NYC Real Estate News by Fernando Branco, Real Estate Broker, GRI, ABR, CNE - Fernando Branco Realty

The Rudin family's $800 million redevelopment of the St. Vincent's Hospital site is one step closer to a reality. According to the Wall Street Journal, Rudin Management obtained $525 million in construction financing and can begin construction once the government approval process, already underway, is complete.  The relative ease with which the Rudin's cleared the financing obstacle given today's tight lending environment was surprising, the Journal said. Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of New York Mellon and M&T Bank contributed to the loan.  But that last hurdle, government approval, could be the highest.  The City Council may respond to  pressure from Village residents  and demand more concessions from the developers for the right to proceed with building. The Rudin family has already reduced the height of the development from 266 feet down to 203, agreed to renovate existing structures rather than replace them, provided a 15,000-square-foot park in the p

American debt has been downgraded. Has Manhattan real estate? A data-driven review. W e know the eurozone is barely hanging on, job reports are terrible, and nobody’s hiring. What we don’t know—because it typically takes a few months to become evident—is what all of this means for New York real estate. Is this a moment to buy? To sell? To  panic -sell? In the weeks after the Standard & Poor’s downgrade, we asked a wide range of brokers, analysts, and executives to size things up. As you’d expect, they more or less fell into two camps—the ups and the downs—but their opinions tended to funnel down to one conclusion. From the optimists:  “In my opinion, we’ve already come off the bottom,” declares Barbara Corcoran, founder of the Corcoran Group and commentator for the  T­oday  show. She says newcomers are still pouring in, especially from China and Brazil, and that those wealthy buyers are indifferent to the downturn. She’s backed up by Victor