Title insurance company Kensington Vanguard National Land and law firm Meister Seelig & Fein sponsored an event to celebrate the uptick in the real estate market at the Ainsworth restaurant in Chelsea. Around 400 people attended. Read more...

By Liana Grey

Until last year, Riverview Club was just another aging rental building in northern Yonkers, on a hilly street winding above the Hudson River. “It had really good bones,” said Randi Kahn of River Hill Residential, a New York-based development firm. And it had equally impressive views of the palisades across the river, and the George Washington and Tappan Zee bridges, and the distant outline of the Manhattan skyline. Read more...

By Daniel Geiger

Speaking last week at a luncheon in midtown, Robert Knakal said that he had difficulty preparing for the talk he was about to give. The New York chapter of CCIM, the real estate organization that was hosting the event, had asked Knakal to speak about his eponymously titled brokerage company, Massey Knakal Realty Services, which he co-founded in the late 1980s with Paul Massey. The two have since built into one of the city’s most prolific sellers of real estate. Read more...

By Roland Li

Benchmark Real Estate Group, LLC has closed on the purchase of a mixed-use building at 10 Fifth Avenue for $9.21 million, according to city records. The building has 14 rental apartments and three retail spaces. The bakery Le Pain Quotidien is a commercial tenant, and Benchmark is seeking to lease the other two spaces. Read more...

By Roland Li

Around 15 months ago, the Alliance of Downtown New York, the city’s largest business improvement district, sought a better way to present Lower Manhattan. Its efforts have culminated in the recent relaunch of its website, which streamlines existing information and integrates maps into the design. Read more...

By Liana Grey

Whenever I take a walk through the West Village, and pass a “Sex and the City” tour bus parked outside Magnolia’s Bakery, I can’t help but wonder: how many of the passengers, some sporting Carrie Bradshaw’s trademark Manolo Blahniks, others carting Marc Jacobs shopping bags, consider buying a townhouse on Perry Street? And do they know how much it would actually cost? Read more...

By Daniel Geiger

BGC Partners, a spin-off of the large investment banking firm Cantor Fitzgerald, has acquired the real estate services company Newmark Knight Frank for an undisclosed sum, the company announced this morning. BGC, a company that brokers the trade of a range of financial products and securities, said that it is buying a majority interest in Newmark Knight Frank’s entire U.S. operations, including its New York office, which is one of the city’s major office leasing brokerages. Read more...

Thirty top real estate agents from seven leading brokerage firms achieved the esteemed New York Residential Specialist (NYRS) designation this spring, adding them to the ranks ofv an elite group. Read more...

When ACC Construction was hired to built out the offices of an investment banking firm, the challenge was to find a balance when creating an open, light space that was neither too traditional, too high-tech nor too stark and minimal. Read more...

By Roland Li

Billionaire Jeff Greene, who made a fortune betting against subprime mortgages, has picked up another sort of distressed asset. Greene’s firm, Coral Gables, FL.-based Florida Sunshine Investments, Inc., has purchased 62 Wooster Street for $26.27 million, according to city records. The building, which also has the address 476 Broome Street, was a planned luxury conversion by Trinity Development Group, with five residential units, a roof-top swimming pool and 4,000 s/f of retail space with art galleries. Read more...