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Los Angeles city prosecutors are calling for an unfinished mega-mansion in Bel-Air to be torn down to its foundation, the latest twist in the saga over a colossal building at the center of criminal charges, court battles and an FBI investigation.
[...] last week, City Atty. Mike Feuer and his prosecutors stepped up their demands, saying that a structural engineer had found that key structures supporting the building were deficient.
— Los Angeles Times
"Hadid pleaded no contest two years ago to criminal charges tied to the mammoth, unfinished building, which prosecutors said was much bigger than city rules allowed and included bedrooms, decks and even an IMAX theater that the city said were never approved," reports the Los Angeles Times. Calls... View full entry
After an incredible publicity blitz and well over a year on the market, Frank Lloyd Wright’s world-renowned Ennis House — tucked into the foothills of Los Feliz [...] — has sold for $18 million to an as-yet-unidentified buyer. That number, while significantly below the $23 million ask, ranks it as the priciest Wright-designed home ever sold, easily eclipsing the previous high-water mark set by the Storer House in nearby Hollywood Hills, which was purchased in 2013 for $6.8 million [...] — Variety
More than one Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home has changed owners this week: after learning about the successful auction of his mid-century modern Norman Lykes House in Phoenix on Wednesday, Variety now reports that the spectacular Mayan Revival-style Ennis House in LA's Los Feliz hills just sold... View full entry
An Arizona house that was the last home designed by the architect Frank Lloyd Wright before his death sold on Wednesday for nearly $1.7m.
Out of nearly 20 bids at a public auction for the Norman Lykes House, the winning bid came from a man who lives out of state, Heritage Auctions told the Associated Press.
— The Guardian
Commissioned by Norman and Aimee Lykes, this Phoenix home known as the "Circular Sun House," was Frank Lloyd Wright's last residential design before his death in April 1959. The structure was completed nearly ten years later by Taliesin architect John Rattenbury. Image: Heritage Auctions In case... View full entry
The Related Companies has released new renderings and a new name for Thomas Heatherwick’s High Line project at 515 West 18th Street: Lantern House. The pair of residential structures is located along Tenth Avenue between West 18th Street and West 19th Street and flanks both sides of the High Line [...]. The development is Heatherwick’s first residential project in New York City and in the United States. SLCE Architects is the architect of record. — New York YIMBY
Thomas Heatherwick is expanding his foothold in New York City: after creating quite a stir with the Vessel at Hudson Yards and the under-construction floating Pier 55 park, the London-based studio is teaming up with developers Related Companies again for the practice's first residential project on... View full entry
“[Parking is] sort of becoming an expected amenity for a high-end condo,” said Andrew Bradfield, a principal of Orange Management, a developer that has installed automated garages in two Brooklyn condos: Waverly Brooklyn in Clinton Hill and the Symon in Downtown Brooklyn. “To not have parking hampers marketing.” — The New York Times
Despite having one of the best public transportation systems in the world, New York City's developers have taken to embracing bespoke and automated parking options as luxury building amenities in recent years. The spots can cost upwards of $200,000 per stall to rent, depending on the development... View full entry
Among the more than 16,200 condo units across 682 new buildings completed in New York City since 2013, one in four remain unsold, or roughly 4,100 apartments — most of them in luxury buildings, according to a new analysis by the listing website StreetEasy. [...]
Already the prices at several new towers have been reduced, either directly or through concessions like waived common charges and transfer taxes, and some may soon be forced to cut deeper.
— The New York Times
Despite record-breaking residential construction in New York City, sales of apartments have slowed steadily in recent years. NYT real estate reporter Stefanos Chen has analyzed the latest numbers of unsold units, especially in the higher price ranges, following a glut of inventory in newly... View full entry
The Central Park Tower, Adrain Smith + Gordon Gill's 1,550-foot supertall tower in New York City, has topped out. The 131-floor, 179-unit complex, created for developer Extell, now reigns as the tallest residential building in the world, New York Yimby reports. Wrapped in rippled... View full entry
99 Hudson Street, a 900-foot tower residential tower designed by architects Perkins Eastman for developers China Overseas America in Jersey City, New Jersey, is nearing completion. The tower topped out as New Jersey's tallest skyscraper in late 2018. In recent weeks, according to New York... View full entry
Touted as the city’s finest undeveloped piece of land, the 157-acre property redefined the luxury market when it listed for a record $1 billion last year. On Tuesday, it sold for a mere $100,000 at a foreclosure auction, a fraction of the $200-million loan outstanding on the property. — The Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times digs into the creative financial maneuvering that resulted in the strangely low final purchase price for a 157-acre hilltop site recently billed as the most expensive property in Los Angeles history. View full entry
In Seattle, Austin, New York, Denver, Minneapolis, Washington and the Bay Area, developers are the antiheroes of an urban drama over the high cost of housing and what must change to bring it down.
But their arch-villain status today — merely invoking “developers” can shut down civic debate — deserves scrutiny
— The New York Times
The New York Times profiles the real estate developer, an arch-villain of contemporary society who, by some accounts, makes too much money, bulldozes humble neighborhoods to make room for the rich, and wills inequality and displacement as a matter of business. But is there another side... View full entry
[...] when the residents of a 12-story loft building in Chelsea learned that a proposed tower next door threatened to darken most of their windows and block their Empire State Building views, they tried a less confrontational approach.
They banded together to make the developer an unusual offer: $11 million not to build.
— The New York Times
A group of Chelsea condo owners have shown that a million-dollar view can actually be worth $11 million. As J. David Goodman writes in the NYT, "The owners used a typical developer strategy and turned it on its head: They bought the developer’s air rights — normally used to allow for... View full entry
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
Across New York City, as the effects of the New York State's recently-enacted rent control laws begin to take shape, apartment building owners are having a tough time finding investors to purchase their properties. According to Bloomberg, apartment building sales are down nearly 50-percent... View full entry
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
NAR’s Profile of International Transactions in U.S. Residential Real Estate 2019 survey reports that "for the seventh consecutive year, China exceeded all other countries in terms of dollar volume of purchases, buying an estimated $13.4 billion worth of residential property, a 56% decline from... View full entry
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
Oversupply, the unknown threat of climate change, and shifting immigration patterns are pushing high-end condominium prices downward in Miami, where, The Wall Street Journal reports, sales have fallen off 24 percent from last year. “There’s just an abundance of inventory,” Alexandra... View full entry
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
The 216 m/709 ft tower with its recognizable external structure in Miami's Museum Park was the first and final residential project in the United States designed by the late Zaha Hadid. Vertical construction began in 2015. Interior shot of a finished residence. Photo: Robin Hill, courtesy One... View full entry
