Donald Trump and the home at 809 N. Canon Drive. (Credit: Getty Images, and Google Maps)

The Trump Organization has sold one of its last remaining properties in Los Angeles, a home on North Canon Drive in Beverly Hills.

The company, now controlled by President Trump’s son Donald J. Trump Jr., sold the home at 809 N. Canon Drive for $13.5 million, property records show. It was an off-market sale.

The buyer was an entity named Hillcrest Asia Limited, according to L.A. County records.

In 2007, the Trump Organization paid $7 million for the home. The company also once briefly owned the mansion next door on 806 North Canon Drive. The Trump Organization did not immediately return requests for comment.

The five-bedroom, 5,400-square-foot home at 809 North Canon sits at the top of Rodeo and Canon drives, where the two roads meet Sunset Boulevard.

Donald Trump reportedly didn’t often stay at the home, but he made an impression. The neighborhood was the only precinct on the Westside where a majority of voters cast their ballots for Trump in the 2016 presidential election. He won the precinct with 54 percent, to Hilary Clinton’s 42 percent, according to election data.

Trump also has maintained high-powered friends in the area. Last March, Tampa Bay Buccaneers owner Ed Glazer held a 2020 campaign fundraiser for the president at Glazer’s Beverly Park mansion.

The 809 North Canon home also stands directly across from the Beverly Hills Hotel. As has been widely reported, that was the location where now President Trump is alleged to have had affairs with former Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal and porn star Stormy Daniels. It was also where a third woman, Summer Zervos, alleged he assaulted her. President Trump has denied the claims by all three women.

The home has been something of a thorn in Trump Organization’s side since his presidential term began. Shortly after his election, the city of Beverly Hills began issuing fines on the property because its six-foot-tall hedges violated city code. Trump’s representatives contended that the hedges were necessary to protect the president if he ever stayed there. The Trump Organization paid at least $1,128 in fines over the course of 2017 related to that violation, records show.

The sale leaves the 250-acre Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles in Rancho Palos Verdes as the New York-based firm’s only L.A.-area property.

Jay Sugarman (Photo by Emily Assiran)

Jay Sugarman, chairman and CEO of the real estate investment trust iStar, hates being called a developer. The Princeton graduate much prefers “creator” or “innovator,” though “financier” or “ground-lease evangelist” might be more accurate. Sugarman’s firm, which he founded as a part of Starwood Capital Group in 1993 before taking it public five years later, has closed more than $40 billion in debt and net leasing deals. And in 2017, iStar launched Safehold — the first public company to focus exclusively on ground leases. That marks a significant shift in Sugarman’s business strategy. This past February, iStar announced plans to sell off nearly $500 million in assets over the next two years to help grow its ground-lease business. At the same time, Sugarman and his associates are tasked with transforming a 1.25-mile stretch of Asbury Park as the master developer for the city’s waterfront. Under the $1 billion-plus redevelopment plan, they plan to add more than 2,000 homes and 300 hotel rooms to the New Jersey beach town over the next decade. Sugarman and his wife, designer Kelly Behun, live in Hell’s Kitchen with their two sons. The couple also own a home they recently had built in Southampton.

DOB: April 12, 1962
Lives in: Manhattan
Hometown: Houston
Family: Married with two sons (ages 16 and 19)

Where did you grow up? I was born in Houston. [My family] moved to London when I was eight, and we moved to Pittsburgh when I was 11. I went to nine schools in 10 years.

What did your parents do? My father was with an oil company, Gulf Oil, so we moved around. But when I found New York as a freshman in college, I knew I was a New Yorker. I’ve been a New Yorker ever since.

What was it like moving from school to school? That was interesting. You’re a new kid, so you always had to figure out how to get inside. These people have all been together their entire lives; how do I connect with that really quickly? So you become incredibly observant. You watch first and try to figure out, where’s the power? Where’s the code? How do I crack this? How do I get in with the people I want to be friends with? And you’ll always be a little bit of an outsider. You’ll never be part of the history. So you have to be a little quirky, you have to be a little different, so people go, “That’s interesting.”

In what way? When I lived in London, I was a big “Monty Python” fan, so I had that kind of British sense of humor. [I] don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t swear, don’t do any of that, so immediately you’re an outsider. But that also gives you a chance to observe people and see what makes them tick and be friends with them in maybe a different way. That’s kind of what we do here: Normally people do it this way, but what if you turned it this way? I think that’s what drives me.

