By Daniel Geiger

Centerline Capital Group, a specialty financing company and debt servicer, is in talks to relocate from midtown to 100 Church Street. The company, which appeared to teeter near insolvency during the recession and the credit crunch but has since bounced back, would take about 60,000 s/f in the deal, sources say. Located currently at 625 Madison Avenue, the firm is negotiating with the building’s landlord, SL Green, to terminate its lease there in order to move. Helping the deal is that another tenant in 625 Madison Avenue, Polo Ralph Lauren, one of the 570,000 s/f building’s largest tenants, is interested in taking Centerline’s space. Read more...

By Daniel Geiger

Greystone, a hedge fund and investment management company, has renewed its roughly 25,000 s/f lease at the high end midtown office building Carnegie Hall Tower. The firm is one of the original tenants in the building, which was built by the Elghanayan brothers in the late 1980s, and occupies the 60-story tower’s penthouse, a space that features sweeping views of Central Park. Read more...

By Daniel Geiger

Two insurance companies are leasing space at 125 Broad Street, an office building in lower Manhattan owned by the New Jersey based real estate investment trust Mack Cali. CNA Financial Corporation is relocating from 40 Wall Street into about 80,000 s/f at 125 Broad. Gen Re is also taking about 56,000 s/f. The company, a reinsurance firm, is moving to 125 Broad from 199 Water Street and hasn’t yet finalized exactly how much space it will take. Sources familiar with the deal said that the firm may end up either committing to as much as 70,000 s/f or negotiating the options to expand to that in the future. Read more...

By Roland Li

The numbers are bleak. U.S. home prices fell 4.2% in the first quarter of 2011, according to data from Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller housing index, released on Tuesday. With the latest decline, prices have hit a new post-recession low, and are now comparable to mid-2002 prices. The trend has been described as a “double dip,” defined by prices dropping below the previous post-recession low in 2009. “The numbers are horrifying. But it’s focused damage,” said David Blitzer, managing director of Standard & Poor’s and index committee chair of S&P Indices, referring specifically to foreclosures. Read more...