In the first half of 2019, New York City apartment building sales fell 48% from the same period a year earlier, B6 said in a report. It was the biggest decline for any six-month period in data going back to 2009. In northern Manhattan, which includes Harlem, the drop in multifamily purchases led to a 61% slide in all commercial-property transactions, the firm said. — Bloomberg

Challenging conditions in the U.S. housing market, along with tighter currency controls by the Chinese government, caused a stunning drop in foreign demand for American homes.

The dollar volume of homes purchased by foreign buyers from April 2018 through March 2019 dropped 36% from the previous year, according to the National Association of Realtors. — CNBC

Miami’s high-end real-estate market has drastically slowed in the past several years, as the Latin American buyers who led a frenzy of postrecession purchases have all but disappeared. South American economies that were roaring in the early years of the decade, including Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela, are now facing severe economic distress, which has devalued their currencies and left purchasers from those countries with far less buying power in the U.S. — wsj.com

One Thousand Museum Residences, the Zaha Hadid-designed skyscraper in downtown Miami, received its temporary certificate of occupancy and will begin closings as early as next week [...]

Developers Louis Birdman, Gilberto Bomeny, Gregg Covin and Kevin Venger, along with the late Zaha Hadid, broke ground on the 62-story, 84-unit luxury condo tower at 1000 Biscayne Boulevard in December 2014. — The Real Deal

After nearly four years on the market and a few sizable price cuts, a 123-room Holmby Hills mansion known as The Manor has sold for $120 million, making it the most expensive home sold in LA County.

The seller is Formula One racing heiress Petra Ecclestone, who bought The Manor from Candy Spelling in 2011, paying $85 million in cash. She gave the home a flashy makeover, adding a nightclub in the basement and tanks for exotic fish. — Curbed LA

The mammoth, unfinished mansion on Strada Vecchia Road in Bel-Air has long been at the center of controversy, investigations and legal battles.

Its developer, Mohamed Hadid, pleaded no contest to criminal charges after prosecutors accused him of building a house far bigger than allowed. [...]

And investigators have looked into possible wrongdoing by a city building inspector scrutinizing the house. — Los Angeles Times

Manhattan’s latest crop of new luxury developments continues to attract a steady stream of buyers.

At the ultra-pricey 220 Central Park South in Midtown, the grand limestone skyscraper designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects, four more units officially sold, including New York City’s most expensive closing in May: a three-bedroom aerie for nearly $26.5 million. — The New York Times

The City Council voted to close a zoning loophole that has allowed developers to boost building heights with excessive mechanical spaces—but it’s only the first step in addressing the issue, say lawmakers. — Curbed NY

As the tech companies Uber, Airbnb, Lyft and Pinterest prepare to go public, thousands more instant millionaires are expected to flood the market in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. All the while, the middle class and working poor are scrambling for shelter. — The Guardian

The high-end condo building at 520 W. 28th St. along the High Line that the company completed roughly two years ago appears so far to be a rare bust.

According to property records, only 16 of the building's 39 units have sold, a roughly 40% sell through that shrinks to an even smaller percentage when measured by square footage. That's because the building's largest and most expensive apartments, including its three penthouse units, all remain unsold. — Crain's New York Business

New details and renderings have been released for 35 Hudson Yards, set to be the tallest residential tower in the Hudson Yards neighborhood at over 1,000 feet. The boutique apartments come with a wide array of in-house lifestyle services, some provided by the Equinox Hotel, which is part of the development. David Childs and Skidmore Owings & Merrill are the architects, while interior design is being led by Tony Ingrao. — New York YIMBY

On March 15, after 12 years of planning and six of construction, the Related Companies will open the gates to its new $25 billion enclave [...] Besides being big, Hudson Yards represents something fundamentally new to New York. It’s a one-shot, supersized virtual city-state, plugged into a global metropolis but crafted to the specifications of a single boss: Related’s chairman, Stephen Ross — NY Magazine

A state lawmaker is gunning for more aggressive restrictions on the vast mechanical voids developers often abuse to boost their buildings’ heights as a “more robust” solution to the de Blasio administration’s recent zoning amendment. [...]

Current zoning exempts mechanical voids from a building’s floor-area ratio (FAR)—a given property’s square footage—and puts no height limits on those spaces. — Curbed NY

Any visitor to New York over the past few years will have witnessed this curious new breed of pencil-thin tower. Poking up above the Manhattan skyline like etiolated beanpoles, they seem to defy the laws of both gravity and commercial sense. They stand like naked elevator shafts awaiting their floors, raw extrusions of capital piled up until it hits the clouds. — The Guardian

Hedge funder Ken Griffin has closed on a massive penthouse at 220 Central Park South, paying a record-shattering $238 million, according to sources familiar with the deal.

The Citadel founder has long been rumored as the buyer of the condominium’s most lavish spread — a 23,000-square-foot quadplex encompassing the 50th through 53rd floors of the limestone tower, developed by Vornado Realty Trust and designed by Robert A.M. Stern. The asking price was $250 million. — The Real Deal