Jorge Perez Betting $1B on South Florida Market

By Anthony Longo 30 01 2008

jorge perez miami condos

Amid a slumping condo market, developer Jorge Perez is joining with a Wall Street firm to create an investor fund that will buy troubled mortgages and distressed property that ranges from raw land to finished condominium units in the southeastern United States. To read the entire story.. CLICK HERE

As reported by the Miami Herald, the condominium developer who led South Florida’s high-rise building boom is making a $1 billion bet that the region’s real estate market is a bargain.

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Source: BlogSouthFlorida / Miami Herald



Sweet Digs Hits Boston

By Anthony Longo 23 01 2008

SEATTLE – Jan. 23, 2008: Online real estate broker Redfin Corporation today launched its online real estate blog, “Sweet Digs,” for the first time on the East Coast. Home buyers and sellers in Greater Boston and the Washington, D.C. metro area can read local, data-driven real estate market information online or in a daily email newsletter. The Boston-area blog is available at http://boston.redfin.com/blog and the D.C.-area blog is available at http://washingtondc.redfin.com/blog.

Every week, the Boston and D.C. Sweet Digs blogs each offer as many as 20 candid, saucy and analytical write-ups of recent sales, price reductions, open houses and real estate trends. Local coverage includes Back Bay, Cambridge and Somerville in Boston; and Bethesda, Loudoun County and McLean in the D.C. area.

Redfin’s investment in the blog’s quality has been significant. Redfin evaluated hundreds of candidates, and contracted with nine independent writers who are deeply knowledgeable about their local real estate market. As Sweet Digs’ Boston and D.C. readership grows, Redfin will expand its neighborhood coverage.

Greater Boston:
Alyk: Boston’s South End
Cosmo Catalano: Back Bay, Beacon Hill
Michael Martin: Beverly, Salem
Pamela Reynolds: Brighton, Brookline
Margaret Sanford: Somerville, Cambridge

Welcome Sweet Digs Boston Team !!! 

Other Great Boston Real Estate Blogs:

Boston Condo & Luxury Real Estate Blog

BostonREB.com (The Original Creator)
Boston-Condos-For-Sale 

Bushari Real Estate Blog



TheFrontSteps Stirs Up Some Juice on Flat Fee Brokerage

By Anthony Longo 22 01 2008

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Lots of activity going on here….check it out.



London Mansion Sold at $94M

By Anthony Longo 21 01 2008

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Toprak Mansion on The Bishop’s Avenue, Barnet, sold last week for $94 million, breaking a U.K. record for a newly built property which was set only two weeks ago by a nearby house called Palladio, which was sold for $68 million. The name of the Toprak purchaser was given as Horelma Peramam, a billionaire from Kazakhstan.

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It was marketed discreetly for several years, and the asking price climbed to $94 million as prime residential London prices soared. The house had been nicknamed Top Whack Mansion but will now be known as Royal Mansion.

The Bishop’s Avenue, a street of super-sized mansions, is known as “Billionaires’ Row.” The Sultan of Brunei and the Saudi Arabian royal family own a number of properties there.  Continued… 

Source:  Fox News



Patriots vs. Chargers Today

By Anthony Longo 20 01 2008

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Go Patriots.

AFC Championship Game starts @ 3!



‘Best Buy’ at 15 Central Park West (NYC)

By Anthony Longo 17 01 2008

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We are loving InTheBox.tv !!! Today they had a great video on 15 Central Park West…one of NY’s newest and most exclusive buildings hands down. So….they stuck a Best Buy in the nicest luxury residential buildings in Manhattan! Hmmm…maybe it will help in reducing their condo fees for the unit owners which include Denzel Washington and a-whole-lotta other celebrities.

Best thing about this is…we witnessed the same thing up here in Boston where Best Buy bought out the enormous retail space @ 360 Newbury, a high-end boutique loft condominium on Boston’s Park Avenue (Newbury Street).