Is there anything else that set you apart at the time? I have one of the world’s largest romance comic book collections, because the art of the 1960s is fantastic and nobody really paid any attention to it. And it comes in a format where you can buy it for 10 cents. “Girls’ Love Stories” “Girls’ Romances,” “Young Love,” “Young Romances,” “Heart Throbs,” “Secret Hearts” and “Falling in Love” were the big seven titles. A lot of those storylines were purchased by the daytime soap operas.

How did you get into real estate? Around 1990, I was working for two high-net-worth families, trying to find ways to invest their capital with a partner. We both looked in the Wall Street Journal for two weeks in a row, and every headline was “Real estate is the worst business.” I knew nothing about real estate. But when you see something for two weeks be absolutely thrashed in the media, and you realize that it’s the largest part of the capital markets in the U.S., you sort of sense that there’s an opportunity. So we decided we needed to start a real estate business right then and there.

What was it like managing investment funds for the Burden, Vanderbilt and Ziff families? I had come out of business school and worked for a guy called Richard Rainwater. He had mentored me by saying, “If you really wanna see what you can do, get in front of a pool of capital that allows you to do anything.” Families can think in unconventional ways because they don’t have shareholders and they don’t have boards of directors. Both the Ziff and the Burden families, for whatever reason, hired my partner and I at a very young age and let us think that way. And we made plenty of mistakes, but we also learned quickly how to be two steps ahead.

During the financial crisis, you forfeited 2 million restricted shares in iStar that weren’t performing well. What were the biggest lessons you learned from that time? You can never afford to take your eye off the ball. I was going to retire in 2005 and I got very close to making that decision, and then the world changed. I wasn’t looking forward anymore. You can’t do that. That’s when you get caught. I had a cardinal rule: Liquidity is everything. But we got sloppy on liquidity. It killed us. Personally, it cost me a lot of years of my life, but I refuse to see a great company not come back, and we’ve been fighting ever since. It’s forced us to learn a whole new set of skills.

What was your first interaction with Asbury Park? I brought a date here 30 years ago. That was my first time in Asbury. It was a ruin. It was beautiful … But it was the wrong place to bring a date. I had a roommate who played Bruce Springsteen every minute of every day, so I was somehow subconsciously being drawn to Asbury Park, but I didn’t know it.

Why do you think there’s been some skepticism that a $6 million penthouse can sell in Asbury Park? Human beings aren’t that different, wherever you go. If you give them a great design, and a beautiful environment and a wonderful city and an incredible lifestyle, think about what that would cost you in New York or Montauk or the Catskills … We’ve suffered from headlines that say we’re selling $6 million condos. They don’t mention the $400,000 townhouses and some of the other projects we’re bringing. But this has to be aspirational.

What other projects are you working on? The ground-leasing business is really all-consuming right now. We’re the largest owner of bowling alleys in the world. We have built a great relationship with the largest operator of bowling alleys, company called Bowlero. We have 10,000 lanes in our portfolio. When you think about places where unconventional thinking can unlock a lot of value, nobody thinks of bowling as a business. But as a real estate business, it’s really interesting to us.

Why did you decide to become the managing owner of Keystone Sports [and the Philadelphia Union MLS soccer team]? I love sports. I love the unpredictability of it. I have two young boys, not so young anymore. That’s all we did together. Our hallway was our batting practice, pitching practice, soccer field. I knew the thing that would keep us together as a family for a long time was having something like that to always share. The good news is Philadelphia was within an hour-and-a-half radius of New York, so I knew I could go be an active participant, but it was far enough away that when the fans started yelling, I could retreat back to New York. We’re 10 years in, and we’re starting to figure it out.

How have you responded to criticism from Philadelphia Union fans regarding the need to recruit more top talent to the team? We’re trying to build a team that develops players. I think if we spend a lot of money on development, when others aren’t, we will have a very sustainable winning strategy when the league is much bigger. If we spend $10 million on a player, and he gets hurt, we’ve kind of got nothing left. It hurts when the fans are on you all the time, but winning solves a lot of problems in Philadelphia. So we just need to start winning.

What are your hobbies, aside from bowling and running a sports team? I practice with U.S. Open champion table tennis player Michael Landers. I love learning skills like that, that are outside the mainstream. I get to play with my kids at a wildly different level than I’ve ever played before.

Does your wife play? She hates sports. She’s a great designer, though, and has an incredible eye for spaces. Wish I could use her in these projects, but we’ve never crossed that line.

You and your wife have thrown some lavish parties at your Hamptons estate over the years [for charities and friends]. What was the most memorable of those? We try to keep that part of our life compartmentalized.

Have you ever hosted a fundraiser to encourage healthy eating, given that your last name contains “sugar”? I do have a big investment in a company called Moon Juice, which is one of the best adaptogenic, plant-based food companies out there. It’s got Sex Dust, Brain Dust, Beauty Dust, Power Dust, Spirit Dust and Dream Dust. If anything helps you feel better about life, it’s lowering your stress levels.

