighted the fact that a couple of the major lease deals for the quarter involved two corporate banks from Manhattan taking large blocks of space in Jersey City. In the largest deal of the year so far in New Jersey, Citibank sublet 316,775 square feet from UBS at its 2-year-old building in the Newport Office Center just south of the Exchange Place PATH station. In the other deal, Deutsche Bank leased 282,238 square feet at Mack-Cali’s refurbished Harborside I at Exchange Place.

Despite these big lease signings, the vacancy rate for New Jersey’s waterfront market is currently estimated at 15 percent, far higher than the rate in Midtown Manhattan, according to various real estate companies.

While some professionals discern signs of a migratory trend from New York to New Jersey, most say it is more like a trickle.

Builders are not exactly rushing their construction equipment to New Jersey, either. An example of the marked difference in one developer’s confidence about the New Jersey market relative to New York involves SJP Properties, which is based in Parsippany.

While SJP is moving ahead with a speculative 40-story office tower project in the Times Square redevelopment area, pushing for expedited approvals, the company’s executives say the timing is not yet right to begin construction of the third and last building at its Waterfront Corporate Center on the riverbank in Hoboken.

“We’re positioned and we’re poised,” said Peter Eppie, SJP’s executive vice president.

Mr. Eppie said SJP stayed in constant touch with planning authorities so that the start-up of construction of the third building could be swift once the company decided to go ahead.

In September, SJP had announced that it had already “commenced development” of the third building. But this month, Mr. Eppie said the only work done for the 550,000-square-foot office structure was ground clearing that took place when construction began for the adjacent W Hotel. SJP’s new building and the Hoboken W will share a retaining wall on one side.

“We’re just not comfortable moving ahead with a spec building in Hoboken right now,” Mr. Eppie said, “and frankly, we don’t see big tenants moving over from Manhattan at this very moment.”

The chairman and chief executive of SJP, Steven J. Pozycki, added, “We follow the numbers very, very closely, and we believe it will happen, and we believe it is due to happen soon.”

Stephen B. Siegel, chairman of global brokerage at CB Richard Ellis, who represented SJP on the Times Square deal, said, “Right now, we have a vacancy rate of 7 percent or less in Midtown and tremendous velocity in deal making, with spillover from Midtown to downtown.”

But tenants that may see rising Midtown rents as too steep are eventually going to look beyond downtown, he said. “Any time space is being quickly absorbed, when that push is evident, the next move has got to be out of the city,” Mr. Siegel said.

Immediately after the attacks of Sept. 11, there were predictions that there would be significant defections from Manhattan to the Hudson River waterfront in Jersey City and Hoboken, and on the Passaic River in Newark.

That happened to a limited degree, mainly involving companies in the financial services and publishing industry. Tenants at SJP’s first two buildings at Waterfront Corporate Center include the publisher John Wiley & Sons, which moved its headquarters from Manhattan, and the offices of Marsh & McLennan, Sumitomo Trust and Banking and Mizuho Securities.

Now, Mr. Siegel says that “nontraditional” expansions out of Manhattan might be on the horizon. “Law firms, for example,” he said, “may have always stayed in Manhattan, but it’s very feasible that given the conditions now, a firm might decide to consider moving part of its operation out of the city.”

“Akin Gump signed a lease at the Bank of America building a month ago for $105 per square foot, for over 200,000 square feet,” Mr. Siegel said. “Let’s say a firm needs 500,000 square feet, and 100,000 square feet of that is back-office operation. Class A space is available in New Jersey, or Westchester, for $50 to $70 per square foot, a nice lower-cost alternative.”

Mr. Pozycki of SJP said the intensity of the demand for space in Manhattan was unprecedented, and the situation anywhere else did not compare. “Manhattan, quite simply, is on fire,” Mr. Pozycki said.

SJP acquired the Times Square parcel in a deal announced during the summer. The parcel, the last remaining redevelopment site in the Times Square renewal project, is on the southeast corner of 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue and had been owned by Howard and Edward Milstein since 1983. It was not officially for sale.

In the deal arranged by Mr. Siegel, the Milsteins were persuaded to set a price — $305 million — and SJP was required to take it or leave it. “We pounced,” Mr. Pozycki said.

The parcel was purchased in a joint venture with Prudential Real Estate Investors. SJP is proceeding with the building at 11 Times Square without having secured any tenants. It will be designed by FXFowle Architects, which has designed other office buildings in Times Square.

SJP will have to pay another $23.2 million to secure development rights before construction can begin.

But Mr. Pozycki said the company was confident that the space would be sought after given the prime location; sleek glass-and-steel design; rights to signage along 42nd Street, where the main entry will be; and coveted curb space for chauffeur service on the 41st Street side, where the second entry will be.

In New Jersey, SJP has approvals to build a total of 2.5 million square feet of office space at the Hoboken site, other sites near the waterfront and in Morris County.

Historic schoolhouse finds new life as high-end residences
By Tom Jennemann

CLASS IS IN SESSION – R Squared Real Estate Partners have converted a 136-year-old school into Adams Square Condominiums.
The final bell rang long ago at 501 Adams St., but Manhattan developers R Squared Real Estate Partners believe that area homebuyers are ready to go back to school.

The five-story building, which has been renamed Adams Square, began life in 1870 as the private Kealy School and later served as Hoboken’s Public School No. 2. In 1996, it was converted to rental apartments and remained that way until R Squared acquired the property last year.

