Joseph Chetrit, Knoxville Point located in Dunlop, Illinois (top), and University Hill located in Nacogdoches, Texas (bottom)

UPDATED, June 21, 11:15 a.m.: The Chetrit Group bought a portfolio of more than 10,000 rental apartments spread across the country.

Chetrit bought the 55-property portfolio with buildings in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio, New York, Tennessee and Texas, brokers who worked to finance the acquisition told The Real Deal.

Roco Real Estate, based in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, sold the properties.

Chetrit financed the deal with a $481 million loan from JP Morgan Chase, according to Robert Verrone and Patrick Perone of Iron Hound Management Company, who arranged the debt. At a loan-to-value ratio of 84 percent, the purchase price works out to nearly $573 million.

The financing closed on Wednesday.

In a separate transaction, Chetrit refinanced another portfolio on Tuesday with a $280 million from Arbor Realty, also arranged by Iron Hound. The portfolio consists of 56 multifamily complexes and 5,400 apartments in Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Chetrit acquired the portfolio in 2015, and the new financing pays off debt from December 2017

Joseph Chetrit did not respond to a request for comment.

Post Road Management worked with Iron Hound on the larger of the two deals, and Galaxy Capital Solutions helped with diligence and closing.

Chetrit has refinanced a handful of properties in recent months. Earlier in June, the investor received a $133 million refinancing package for his development at 500 Metropolitan Avenue in Williamsburg, New York. In April, the company received $152 million from CCRE for 65 Broadway in Manhattan, also known as the American Express building. Back in December 2018, the company also received $85 million in refinancing for its mixed-use project at 545 West 37th Street in Manhattan from JPMorgan Chase and Mack Real Estate.

In South Florida, Chetrit recently closed on $55 million in financing from Rabina Properties for its long-planned mixed-use Miami River development.

Vlad Doronin and a rendering of 888 Brickell Plaza

A trio of major projects in the Arts & Entertainment District, Edgewater and Brickell had no problem sailing through Urban Development Review Board. On Thursday, board members voted 7-0 to approve Edgewater Hotel, 17th Street Tower and 888 Brickell Plaza with some minor design tweaks.

The Edgewater Hotel

Previously conceived as the Bentley Edgewater Hotel & Residences, the new Kobi Karp-designed project would be an eight-story hotel with 207 rooms, 139 valet-only parking spaces and a pool and amenity deck on the third floor.

Karp said the façade will be comprised of a mixture of glass and undulating aluminum louvers to cover the second-floor parking.

The review board authorized design waivers related to loading docks, parking and lot coverage. Located at 410 Northeast 35th Terrace, the project has reverted to developer Amaury Martinez. The Heafey Group is no longer involved.

888 Brickell Plaza

A proposed 50-story building with 940,000 square feet for primarily office use was granted waivers for upper level setback reductions, an increase in lot coverage and a minor reduction in the driveway width, among others. The applicant, Watson Brickell Development LLC, is an affiliate of Russian developer Vlad Doronin’s OKO Group.

Carlos Lago, an attorney for OKO Group, said the property, at 888 Southeast Brickell Plaza, near Brickell City Centre, will be the first major office building in the urban core during the last 10 years.

The tower, designed by Adrian Smith of Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture, would have about 15,000 square feet of retail space, 490,000 square feet of office space, and a restaurant on the 53rd floor.

17th Street Tower

Designed by Zyscovich Architects, 17th Street Tower is the latest residential project by NR Investments in the A&E District. The board approved waivers allowing micro units, one commercial loading berth instead of two residential berths, to extend the parking garage above the first floor and the primary frontage, and to reduce the number of required parking spaces by 30 percent.

The proposed 29-story building, at 90 Northeast 17th Street, would be the first NR Investments project with micro units, said Iris Escarra, a lawyer for NR Investments. The developer would also include more than 38,000 square feet of office space, 4,500 square feet of commercial space, and 224 parking spaces. The new building would rise on land rise immediately north of Canvas, a 37-story condominium tower recently completed by NR Investments, led by principals Ron Gottesmann and Nir Shoshani.

Manny Del Monte, an architect with Zyscovich, said the site poses several design challenges that required the waivers to the garage and for one loading berth.

Mayfair Hotel & Spa and Brookfield CEO Bruce Flatt

UPDATED, July 1, 11 p.m.: Brookfield Asset Management bought the Mayfair Hotel & Spa in Coconut Grove for a price in the upper $40 million range, The Real Deal has learned.

Copperline Partners and TriGate Capital sold the hotel at 3000 Florida Avenue in Miami to Brookfield. The deal closed on Thursday, according to sources. Crescent Hotels & Resorts is now managing the property.