What’s your biggest vice? Cotton candy. There couldn’t be anything worse. But man is it good. If I go to a carnival, I want cotton candy. I’ll say that.

—Edited and condensed for clarity

Magic City rendering and Tony Cho

Magic City Innovation District in Little Haiti secured its first commercial tenants.

Five businesses, including an art gallery, a tech company and a marketing firm signed long-term leases totaling 18,650 square feet of commercial space in existing warehouses at the planned $1 billion mixed-use project, according to a release. The developers spent $12 million to renovate the buildings, according to a spokesperson.

The businesses are:

• Diana Lowenstein Gallery, which is moving from Wynwood to 320 Northeast 61st Street. It is leasing 3,400 square feet.
• OnPoint Global, a tech company, is leasing 12,000 square feet at 6300 Northeast Fourth Avenue.
• Manmar Entertainment, a marketing and consulting firm, is leasing 1,700 square feet at 320 Northeast 61st Street.
• Ecovie, a start-up that designs and delivers on-site water management solutions, is leasing 1,200 square feet at 6210 Northeast Fourth Court.
• COOL Creative, a boutique creative services agency, is leasing 350 square feet at 300 Northeast 62nd Street.

On March 29, the Miami City Commission gave initial approval to Magic City’s plan to build its project on 18 acres. Magic City is still waiting for the city of Miami to approve its bid to become a Special Area Plan (SAP).

Magic City Innovation District plans a 7.8 million-square-foot mixed-use development including 2,630 residential units, 432 hotel rooms, 2 million square feet of office space, 350,000 square feet of retail, and four acres of public open space, according to the release.

The project is being developed by Cirque du Soleil co-founder Guy Laliberte; Plaza Equity Partners, led by Neil Fairman; and Miami developer and real estate broker Tony Cho. Bob Zangrillo, previously a major investor in the Magic City Innovation District project, is no longer a involved in the project. In March, Zangrillo was charged with conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud as part of college admissions scandal known as Varsity Blues.

According to the complaint, filed in the Southern District of Florida, Zangrillo paid off athletic department officials at the University of Southern California to designate his daughter as an athletic recruit, having someone take classes on her behalf.

KKR Co-CEO Henry Kravis (Credit: Getty Images and iStock)

KKR, the investment firm known for company takeovers, has doubled its stake in a company that targets house-flipping.

The firm invested another $250 million in New Jersey-based Toorak Capital Partners, which has $1.5 billion in house-flipping loans on its books, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Toorak buys loans from firms like LendingHome and PeerStreet, which issue 12-month, high-yield mortgages for home fix-and-flip projects that fetch interest rates between 8 to 12 percent.

In May last year, KKR upped its investment in the house-flipping firm from $75 million to $250 million. It now has invested a total of $500 million.

According to a recent study by CoreLogic, 10.6 percent of U.S. home sales in the fourth quarter of 2018 were flips, close to the 2006 house flip rate of 11.3 percent. The market these days is quite different that the one that preceded the recession: flippers in the fourth quarter on average made a nearly 23 percent profit on flips, compared to 6 percent in 2006. Institutional investors comprise more than 40 percent of flippers today, with companies like Opendoor, Zillow and Redfin all placing big bets on the space.

The most popular markets for house flipping today include Birmingham, Alabama and Memphis, Tennessee. [WSJ] — David Jeans 

Florida Keys aerial (Credit: iStock)

A developer in the Florida Keys was sentenced for illegally filling and clearing federally regulated wetlands without a permit in the wake of Hurricane Irma.

Bonefish Holdings LLC pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years of probation, and ordered to pay a $50,000 criminal fine and to fully restore the impacted 3.7 acres of wetlands. Bonefish, led by Coral Springs developer Albert Vorstman, estimated the restoration would cost about $189,000, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s office.

Vorstman, a urologist, has been trying to develop an oceanfront 8-acre property in Islamorada’s Upper Matecumbe Key since he purchased it in 2007, partnering with the Fort Lauderdale architectural firm EDSA, the Miami Herald reported. The Village of Islamorada repeatedly rejected plans to develop the lot into a 49-room eco-tourism resort.

After Hurricane Irma hit the Florida Keys in September 2017, destroying homes, resorts and other properties in its path, the developer hired workers to clear the storm debris and fill the site without a permit, violating title 33 of the Clean Water Act, according to the release.

“The defendant’s actions were designed to intentionally take advantage of what it saw as an opportunity to remove significant additional vegetation and the filling of wetlands, in the hope of easing the path for future development of the site,” the release said.