Now the building has been converted into condos, which are currently on the market.

Architecturally speaking, R Squared Principal Mitchell Rechler said the building is one of the Hoboken’s most unique. It boasts twin towers, accented with gothic arched windows and stone tracery. Inside, the lobby is highlighted by white marble and framed by dual staircases that ascend the left and right side.

The lobby flows into what used to the school’s auditorium and cafeteria. The ceiling has been removed, which has left a quiet courtyard.

The building has 59 one-, two-, and three-bedroom condos from 612 to 1,395 square feet of living space, which are currently priced from $430,000 to $800,000, according to Rechler.

Each of the condos features modern amenities such as solid hardwood floors and remote-controlled air conditioning systems. Kitchens include walnut-stained cabinets, honed Kashmir granite countertops, and stainless steel appliances, while bathrooms offer Carrera marble vanity tops, floors, and bases.

An example of adaptive reuse

Instead of demolishing the interesting old buildings, there has been a movement in urban renewal called “adaptive reuse,” in which buildings are adapted for new uses while retaining their historic features and maintaining a link to the past.

Rechler said that the building’s history as a schoolhouse and “gothic castle-like” façade made the building the perfect candidate to be adapted into condominiums.

R Squared hired Manhattan architects Beyer Blinder Belle to remodel all of the building’s interiors. That firm specializes in historic renovations and has worked on projects at Ellis Island and Grand Central Station in the New York Area and the Capital Building in Washington D.C.

“Our goal was to adapt the existing classic design into today’s world and with today’s aesthetics,” Rechler said. “All of the important architectural elements that existed in the building have been adapted beautifully.”

10/08/2006

Despite some concerns, council passes zoning for movie theater
By Tom Jennemann

After about an hour of hearty debate, the Hoboken City Council approved zoning changes that will allow developers to build a five-screen movie theater at 14th Street, between Adams and Grand streets.

Ursa Development and Tarragon Development Corp., partners who are the designated developers for much of the city’s Northwest Redevelopment area, announced plans in July to bring a movie theater to Hoboken.

Their plan had the full support of Mayor David Roberts, who believes the theater would be a valuable community amenity. Because of the unique dimensions and other requirements for a movie theater, the City Council had to amend the zoning of the Northwest Redevelopment plan.

Ursa/Tarragon are in the final stages to lease the property to Clearview Cinemas. The concept would be to build an “urban theater,” where the vast majority of patrons would walk to the movies or arrive by mass transit. With this in mind, the new zoning would mean that the theater would be built with no parking.

At Wednesday night’s public hearing, several people who live in the neighborhood expressed concerns about parking, traffic, location, and the theater’s long-term viability.

No parking

For several of the speakers, parking was a big issue.

John Curley, a lawyer for URSA/Tarragon, said that having no parking is “the industry standard for an urban theater of this type.”

But not everyone agrees. Jane Song, who lives near the site, said that she is “skeptical that the movie theater will work without some form of parking.”

Hoboken resident and Hoboken Housing Authority Commissioner Perry Belfiore said the movie theater is “going to exacerbate the problem in a city that is already suffering.”

Councilman Michael Cricco, who was the only council member to vote against the rezoning and in whose ward the theater will be built, said he was presented with a petition signed by dozens of residents who live in the neighborhood and don’t want the movie theater there.

“I have to vote with my constituency,” Cricco explained as his reason for not supporting the rezoning.

Theater’s supporters respond

Councilman Peter Cammarano responded that he supports the plan not including parking spaces. He said having parking would only entice “vans full of kids” from out of town to come to Hoboken. Encouraging people to walk to the theater is a good thing, he said.

He added that he is not buying the argument that the location on the city’s northwest side will keep other Hoboken residents from going to the movies. He said that people who currently live in that area regularly walk to Washington Street to have a dinner at a restaurant.

Councilman Christopher Campos noted there are two large parking garages on 15th street that can accommodate people that come from out of town.

Councilwoman Theresa LaBruno, who has been one of the biggest advocates for the theater, said that a city that has a growing number of young families deserves its own theater.

Long-term viability

There were also several members of the public who questioned whether the theater can be a success, given past failures. Last year the small Hudson Street Cinemas near the PATH station closed, and that is in a much more centralized location, some argued. “I don’t believe this movie theater is going to be a success,” said Hoboken resident Bob DuVal.

But Councilman Ruben Ramos Jr. noted that the Hudson Street Cinemas were dilapidated. He said the new facility will be comfortable, with state-of-the-art equipment.

Ursa/Tarragon Attorney John Curley added that Clearview has a business model that has been successful in other urban areas.

“Clearview Cinemas would not come into a market if they thought they were going to lose money,” Curley said.

Additional residential zoning there

As part of Wednesday night’s ordinance, the City Council also rezoned two other parcels of land for which URSA/Tarragon is the designated developer. The parcels directly face the former Henkel Chemical Plant property. In the original redevelopment plan, the block was zoned as a non-residential “buffer area.”

The new zoning will now allow the developers to build residential as well as retail structures on that area. City Director of Community Development Fred Bado has said that the new zoning could allow the developers to build “up to 100 additional units” of residential housing.

Roberts said that the additional residential zoning is an allowance to offset development costs for the theater.