Property records show Brookfield affiliate BSREP III Coconut Grove LLC paid $46.75 million for the Mayfair. The company financed the deal with a $20 million loan from City National Bank.

The 179-room hotel was designed by Miami architect Ken Treister and was completed in 1985. The property is known for its architecture, with an open-air tropical atrium, spa, and a rooftop deck and lounge. The hotel also includes 20,730 square feet of indoor and outdoor space, the 140-seat Mayfair Kitchen restaurant, a 4,500-square-foot spa, a fitness center and business center. The price equates to about $261,000 per room.

Christian Charre and Paul Weimer of CBRE were the listing brokers. CBRE declined to comment.

Mayfair CLTG Holdings LLC paid $27.6 million for the hotel in 2014. The Mayfair Hotel & Spa is part of the Mayfair office and residential development, a group of buildings that were developed in the 1980s. Next door is CocoWalk, an open-air shopping center that’s currently being redeveloped by Federal Realty Investment Trust, Grass River Property and The Comras Company.

Brookfield, a global asset manager with over $365 billion in assets, purchased a few South Florida hotels over the past year. Thayer Lodging Group, a subsidiary of Toronto-based Brookfield, paid $170.6 million to acquire the Hilton Fort Lauderdale Marina about a year ago.

In December, Brookfield paid nearly $218 million for the PGA National Resort & Spa in Palm Beach Gardens.

Kevin Plank and Port Covington in Baltimore

The knock on the wildly popular federal Opportunity Zones program has been that, so far, its intended purpose of lifting up distressed neighborhoods has not been front and center on developers and investors’ minds.

Controversy has stirred anew now, this time concerning Under Armour’s billionaire CEO Kevin Plank. He was able to qualify for Opportunity Zone tax benefits for his waterfront development south of downtown Baltimore despite his project not meeting the program’s initial parameters, according ProPublica.

During the initial selection process, a deputy chief of staff to Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan wrote in an email that the site “does not qualify” as an Opportunity Zone. The zone where the project was located in area too wealthy to qualify, ProPublica reported.

Hogan selected the area for the program anyway, after meeting with the lobbyists for Plank, who owns about 40 percent of the zone, according to the ProPublica report.

The U.S. Treasury, which was in charge of approving the governor’s selections, did not initially select that Port Covington area as an Opportunity Zone. But that changed three weeks later when the Treasury Department issued a revised list after claiming it left some tracts out by mistake.

The revised list included 168 new areas across the country defined by the agency as “low-income communities.”

Port Covington was on that list, selected because of a provision of the law that allowed areas to make the cut if they had fewer than 2,000 people and they were within an “empowerment zone.” In this case, the empowerment zone was a small parking lot underneath the highway about one one-thousandth of a square mile.

In Chicago, a similar situation could be seen with a $2 billion project at a former hospital. In that instance, the Michael Reese site did not meet the city’s original guidelines, but was ultimately added to the list when state officials intervened. [ProPublica] — Keith Larsen 

First-time home buyers are struggling to compete with deep-pocketed institutional investors. (Credit: iStock)

More than one of 10 homes sold in the U.S. last year went to investors and speculators. And in the bottom third of the market, the proportion was one out of five.

The involvement of private-equity firms, speculators and other investors in the U.S. housing market has hit all-time highs, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing data released by CoreLogic this week.

Housing markets saw a wave of institutional investment following the financial crisis, with firms like Blackstone and Starwood Capital Group scooping up thousands of foreclosed properties across the country.

Investor interest appeared to dip after a 2013 peak as markets began to recover, but has since rebounded. Economists attribute this sustained investor appetite to strong rental demand, online home-buying technology and low interest rates.

Though institutional investment was credited with stabilizing markets in 2011 and 2012 by making all-cash buys amid amid a mortgage credit slowdown, millennials and other first-time home buyers now find themselves struggling to compete with their deep pockets.

In some cases, people in cities like New York and San Francisco who have been priced out of local markets are choosing to pick up investment properties in places like Georgia and Tennessee — sometimes without ever having been to those states.

The top market for investor purchases in 2018 was Detroit, where investors bought two out of five lower-priced homes, followed by Philadelphia, where nearly half of starter homes went to investors. [WSJ] — Kevin Sun

Steve Van Andel and 4381 South Road in Wellington (Credit: Zillow)

The former co-CEO of the multi-level marketing giant Amway sold his Wellington estate for $12.5 million.

Steve Van Andel sold the 59-acre equestrian estate at 4381 South Road for $211,864 per acre, records show. Romain Marteau and Brianne Goutal-Marteau, a champion show jumper in Wellington, bought the property.