The Bonefish Holdings property, a group of five lots, was overgrown with invasive plants like Australian pine and Brazilian pepper trees, according to the Herald. The U.S. Attorney’s office said that the company received confirmation from the United States Army Corps of Engineers in 2009 and in 2013 that the property included federally protected wetlands, ensuring that the developer was aware that permits would be required in order to fill and clear the site.

Blue Road partners Jorge Savloff and Marcelo Tenenbaum, with Redbury South Beach and Hotel 18

UPDATED June 12, 12:45 p.m.: Blue Road scored an $18 million loan to renovate two hotels in South Beach, as the company pursues its strategy of buying and rehabbing older hotels.

The Bay Harbor Islands-based firm secured the loan from City National Bank of Florida for Hotel 18 at 1775 James Avenue and the Redbury South Beach at 1776 Collins Avenue, property records show.

Blue Road bought Hotel 18 in 2016 for $11.68 million after the previous owner was hit with a foreclosure lawsuit, records show. The 15,557-square-foot hotel, built in 1948, has 46 rooms.

The Redbury South Beach, built in 1951, has 69 rooms, records show. Blue Road paid $27.2 million for the 43,651-square-foot hotel in 2017.

Blue Road plans to use the proceeds of the loan to gut Hotel 18 and expand the Redbury on the site, doubling the number of rooms, said Blue Road principal Marcelo Tenenbaum. Construction began two weeks ago and is expected to be completed in 16 months.

Blue Road, led by Jorge Savloff and Tenenbaum, has focused on buying and renovating South Beach hotels. The company’s projects include the Berkeley Hotel at 1610 Collins Avenue, Riviere Hotel at 1424 Collins Avenue and the Greenview Hotel at 1671 Washington Avenue.

Last March, the company paid $14.27 million for Park Terrace, a 32-unit apartment building at 355 19th Street in Miami Beach.

In 2017, the development firm bought the Stiles Hotel at 1120 Collins Avenue in Miami Beach from the Carlyle Group.

FHFA director Mark Calabria (Credit: Federal Housing Finance Agency and Getty Images)

A decade after Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were put under government control, a Trump administration-appointed regulator is stepping in to try again to hand the mortgage finance companies back to the private sector.

“If I do nothing and don’t push, then I’m fairly certain Congress will do nothing,” Mark Calabria, the Trump-appointed head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, said, according to the Wall Street Journal. “They have a lot of priorities, so how do I knock this up a few levels in the priority chain for Congress?”

The push follows multiple failed attempts to do privatize the lenders. Together, Freddie and Fannie buy low cost housing loans and repackage them as securities, and guarantee almost half of the $10 trillion housing market.

Ahead of the financial crisis, both companies took on more risk than they could take, and were bailed out by the government after loans went sour during the crisis.
In March, the Trump administration said it was finalizing a plan to hand over the companies to the private sector. If that happens, those low cost mortgages could become more expensive unless additional legislation is also introduced, Calabria said. [WSJ] — David Jeans 

(Credit: Getty Images)

Apartment rents have risen dramatically in South Florida, requiring an even bigger chunk of the average paycheck, according to a newly released report.

In the third quarter, the median rent in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale metro required a whopping 41 percent of the median income, which comes out to about $7,000 more a year than prior to the housing bubble, according to the report by Zillow. The listings website defines the “pre-bubble years” as 1985 to 2000, when the median rent required 28.5 percent of the median income, which in Miami is $53,651, a spokesperson said.

Mortgage payments are also requiring a bigger share of income: 21.3 percent in the third quarter compared to 20 percent historically.

Earlier this month, Apartment List released a report that ranked Miami as the least affordable metro for renters in the U.S. last year. Nearly 63 percent of Miami renters spent more than 30 percent of their income on rent in 2016, according to Apartment List. Rents are also expected to keep rising.

Across the country, renters in 34 of the 35 largest markets, Miami included, are spending a larger share of their paychecks on rent, Zillow said. Los Angelinos spent the biggest share of their income on rent in the quarter – a whopping 48.4 percent – compared to the city’s historic average of 36.2 percent. That’s a difference of more than $8,000 a year.

In the New York-northern New Jersey market, renters were sacrificing 39.3 percent of their income on housing, up from the historic average of 26.2 percent – a difference of about $9,500.

(Credit: Getty Images)

A new Wyndham hotel will be built in Miami Springs, according to a notice of commencement filed with Miami-Dade County.