Looks like Best Buy is going UP-MARKET!

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Condos Go Rental (Providence, RI)

By Anthony Longo 17 01 2008

waterplace park condo providence, riOne of the sexiest Providence Condo Developments aims to go rental.  Kind of a shame…but most likely temporarily.  Currently there  is some other great competing Providence Condo projects on the market that are further along in construction or ready to move into including:  The 903, The Residences at the Westin, and Pearl Street Lofts.Boston developer Intercontinental Real Estate Corp. is considering converting one of the two condominium high rises in Providence’s Waterplace Park that are scheduled to open in the spring into rental apartments until the real-estate market improves.

“We’re looking at alternatives, which may include renting one of the two [towers] for a year or two,” Intercontinental’s chairman and chief executive officer Peter Palandjian said in an interview last week. “We love the project. We love the building. … It’s just no one is buying.”

Only 14 of the 193 units in the two towers are under purchase-and-sales agreements, he said, and the building is scheduled to be completed in three or four months.

A decision will probably be made early next month, Palandjian said, and the building would be “ready for a spring rent up.”

The Waterplace Park towers — which contain 193 units — were the first and the biggest of three condo developments in downtown Providence when the developer broke ground in May 2005.

Since then, the real-estate market has slowed to a crawl and the inventory of unsold condominiums has climbed. It would take nearly 12 months to sell all of the 1,816 condos on the market as of the end of October — almost double the six-month supply two years earlier, according to data from the Rhode Island Association of Realtors.

In Boston, three major condo developments have recently hung “For Rent” signs, including the Mezzo Design Lofts in Charlestown backed by a former Los Angeles Lakers basketball giant Earvin “Magic” Johnson’s Canyon-Johnson Fund.  Continued…

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Exclusive Buyers Agents (Boston)

By Anthony Longo 16 01 2008
Working with a buyers broker is always free…
Working with CondoDomain takes it one step further…Until recently, the real estate industry exclusively represented the Seller. A growing number of Real Estate Agents (and the public) want Buyers to have an equal level of representation in the real estate transaction. The National Association of Exclusive Buyer Agents (NAEBA) is proudly pioneering a nationwide effort to give today’s home-buying consumers the level of service they demand.

Exclusive Buyer Agents can assist you with locating and evaluating property. An EBA works to negotiate the best price and terms for you, not the Seller! They can assist you in evaluating loans and financing options, or help you find competent home inspectors and home warranty companies. Above all, the EBA offers undivided loyalty and works to protect the Buyer’s interests throughout the transaction. An EBA will not ask you to limit your level of service for their benefit. The goal of the EBA is always to protect you – the Buyer.

Top Priorities of CondoDomain Team Members as an EBA:

  1. Exclusively and confidentially represent you as our client and put your interests first
  2. Provide transparency in our opinions, the good and the bad including property information, neighborhood information and community information.
  3. Help in the search & compare process
  4. Negotiate and get you the lowest price possible with the best terms possible
  5. Refer you to top legal, financial, appraisal & inspection professionals

We take Exclusive Buyers Brokerage one step further by adding our Flat Fee business model! We believe in true transparency and therefore have enhanced oru business model by taking a Flat Fee instead of a commission percentage.

Whether you spend $130,000 or $13,00,000 you will be assured we are working for you at the same service level, transparency, honesty and integrity as a client of CondoDomain.com! See How

Advantages of working with CondoDomain that you DO NOT get when working with a traditional agent or trying to buy a property on your own.

  1. Efficient & Effective: We know the market better than anyone and search all property types including MLS, LINK, New Developments, Existing Buildings, FSBO, Lofts, Foreclosure listings & even Auctions
  2. Competitive Advantage: This is all we do, all day, everyday. Search, Negotiate & Close!
  3. Your On Our Team: Our conversations are in complete confidentiality allowing us to communicate clearly and openly to each other
  4. Guarantee: We actually guarantee our services to you!