The equestrian estate includes a single-family home totaling 3,230 square feet with three bedrooms and six bathrooms. In addition, the large estate has a 24-stall barn, two tack rooms, laundry room, four grooming and wash racks, and large hay or storage room.

The property was previously listed for $22.5 million in 2017, records show. Van Andel bought the site in 1994 for $525,000.

The Marteaus secured a $8.8 million loan from Florida Federal Land Bank Association to buy the estate, records show.

Steve Van Andel’s father, Jay, founded Amway in Michigan in 1959 with Rich DeVos. The company started out selling organic cleaning products and later added dietary supplements, according to the news publication MLive. Steve Van Andel retired from the company in 2018.

The Van Andel family is a fixture in western Michigan, especially in Grand Rapids. The family has donated millions for buildings that bear their names, including the Van Andel Arena. Amway also has the naming rights to the NBA’s Orlando Magic basketball arena in Orlando, called the Amway Center.

Wellington is known as the winter equestrian capital of the world and is home to a number of second homes for high level corporate executives and celebrities.

In May, Andrey Borodin, a billionaire Russian exile paid $23 million for a massive equestrian compound in at 4370 South Road Wellington that was once home to the Lechuza Caracas polo team.

In 2018, Billy Joel paid $3.5 million for a five-acre horse ranch in Wellington for his fourth wife, Alexis Roderick, an experienced equestrian. In 2017, a company tied to billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, spent $8.25 million for land next to her Wellington estate.

From left: Amir Korangy, Jennifer Berman, Louisette Geiss, Don Peebles, Alexandra Tieu, and Kofi Nartey at The Real Deal’s residential real estate showcase on Friday (Credit: Jeff Newton)

Amir Korangy wasted no time addressing the elephant in the agent-packed room at The Real Deal‘s residential real estate showcase on Friday: If Los Angeles’ top agents truly want to demonstrate their commitment to diversity in the real-estate industry, he said, they should start by pushing for change on their wildly popular TV show, Bravo’s “Million Dollar Listing.”

“They should put their money where their mouth is,” Korangy, TRD publisher, said during his remarks for the panel on diversity at the London West Hollywood. “And either give up their place on the program for another woman or a person of color or demand that the producers of that show put more diversity on screen.”

His remarks followed criticism TRD received for initially putting together a panelist lineup that had nine males and only one female, not including the female moderator. After Tracy Tutor, an influential real estate agent and cast member on “Million Dollar Listing,” criticized TRD for not putting together a lineup representative of the industry, she called on her colleagues to show solidarity by bowing out of the event. Her co-stars on the show, Josh Altman and Josh Flagg, did so.

In a June 12 Instagram post, Korangy acknowledged the misstep, and pledged to address it. The speaker lineup was changed to be more representative of those selling some of the country’s most expensive homes. An additional panel, “The Diversity Dilemma,” was added to the programming. Don Peebles, head of the development firm Peebles Corporation, moderated that discussion, which featured Kofi Nartey, Jennifer Berman, Alexandra Tieu and Louisette Geiss.

Nartey, who leads the sports and entertainment division at Compass, said he strives to hire diverse individuals for his team.

“Different perspectives bring different experiences,” he said. “We have to engage not only with the minorities and women but we have to do it from the perspective of wanting different voices at the table.”

The concept of mentorship and the impact it can have on minorities entering the industry took center stage during the discussion. Tieu, a real estate consultant, implored those power brokers in the room who are running brokerages or teams to take on apprentices in a way that is inclusive to every person at the firm.

“If you find yourself doing mentorship at the golf course, ask yourself if that is accessible to every person on your team,” Tieu said. “If the answer is no, you probably should rethink how you’re mentoring people.”

Peebles, founder of the Peebles Corp., moderated the panel. “Opening up the doors of opportunity and putting people in positions to be successful” is critical, he said. Beyond mentoring, companies should start “seeing diversity as a value to a business.”

Korangy noted TRD‘s reporting on issues such as the gender gap at the top of the industry and the culture of sexual harassment that still persists today. He committed to continue to invest in reporting that would shed a light on bad behavior. And he issued a challenge to Altman, Flagg, and the bosses at Bravo: Don’t be selective about where and when you choose to fight for diversity.

Bravo’s hit franchise is now on its 11th season in Los Angeles. Its cast has four white males — Altman, Flagg, James Harris and David Parnes — and only one female, Tutor. The only other female in Bravo’s lineup is Samantha DeBianchi, who stars in the Miami spinoff.