Property records show entity Sucre LLC, led by Salvatore Natoli, scored $17.7 million in construction financing to build a 10-story, 150-key Wyndham Garden hotel at 4849 and 4909 Northwest 36th Street. The lender was Centennial Bank. Modis Architects will be designing the hotel.

In 2015 the developer paid $5.35 million for the 2.2-acre site. Miami Springs city leaders approved plans to build the Wyndham Garden Hotel last year. It’s being built on the former site of an old Pilot House bar, which closed nearly a decade ago. The site currently holds some retail space, including a Subway.

The lot at 4909 Northwest 36th Street (Credit: Google Maps)

Wyndham Hotel Group has a global portfolio consisting of 18 brands and more than 8,100 hotels and 705,700 rooms, according to its website. In 2016 it generated $1.3 billion in revenue.

Other hotels that have sprouted near the airport and in Doral include Riviera Point Development Group’s Radisson Red hotel at at 3450 Northwest 25th Street. In March, Baywood Hotels closed on a $15.4 million construction loan for a hotel it’s building near the Trump National Doral Miami resort.

Jeff Jacobson, Robert Sulentic and skylines of New York City and London

From TRD New York: CBRE Global Investors and LaSalle Investment each raised more than $1 billion for new real estate investment ventures, according to the Wall Street Journal.

CBRE took in $1.34 billion in private equity this year that it will mostly direct at U.S. commercial properties, targeting annual returns of 12 to 13 percent. LaSalle raised $1.07 billion for a debt fund that will focus on Western Europe, particularly the United Kingdom. Lasalle will make senior loans to developers and investors as well as mezzanine financing.

But the fundraising comes at a difficult time for private equity, which has seen significantly less investment this year than in the proceeding two years with many investors unsure of how much longer the peak real estate market will last before it falls. Last year, private equity firms and other real estate-investment managers raised $126 billion. But this year, that tally stands at just $96 billion, according to research firm Preqin.

“Anybody who has been out there raising capital in this environment will tell you it’s pretty challenging,” said Vance Maddocks, CBRE’s American chief investment officer. [WSJ] —Will Parker

(Photo illustration by Jhila Farzaneh for The Real Deal. Credit: Getty Images)

A $200 million mortgage for a luxury apartment complex led a ranking of the biggest loans to close in Palm Beach County in the third quarter of this year, according to The Real Deal’s analysis of county records.

Only one office property made the cut – the Golden Bear Plaza in Palm Beach Gardens. The majority of the biggest mortgages were for multifamily properties, both under construction and newly acquired.

“We’re in the late stage of the current real estate cycle, so we have to be a little bit more careful,” said Ruben Pedron, senior vice president and Florida market manager for commercial real estate at SunTrust Bank. SunTrust, which has worked on retail and office deals, is still financing construction loans and mortgages for value-add properties but is looking to finance more stabilized properties at this stage in the cycle.

This year, the county has seen a few value-add deals, especially in the retail and office sectors. The seventh largest loan to close in the third quarter was the $62.3 million sale of Golden Bear Plaza, which was financed with a $44.3 million mortgage from Värde.

Mutifamily and industrial have been the strongest asset classes this year, said David Wigoda, senior vice president at CBRE Capital Markets. He expects that to continue into next year.

While fewer hotels have traded, Wigoda said “non-essential retail is probably the weakest” sector of the commercial real estate market in Palm Beach County. “Secondary centers that don’t have much of a draw for shoppers are going to continue to suffer,” he said, excluding grocery store-anchored properties.

Here are the top 10 loans to close in the third quarter:

#1 Monogram Residential Trust closed on a $200 million loan in September for the Mark at Cityscape, a 208-unit building at 9 Plaza Real South in Boca Raton. Walker & Dunlop is the lender. Property records show Monogram, which announced it was being acquired by Greystar Growth and Income Fund this summer, paid nearly $82 million for the property in 2015, the year it was built.

#2 In August, Bainbridge Companies paid $102.5 million for a multifamily property in Delray Beach and financed the purchase with a $66 million mortgage from New York Community Bank. Bainbridge paid about $210,000 per unit at Delray Verana, 1495 Spring Harbor Drive.

#3 Bridge Investment Group took out a $55 million mortgage for a property it acquired in Lantana in September. The real estate investment and property management firm paid $77.2 million for the Carlisle Palm Beach, a luxury senior living community at 450 East Ocean Drive in Lantana. Wells Fargo is the lender.

#4 North American Development Group secured a $53.4 million construction loan for Alton Town Center, a retail project in Palm Beach Gardens. PNC Bank is the lender.

#5 In August, the Related Group scored a $52.8 million mortgage for Town Southern Apartments, a rental development at 10823 Acme Road in Royal Palm Beach. JP Morgan is the lender. The Miami-based developer is building a garden-style, 392-unit apartment project on the 29-acre site.