Out of a total of 17 agents to have been cast in the franchise, only two are female. None is black.

“Right now, that show is all good-looking white men and two white women,” Korangy said. “I know we’re in Hollywood and people don’t like to mess with their celebrities, but I really believe this is a greater cause.”

Don Peebles

Development firm Peebles Corp. is launching a $500 million investment fund for minority and women developers in markets that include New York, Los Angeles and South Florida, The Real Deal has learned.

The Peebles Corp. founder Don Peebles announced the company’s new fund during TRD’s annual residential real estate showcase on Friday, at the London Hotel in West Hollywood, where he moderated a panel on diversity in the industry.

For minorities and female developers, “access to capital has been the biggest challenge,” said Peebles, who has been an outspoken advocate for diversity in the industry. “I looked at how to address that for a number of years. No one in the country is doing this on a national level.”

In addition to supplying capital, Peebles said his company will look at ways to support the emerging developers. Through co-developing or partnerships, he hopes the fund will “help mitigate risk and help them grow quicker.”

To ensure “boots on the ground” support, Peebles said the fund will invest in projects based in cities where Peebles’ firm already operates: South Florida, New York City, Los Angeles, Boston, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, and Charlotte.

The fund will focus on urban infill projects that range between $10 to $70 million. There will be a variety of commercial and multifamily projects, with an emphasis on projects that offer affordable housing.

“The idea is to create this business model that shows that investing in emerging developers and investing in diversity will result in higher returns with less risk,” Peebles added.

Peebles said he is having discussions with global banks and other financial institutions to invest in the fund, though he declined to identify them. He anticipates the fund will consist of a small group of investors.

The firm is targeting 60 deals in the fund, Peebles said. He anticipates there will be similar funds in the future.

“It’s a very positive thing to have the developments that are taking place in communities of color, to have the projects be developed by people of color,” Peebles said. “We see this as a win-win and an untapped market.”

Hudson’s Bay Chairman Richard Baker (Credit: Getty Images)

As Saks Fifth Avenue and Lord & Taylor parent company Hudson’s Bay mulls what to do with its retail real estate portfolio, a Canadian pension plan threw a wrench in the company chair’s plan to take the retailer private.

Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan sold all of its 18 million shares in Hudson’s Bay Company to multiple unnamed investors, Bloomberg reported. The sale comes just days after the pension spurned attempts by Hudson’s Bay Chairman Richard Baker to buy its stake. The parent company of luxury retailers Saks Fifth Avenue and Lord & Taylor has seen particularly steep decreases at its flagship store, Lord & Taylor, where sales fell 17 percent.

Baker’s effort to take the company private is facing some resistance from activist investor Jonathan LItt’s Land & Buildings and others, who have decried the $9.45 per share offer, calling it “woefully inadequate,” Bloomberg reported. The move puts a further wrinkle in Baker’s plans to take the 349 year old retail company private amid declining share prices: Hudson’s Bay shares lost almost 42 percent during the past year.

In preparation for the $1.3 billion deal to go private, the Canadian company announced earlier this month it is looking to close 15 of its Saks Off 5th stores and four Lord & Taylor stores. Hudson’s Bay is also reportedly considering the selling the entire Lord & Taylor brand, while Baker is making inquiries with landlords about buying back leases. [BNN Bloomberg] — Georgia Kromrei

Italy’s real estate market is on the rise, as home buyers seek everything from urban apartments to rural estates. Pictured above is a residential street in Venice. (Credit: iStock)

While Italy has long attracted art lovers — not to mention pizza, pasta and gelato lovers — major real estate investors have largely avoided it for the last decade. But that’s now changing.

Casa & Country Italian Property’s Gemma Bruce said her luxury firm has recently seen an uptick in buyers looking for homes.

They are “people we dealt with six, seven, eight years ago who … suddenly reappeared,” she told Mansion Global. And many of those flooding in are high-income, savvy investors.

Home prices in Italy have increased in the last 12 months after hitting a post-crisis low in 2016 and 2017, according to Bruce.

In 2017, new (and favorable) tax policies were introduced. And those rules were tweaked again this year to entice retirees with foreign pensions.

The new tax rules have ignited interest among foreign nationals as well as Italians living abroad, according to Savills’ Jelena Cvjetkovic, who said appreciation in the residential market is strongest in large cities Milan, Rome and Venice. (Savills has two residential projects in Rome.) But other areas, including the smaller Florence, are also attracting interest. And sources say interest is also spanning different housing types, from luxury apartments to sprawling estates.

Those interested in vineyard estates, rural villas and even castles are usually interested in the Tuscany region, said Luca Giovanelli, a partner of Hamptons International in Italy.