#6 Northland Investment Corp. financed the purchase of a Jupiter apartment complex in August with a $46.4 million loan from CBRE Capital Markets. Northland paid $56 million for the Mallards Cove and Shell Trace Apartments at 6705 Mallards Cove Road.

#7 An office deal made the top 10 list with a $44.3 million mortgage for Golden Bear Plaza in Palm Beach Gardens. Pennsylvania firm Alliance Partners HSP paid $62.3 million for the three-tower office park at 11760 U.S. Highway 1 in July. Värde, a Minneapolis-based debt fund, provided the financing.

#8 Also in July, Castle Lanterra Properties picked up the 259-unit Loftin Place apartment complex in West Palm Beach, and financed the acquisition with a $43.7 million mortgage from Berkeley Point Capital.

#9 The Related Companies closed on a $43 million loan for the convention center hotel property it owns at 600 Okeechobee Boulevard in West Palm Beach. Related said earlier this year that it was considering a second, 200-room hotel on an adjacent lot. Related spent roughly $110 million on the 12-story, 400-room hotel. Israeli lender Bank Hapoalim is provided the mortgage in July.

#10 DRA Advisors financed the purchase of a shopping center in Boynton Beach, marking the 10th biggest loan to be recorded in the county during the third quarter. DRA paid $47.3 million for the Fountains of Boynton Beach in September. PGIM Real Estate US Debt Fund REIT provided the nearly $39 million mortgage.

Harunobu Coryne contributed reporting.

Art Basel Miami Beach

“South Florida by the numbers” is a web feature that catalogs the most notable, quirky and surprising real estate statistics.

It’s back! The extraordinary Art Basel returns to Miami Beach next week, bringing with it much of the world’s finest modern and contemporary art. Evolving dramatically since its Miami Beach debut in 2002, Art Basel now draws large and well-heeled crowds throughout the entire region, having spawned a dizzying array of satellite art fairs, dinners, and parties. Miami’s savvy and progressive real estate community has capitalized on this unique opportunity for many years, using private gatherings, creative showcases, and rooftop soirees to get deep-pocketed buyers and investors (literally) in the door. Let’s examine the intersection of Miami art and real estate in this edition of “South Florida by the numbers.”

77,000: Attendance at Art Basel 2016, matching the number from 2015. This was considered a major victory for organizers, who had serious concerns about last year’s Zika warnings and post-election malaise. [MiamiHerald]

$400,000: Price of a Rafael Domenech-created artwork commissioned by Miami mega-developer Jorge Pérez for his Hyde condominium; “…a sprawling installation that featured Saturn-like rings above the building’s entryway.” (Pérez hosted an opening party to introduce the sculpture during last year’s Art Basel, but poor weather moved the festivities to his penthouse at an adjacent property.) [NYT]

5,600: Square footage of the $12 million Grove at Grand Bay penthouse, debuted at last year’s Art Basel. The fully-furnished unit has the first Baccarat chandelier in the world (Le Roi) designed by Marcel Wanders. [TheRealDeal]

$30 million: Total estimated value of artwork on display at a private Art Basel dinner last year, held to market the mansion at 212 West Dilido Drive in Miami Beach’s Venetian Islands. Listed at $28.5 million, the seven-bedroom, nine-bathroom house was also marketed with the opportunity to buy a $15 million Sanlorenzo yacht. The event featured pieces by Italian artists Fontana, Castellani, Burri and Scheggi. [MansionGlobal]

5: Number of years Art Basel organizers recently agreed to continue holding the event at the Miami Beach Convention Center. Already in the midst of a $615 million expansion (which will continue through this year’s festival), the city of Miami Beach agreed to add an additional elevator and escalator at the convention center to seal the agreement. [TheRealDeal]

This column is produced by the Master Brokers Forum, a network of South Florida’s elite real estate professionals where membership is by invitation only and based on outstanding production, as well as ethical and professional behavior.

Brickell Flatiron is gearing up to top off in December 2018.

Construction crews completed the 17th floor pedestal of the 64-story tower at 1001 South Miami Avenue, new drone footage shows.

Ugo Colombo’s CMC Group is developing the luxury condo tower, where sales exceed 70 percent and $300 million, according to the developer. The developer is financing construction with a $236 million construction loan led by Bank of the Ozarks. Earlier this year, it replaced Cervera Real Estate with Fortune International Group as the exclusive sales and marketing firm.

Check out the full video above. – Katherine Kallergis

Produced by Jhila Farzaneh.

Sawgrass Lake Center and Thomas K. Sittema is the CEO of CNL Financial Group (Credit: HFF, CNL Financial Group)

CNL Financial Group’s Sawgrass Lake Center in Sunrise just hit the market and could sell for up to $62 million, according to REAlert.

The Orlando-based investment firm listed the 239,000-square-foot office complex at 13450 West Sunrise Boulevard with HFF. The $62 million price breaks down to about $260 per square foot.

Records show CNL paid $45.2 million for the 7-acre property in 2014. It later secured $38.2 million in refinancing from Mesa West Capital.

Sawgrass Lake Center, built in 2001, is anchored by AT&T, which occupies 58,000 square feet in the six-story building, according to REAlert. Other tenants include Nuance Communications, First American Title, J.P. Morgan and AvMed.

A number of corporations, like HBO Latin America, Blackberry and Emerson, have moved their regional headquarters to Sunrise in recent years. Developer Joseph Kavana is also building the first phase of Metropica, a master-planned, mixed-use community in Sunrise. [REAlert] – Amanda Rabines

Rendering of the proposed tower at 1775 Biscayne Boulevard

An Aventura orthopaedic surgeon and his wife are spearheading plans to convert a prime slice of vacant land on Biscayne Boulevard and 17th Street into a 53-story mixed use tower.

Barry J. Silverman and Judy Silverman manage V Downtown Inc., a company that is proposing to build the new high-rise in Miami’s Arts & Entertainment District.

Miami’s Urban Development Review Board signed off on several waivers requested by V Downtown for the project at 1775 Biscayne Boulevard at its meeting on Wednesday.

Rendering of the proposed tower at 1775 Biscayne Boulevard

The project, designed by Kobi Karp, would have 444 residential units, 200 hotel rooms, 45,600 square feet of commercial space, 64,500 square feet of office space, and 546 parking spaces. The project would include a rooftop amenity deck for the residences and a lower amenity deck for the hotel and retail uses, which would be open to the public and provide access to views of Biscayne Boulevard and Biscayne Bay. The development is adjacent to the Omni Center and just east from Opera Tower.

The commercial spaces would be on the ground and lower levels and followed by the office space on floors two through seven. The hotel would occupy the 10th through 17th floors with the residential units taking the upper floors, according to documents filed with the city.

V Downtown sought waivers to increase the lot coverage to 88 percent instead of the 80 percent that is currently allowed; to allow a floor plate of 19,800 square feet where only 18,000 square feet is allowed for the residential side; to reduce the required parking by 30 percent because the project is located near the Omni Metromover station and bus depot; and to allow the parking structure to extend along the entire length of the proposed frontage. The garage would have an artistic or glass treatment to help conceal it, documents show.

The Silvermans are known for their philanthropic work with Jewish organizations such as the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, the Greater Miami Jewish Federation Foundation and the Aventura Turnberry Jewish Center. Through the Barry and Judy Silverman Foundation, the couple have funded local educational and social services with a special focus on people with disabilities and special needs.

Mika Mattingly and the development site in Wynwood

A development site in Wynwood that just hit the market could fetch anywhere from $16 million to nearly $20 million, according to comparable sales in the neighborhood.

The 1.65-acre property at 2335 North Miami Avenue is unpriced, but listing broker Mika Mattingly said land on streets away from Wynwood’s main corridor, Second Avenue, is trading for $225 per square foot to $275 per square foot.

Goltens, a marine repair facility, has owned and operated the site for at least 35 years. The company plans to lease space in Fort Lauderdale early next year, Mattingly, of Colliers International South Florida’s Urban Core division, said. She’s co-listing the property with Colliers’ Caitlin Inklebarger.

The site is zoned T-6-8 and T-5, which means it can be developed into 12 and eight stories, and between 400,000 square feet and 600,000 square feet. It’s being marketed as “the Oasis” and includes a 35,000-square-foot warehouse with a private cul de sac entrance. Mattingly said the property could be rented out as an event venue.

The site, in the southeast section of Wynwood, is a block away from East End Capital’s recently completed Wynwood Arcade, home to the Salty Donut. It’s also adjacent to a retail building that sold last year for $8.5 million, or $634 per square foot for the building and $614 per square foot for the land.

FHFA Director Melvin Watt

From TRD New York: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac owe the White House more than $7 billion, and the two entities are fighting over how to move forward.

Officials from the Federal Housing Finance Agency say they want Fannie and Freddie to keep between $2 billion and $3 billion to protect them against losses, but in exchange for this, officials from the Trump administration want to limit their market footprint through measures like tighter limits on loan sizes that they back, according to Bloomberg.