Bruce said a house in Tuscany with some land and, perhaps, a swimming pool will sell for as much as $2.27 million, but that prices for architecturally significant estates can reach nearly $70 million. [Mansion Global] – Mike Seemuth

Demonstrators march to Berlin’s Alexanderplatz protesting the city’s rising rent prices in April 2019 (Credit: Getty Images)

Lawmakers in Berlin have approved a five-year rent freeze, significant move that follows voter backlash over rising property prices.

The law will apply to an estimated 1.5 million apartments, and is likely to face legal challenges from property owners, the Financial Times reported. The law is supposed to start in 2020, but will apply retroactively to all rental agreements starting earlier this week.

Similar battles are playing out throughout the U.S. In New York, state lawmakers passed a new rent reform law last week, which the real estate industry is already describing as devastating. in Los Angeles are also trying to rein in the industry, especially after California failed to pass Proposition 10, which would have opened the door for rent control statewide.

The Berlin decision has sparked worry among German investors who have seen their shares take a hit, the Times reported. For example, shares in Deutsche Wohnen, a major landlord in Berlin, have dropped 14 percent in two weeks since the rent freeze plans started.

The rent freeze is the first attempt by a city government to cap rents in Germany, and it shows growing anger over the lack of affordability in a city that once touted its low cost of living. But rental prices throughout Berlin have more than doubled over the past decade.

The real estate industry has argued that the rent spikes are a result of the large-scale privatization of public housing recently. But others point to Berlin’s restrictive policies on construction. [FT] — Gregory Cornfield

Gwen Stefani, Gavin Rossdale, and their former home in Beverly Hills Post Office, and Jay Stein with his home in Beverly Hills 

A wave of expensive properties hit the market this week, adding to the glut of luxury residences on the market. There was also one notable price cut for a property in Beverly Hills that’s been languishing for as long as its former owners have been divorced.

Rockstars and former couple Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale chopped the ask on their 15,000-square-foot home from $35 million to $24 million, a 31 percent drop. Located in a gated neighborhood in Beverly Hills, the home includes seven bedrooms and seven bathrooms. There’s also a tennis court and swimming pool. Stefani and Rossdale paid $13.3 million for the home in 2006, a decade before they split. They put the home on the market in shortly after divorcing.

Jay Stein, chairman of department store retailer Stein Mart, put his 8,400-square-foot pad on the market this week at $29.5 million, Variety reported. Stein and his wife Deanie bought the home for $22.5 million nearly three years ago, though they didn’t appear to make significant upgrades to the Trousdale Estates home. The modern, one-story home includes six bedrooms, eight bathrooms, a wine cellar and infinity edge swimming pool.

In the Holmby Hills, a Spanish-style mansion once owned by the late actor Vincent Price has hit the market for $21 million. Billionaire Peter Sperling, son of the founder of the University of Phoenix, is selling the 11,650-square-foot home. In addition to eight bedrooms and 14 bathrooms, the residence includes a library, theater, game room with a bar and an art studio. He bought the home for nearly $15 million in 2004. Price, who starred in several horror movies including “House on Haunted Hill,” died in 1993.

Jordana Woodland, founder of lingerie brand Naked Princess, broke an L.A. County record this week. The actress, who was married to disgraced venture capitalist Michael Goguen, sold her penthouse duplex for $13.3 million. While that reflects a sharp drop from the original $20 million ask, it still marks the most expensive condo sold so far this year. It’s unclear who the buyer is. Located in the amenity-rich Remington tower, the 6,000-square-foot unit includes three bedrooms and five bathrooms.

The Arc House at 50 Green Hollow Road in East Hampton

An unusual East Hampton home that finally found a buyer in 2015 after two years on the market is now poised to list again, albeit under less-than-ideal circumstances.

The Arc House, built in 2010 and designed by Maziar Behrooz, will soon return to the Hamptons’ turbulent luxury home market as the U.S. Department of Justice prepares to list the property as part of its criminal case against admitted felon Joseph Meli, Bloomberg reported.

A federal court filing last week in Manhattan outlines the assets seized from Meli as part of his guilty plea in October 2017 to one count of securities fraud in relation to his involvement in a ticket-reselling scheme involving Broadway plays and other notable events.

At the top of Meli’s asset forfeiture list, which includes items such as a 2017 Porsche 911 Turbo, a Rolex watch and $551,000 in a Citibank account, is a home once owned by his wife, Jessica, at 50 Green Hollow Road in East Hampton. Paul Luciano, a broker at Utopia Real Estate in Flushing named on a U.S. Marshals Service website as handling the sale of the property, did not immediately return a request for comment on the matter, nor did property manager Alexa Hale of Colliers International in Houston.