Fannie and Freddie are scheduled to pay the U.S. Treasury $7.7 billion by the end of December, and if FHFA director Mel Watt decides to withhold some money without getting approval from the administration, it could lead to a major conflict between President Donald Trump and the independent agency.

The negotiations stem from the government’s takeover of Fannie and Freddie in 2008. The two mortgage giants got $187.5 billion to help them get through the financial crisis, while taxpayers got a new type of stock in return that paid a dividend of 10 percent. [Bloomberg] – Eddie Small

Rendering of Cube Wynwyd

RedSky Capital closed on an $18.27 million construction loan for an office building it plans to develop in Wynwood, property records show.

Bank of the Ozarks is providing the financing for Cube Wynwyd, an eight-story office building at 222 Northwest 24th Street. The project, with nearly 80,000 square feet of office space and about 11,400 square feet of retail space, will mark one of the first new office buildings in Wynwood. Construction is underway, according to a spokesperson for Blanca Commercial Real Estate, which is handling leasing.

JLL’s Aaron Appel and Jonathan Schwartz arranged the financing.

Rendering of Cube Wynwyd

Asking rents range from about $38 to $42 per square foot triple-net for spaces that go up to a full 11,360-square-foot floor, Tere Blanca previously said. It’s 27 percent preleased to tenants that include Spaces, a shared workspace concept. Spaces just signed a nearly 24,000-square-foot lease at Cube Wynwyd, according to a spokesperson. Randy Carballo and Gavin MacPhail of JLL represented the co-working firm, and Blanca, Danet Linares and Flavia Eternod of Blanca Commercial represented RedSky.

Rendering of Cube Wynwyd

Arquitectonica is designing the LEED-certified building, which will include a rooftop terrace and 30-foot breezeway with restaurant and retail tenants on the ground floor. It’s slated to open in 2018.

The mortgage industry is the latest group to express concern over the proposed GOP tax plan

From TRD New York: Add the mortgage industry to the list of groups concerned about the Republican tax plan.

Industry leaders are worried that a provision in the Senate bill changing the time when lenders pay taxes on income they get from managing mortgages could cause some smaller lenders to go out of business, according to Bloomberg.

Lenders currently pay taxes on this service as they receive the money, but under the Senate bill, they would have to pay these taxes upfront. The Mortgage Bankers Association said smaller companies unable to afford this could just abandon the practice entirely.

“It’s a fire drill,” MBA president David Stevens told Bloomberg. “We’re scrambling to get people on phone calls. It would cause a significant disruption in the industry.”

Senate leaders expect to vote on the bill Thursday or Friday, and it is unclear whether they plan to keep this provision in the bill or whether they targeted lenders on purpose.

The Republican tax proposals could have far-reaching effects on the real estate industry, including making it more expensive to own a home and making it more difficult to develop affordable housing, though it would likely be a boon for condominium developers and large real estate corporations.  [Bloomberg] – Eddie Small

Miramar Town Center with Daniel L. Rashin CEO of Rockefeller Group and Conor Flynn CEO of Kimco Realty (Credit: City of Miramar, Rockefeller Group, Kimco Realty)

A joint venture between the Rockefeller Group and Kimco Realty just sold a portion of its Miramar Town Center mixed-use development to IMC Equity Group for $24.8 million.

Property records show the partnership sold part of the mixed-use project at 11645 Red Road and 2401 Main Street to a company led by IMC Equity Group’s co-founder and CEO, Yoram Izhak. The Israeli-born real estate investor financed the deal with a $17.25 million CMBS loan from LoanCore Capital Markets.

The Rockfeller-Kimco partnership sold 17 apartments spanning 27,000 square feet, 127,000 square feet of retail and office space, a 585-space parking garage and a 3.7-acre vacant lot.

Miramar Town Center Site Plan (Credit: City of Miramar)

The 54-acre project also includes a 487-unit apartment complex, a performing arts center, an educational building and Miramar’s city hall and police headquarters – all of which were not included in the deal.

Tenants at the mixed use projects include a 24-Hour Fitness, Subway, UPS Store, Juana’s Sports Bar, La Famiglia Restaurant, Salonz Suites and Comcast Corporation.

Last year, IMC Equity Group paid $18 million for a West Kendall shopping center. In 2014, Izhak said he set a goal to spend $200 million in real estate investments that year.

Kimco, known for retail acquisitions, is also developing Dania Pointe, a shopping and entertainment center under construction in Dania Beach. It recently announced leases with Brandsmart USA, Hobby Lobby, and TJ Maxx. The first phase of Dania Pointe is slated to open by the end of 2018. Once completed, the center will span 1 million square feet and house more than 100 stores and restaurants.