Known as the Arc House due to its unique architecture, which saw Behrooz draw inspiration from the shape of an airplane hanger, the home first hit the market in 2013 seeking nearly $5 million. Curbed, which at the time noted that the the home looked the “lair of a Bond villain,” subsequently reported on its $3 million sale in 2015 in a deal brokered by Bespoke Real Estate’s James Casale.

A current listing price for the 6,400-square-foot Arc House is not yet publicly available, although Enzo Morabito, a veteran East End broker at Douglas Elliman, told Bloomberg that $3.2 million seemed like a reasonable sum. “Whoever is going to buy it is going to have to be very, very unique,” he said, noting that the new seller, the U.S. government, shouldn’t affect a potential deal.

The Arc House has four bedrooms, three bathrooms, a pool, a flexible layout that has space for an art gallery. It also has a large, 30-by-60-foot living room with 16-foot-high ceilings at its apex. The Marshals Service, which handles the Justice Department’s asset forfeiture program, took control of the Arc House because Jessica Meli used funds from her husband’s ticket-selling scheme to purchase the 2.62-acre property four years ago.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission named Jessica Meli as a relief defendant in a civil case related to the ticket scam. In November, she settled with the regulator and agreed to disgorge $4 million in investor funds as part of the $104 million being sought by the federal government from Meli himself.

Meli was sentenced to six-and-a-half years in prison last year. In April, his accused accomplice, former sports radio personality Craig Carton, was sentenced to 42 months in federal prison after being convicted in November. Earlier this year, Carton reportedly agreed to sell his six-bedroom home in Chester, New Jersey, for roughly $1 million, about half of its initial asking price.

As for Meli, federal prosecutors charged him again in April over his alleged role in another ticket-selling scam involving his cousin.

Federal Bureau of Prisons records show that Meli is currently incarcerated at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn and is not scheduled to be released until February 2024.

Giana Desir

A judge recommended that a landlord and realty company pay $25,000 for discriminating against a transgender woman seeking an apartment in Brooklyn.

The ruling by administration law judge John B. Spooner favored Giana Desir, who started her transition from male to female in 2013, the New York Daily News reported.

The judge ruled on a complaint on her behalf that the New York City Commission on Human Rights filed in 2016 against landlord Henry Walter and Empire State Realty and Management.

Desir struggled to find rental housing in Brooklyn after her apartment lease expired in 2015 and an unnamed landlord declined to renew it, according to the New York Daily News.

When she met with Walter, he suggested that Desir wait until her transition to female was complete before trying to rent an apartment.

According to the judge’s summary of the case, Walter told Desir he was unable to rent her an apartment where she would be “around people and children.”

Desir said Walter was the fifth landlord who told her apartments were available, then said none were after meeting her in person and learning that she was transgender.

Trial evidence showed that Walter and Empire Realty violated the City Human Rights Law by refusing to rent an apartment to Desir because she is transgender, Spooner wrote, the New York Daily news reported.

The administration law judge recommended a $10,000 civil penalty and a $15,000 compensatory fine, plus an order that the landlord and realty firm under anti-discrimination training. [New York Daily News] – Mike Seemuth

Andrew Rosen and interior shots of his penthouse at 130 West 12th Street (Credit: Getty Images)

Designer Andrew Rosen sold his Manhattan home for $18.5 million after quitting his job as CEO of the apparel company Theory in April.

Rosen sold the Greenwich Village penthouse for 42 percent more than the $13 million he paid in 2012, but less than the $21.5 million he listed it for in September 2018.

The gain on the sale to Long Light Capital financier Justin Korsant stemmed from the overall rise in luxury Manhattan prices over the past seven years, as well as a major renovation, which Rosen’s interior designer wife Jenny Dyer likely directed, according to Women’s Wear Daily.

The apartment has terraces connected to all eight of its rooms and tall hornbeam trees make the terrace off the master suite a “private outdoor room,” according to the listing. Interior features include a gym and a wood-burning fireplace in the living room.

The penthouse is part of the upscale Greenwich Lane, a five-building complex of condos and townhouses where the old St. Vincent’s Hospital was located. Other Greenwich Lane residents include Michael Kors, British fashion entrepreneur Tamara Mellon and German model Toni Garrn.

While its unclear whether Rosen is hunting for another Manhattan residence, he’s far from homeless. The retired CEO owns a house in Southampton and a condo at the Four Seasons Residences at the Surf Club Miami, which he bought for $5 million in 2017.

Rosen, who was succeeded by Theory’s chief operating officer, Dinesh Tandon, will continue working with the apparel company as an adviser. A spokesman for Rosen did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Rosen’s listing agent was Leonard Steinberg of Compass. Another Compass agent, Brett Mitchell, represented Korsant in his purchase of the Greenwich penthouse. [WWD.com] – Mike Seemuth

550 Biltmore in Coral Gables

Miami-based private equity firm CGI Merchant Group paid $54.4 million for 550 Biltmore, a 16-story office building in Coral Gables.

CGI, which owns co-working space operator Nexus Workspaces, paid $336 per square foot for 550 Biltmore.

CGI recently opened two new Nexus Workspaces locations at commercial properties in Boca Raton and Boynton Beach that the firm acquired for a total of $9.4 million.

Built in 1986 at 550 Biltmore Way, the 16-story, pyramid-shaped 550 Biltmore  building was 89 percent leased at the time of sale.

Office tenants of the 162,293-square-foot building include UBS, Heinemann Americas Inc. and Compagnie Financiére Richemont, owner of the Cartier brand.

The Coral Gables building has an Art Deco architectural design. Its interior features include Italian travertine walls with marble and granite accents, burled walnut elevator cabs, and polished-stone and brushed-metal finishes in the lobby.

The office building “has been institutionally owned and maintained throughout most of its history and was renovated in 2013,” according to a press release issued by Cushman & Wakefield.

With assistance from office-leasing team Brian Gale and Ryan Holtzman, the Cushman & Wakefield Capital Markets team of Mike Davis, Miguel Alcivar, Dominic Montazemi, Scott O’Donnell and Rick Brugge negotiated the sale of 550 Biltmore on behalf of “a global real estate investment manager,” according to the press release. The exclusive leasing-advisory team for the property includes Gale, Holtzman, Andrew Trench and Jeannette Mendoza.

The South Florida Business Journal reported in 2014 that an affiliate of Prudential Real Estate Investors acquired the 550 Biltmore building for $50.2 million. – Mike Seemuth

Qatar Sotheby’s International Realty General Manager Seran Gheorghe, and a view of Doha, Qatar

Sotheby’s International Realty is growing in the Middle East.

The brokerage firm is adding a new arm in Qatar, Inman reported.

The branch, to be headquartered in the capital of Doha, will be owned by lifestyle conglomerate Alfardan Group and will focus on luxury residential markets. It also will work with clients who are looking to buy real estate around the globe, according to Inman.

Philip White, president and CEO of Sotheby’s International Realty, in a statement pointed to the country’s “high-income economy and global real estate interest” as a reason for the expansion.

Seran Gheorghe, a real estate veteran in the region who had been with Gulf Sotheby’s International Realty in Dubai, will head up the new brokerage. He said the Qatari market has high-end apartments, beachfront villas and penthouses that have attracted buyers from India, China, the U.S. and Europe, Inman reported.

The move from Sotheby’s, which is owned by Reology and has offices in 72 countries and territories, to open the new brokerage comes as the 2022 FIFA World Cup soccer tournament is scheduled to play in the country, Inman reported, a decision that already has been fraught with controversy.

The new branch launch also comes after a private equity firm — a subsidiary of Peerage Capital — recently acquired Sotheby’s Canadian brokerage division.

Earlier this year, Sotheby’s realigned its corporate structure to bring two of its former business divisions under one roof, a move the firm said would help it create more synergies and grab more global market share.

[Inman] — Mary Diduch 

The actress, singer and producer has put her Bedford Corners home on the market for $3.6M.

Emmy Award winner and Westchester County native Glenn Close has listed her 10.67-acre estate in Bedford Corners for $3.6 million.

The acclaimed actress has tapped Muffin Dowdle of Ginnel Real Estate to oversee the sale of her five-bedroom, five-bathroom estate at 136 Succabone Road in Bedford. Close, a longtime resident of the tony suburb, home to many stars of the screen, is the latest notable individual with local roots to put her house on the market.

The Real Deal noted earlier this month that actor Bruce Willis and his wife, model and actress Emma Heming, had cut the price of their 22-acre Bedford Corners estate to $8.7 million. Claudio Reyna, a former captain of the U.S. men’s national soccer team, also recently listed his Bedford Corners home for $2 million.

Close’s property consists of 5,773 square feet of indoor space, a guest cottage, a playhouse with a sleeping loft and a two-car garage. Built in 1910 as a farmhouse, the home was later renovated by Norwalk-based architectural firm Shope Reno Wharton, according to Dwell, and its listing with Ginnel touts its “substantial millwork wide moldings and five fireplaces.” Other amenities include an exercise room, an in-ground pool with a separate spa, an out building and a covered porch.

The property, known as Beanfield, has reportedly been home to Close, who was born and raised in nearby Greenwich, since 1991. The star of “Fatal Attraction,” “The Natural” and myriad other movies, plays and television shows has listed the home almost a year after the property hosted the wedding of Close’s daughter, Annie Starke, to management consultant Marc Albu.

Ginnel told TRD that taxes for Close’s home are approximately $68,600 per year. The home last traded for $1.75 million in 1989, according to Realtor.com. Ginnel’s Dowdle, who came in at No. 4 in TRD‘s ranking of the top residential brokers in Westchester earlier this year, did not return a request for comment about the listing for Close.

As previously noted by TRD, a first quarter Douglas Elliman market report noted that residential sales in Westchester had climbed 9.2 percent year-year-over, while the median sales price in the county jumped 4.6 percent, to $463,000.

Hong Kong may be in a state of unrest, but a local design firm is seeking to mitigate the city’s housing crisis with concrete pipes rebuilt as stackable apartments.

James Law Cybertecture is seeking city approval to offer micro apartments made from concrete water pipes, called OPod Tube Housing. The firm has built a prototype for its tiny home approach by transforming a pipe that is 2.5 meters wide, or a little more than eight feet, into an apartment that spans 9.29 square meters, or about 30 square feet.

Interior features include curvy whitewashed walls and a flat wooden floor. The front panel on the model unit is fully glazed and serves as both a window and a door that residents can unlock with smartphones. A bench seat doubling as a bed, a mini-refrigerator and a microwave oven also would fit into the micro apartment. Complete with a toilet and shower, the white-tile bathroom in the rear of the OPod unit is screened off, with the entire apartment able to be loaded onto a truck with a crane.

James Law Cybertecture is negotiating with Hong Kong’s government, currently coping with public protests calling for the city’s leader to resign, for clearance to install and rent OPod apartments. Founder James Law sees his portable units as residences that could have up to four stacked atop one another at undeveloped in-fill sites between existing buildings in vacant locations across Hong Kong.

Law told design publication Dezeen that it would cost about £11,000 to manufacture each OPod apartment, which tenants could rent for less than £300 a month. He also said the experimental tiny-apartment design would appeal to “young people who can’t afford private housing,” noting that the typical tenant would probably reside for a year or two in an OPod unit before moving.

The average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in the heart of Hong Kong exceeds £1,500. The city has been ranked as having one of the least affordable housing markets in the world. Hong Kong’s severe scarcity of housing is rooted in population growth, soaring real estate prices and limited land availability due to its island geography.

Other architects in Hong Kong have suggested solutions to the city’s housing shortage that focus on compact residential units. In 2014, a Hong Kong studio called Affect-T floated the idea of installing bamboo micro homes inside vacant factories.

More recently, Design Eight Five Two made a 52-square-meter apartment more comfortable with concealed storage space, easy-to-move furniture and sliding partitions, while another local studio, NCDA, created a 34-square-meter apartment roomier by installing a mezzanine with a treehouse-style design. [Dezeen] – Mike Seemuth

Jamie McCourt and 160 Spyglass Lane

The former co-owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers and the current ambassador to France and Monaco bought a Jupiter estate for $8 million.

The trust of Jamie McCourt purchased a 6,804-square-foot home at 160 Spyglass Lane for $1,175 per square foot, records show. The sellers are Eileen and Mark Epstein.

The Epsteins bought the home for $7.7 million in July 2018, records show.

The home was built in 2018 and has five bedrooms and six and a half baths. The waterfront estate sits on a 21,000-square-foot lot and is in the Admirals Cove community. The house also sits behind a golf course.

Christian Angle with Christian Angle Real Estate represented the seller.

McCourt co-owned Major League Baseball’s L.A. Dodgers with her then-husband Frank McCourt. In 2009, the two became entangled in a nasty divorce, which eventually led to a settlement agreement in 2012 where Jamie McCourt would sell give up her stake in the team.

Prior to co-owning the Dodgers, she was the general counsel of the McCourt Co., the family real estate firm in Boston.

Jupiter is one of the wealthiest towns in Palm Beach County where a number of celebrities have bought large homes.

In May, Serena Williams sold a 2.4-acre vacant lot at 152 Bear’s Club Drive in Jupiter for $6 million to Patrón Spirits CEO Edward Brown and his wife Ashley.

And in late 2017, the founder of NetJets Marc Laukien sold his 9,310-square-foot home at 19307 North Riverside Drive for $5.1 million.