CondoDomain Team Members = Experience. Transparency. Trust. Results.



The Real Estate Lounge

By Anthony Longo 16 01 2008

real estate cafeCool new ideas to relax, sip up…and me a real estate agent… (by way of the NYTimes)

…Though still a rarity, the office-camouflaging tactic is being tried in several parts of the real estate world. “You’re starting to see a lot more creative ways to reach out to people,” said Joel Burslem, a marketing expert in Portland, Ore., who founded a popular blog called Future of Real Estate Marketing. “It’s an awakening to the fact that agents really need to court buyers these days. They’re looking for ways to entice and engage.”

Of course, sooner or later, visitors to Ms. Jones’s plush coffee-bar-style lounge (which is open until 9 p.m. five nights a week) figure out that it is merely a comfortable place to browse property listings on the Internet, either via a 40-inch flat-screen television or at one of several desks outfitted with personal computers and designer lamps. The high-style atmosphere is a lure to get them in the door, something real estate agencies everywhere are finding harder to do as the house hunt increasingly goes virtual.

A similar experiment has been undertaken by Rick Higgins, founder of the Higgins Group (where Ms. Jones is a managing partner). A company storefront in Westport’s chic Main Street shopping area resembles a Chamber of Commerce information center. Visitors to the cozy wood-beamed space will indeed find useful local data, but a sales agent will also offer to walk them through the search technology on the Higgins Group Web site.

“It’s a nice icebreaker, without requiring a commitment emotionally of the people coming in,” Mr. Higgins said.

Thaddeus Wong, a co-founder of a company in Chicago called @Properties, has taken an even subtler approach. Last year, in the city’s River North neighborhood, Mr. Wong’s agency went into partnership with a Starbucks-style coffee shop; eventually, patrons logging into the cafe’s free Wi-Fi service will pull up the brokerage’s Web site.

Called @Spot, this is foremost a coffee shop (owned and operated by one of the company’s agents) that simply features the @Properties logo on its cups and sleeves. “It’s just another form of branding,” Mr. Wong said. “It’s just a little bit more of a progressive form of marketing.”

Not every such venture has met with complete success. In 1995, Bill Wendel pioneered an enterprise called the Real Estate Cafe about three blocks from the Harvard campus in Cambridge, Mass. The cafe invited buyers to look through property listing books on their own at a time when listings were not publicly accessible on the Internet. The agency operated on a fee-for-service basis, and sponsored networking events like a Roommate Rendezvous.

The need for such a clearinghouse dissipated after 2000, however, when listing and other real estate-related data became more readily available online. Mr. Wendel eventually went virtual…continued…

Source: NYTimes



25 Bond – New Yorks Finest (for $8.950M)

By Anthony Longo 14 01 2008

New York Condo NOHO

25 BOND STREET, 2 East – I have been in this unit and it is truly amazing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Want to Buy this – Email us (experience@condoDomain.com) and we will hook you up!
Nestled in historic Bond Street, the widest cobblestone street in New York City, 25 Bond uses only the highest quality materials to create a new gold standard in luxury.

The hand-chiseled Egyptian limestone facade, its rich 10-foot floor-to-ceiling bronze windows with sliding glass doors, and the 100-foot long, hand-carved granite sidewalk by sculptor Ken Hiratsuka combine to bring light and texture to the Bond Street exterior.

The exacting attention to detail make 25 Bond a distinctive and timeless building representing a truly one-of-a-kind downtown New York City address.
New York Condo NOHO

Unit Specifications

Rooms 7
Bedrooms 3
Bathrooms 3.5
Home Theater 1
Approx. SF 3,722
Approx. Exterior SF 80

Financial Information

Offered at $8,950,000
Maintainance $5,000
Tax Deductible 10%
Financing: 50%

New York Condo NOHO

Apartment Features

Direct elevator access into a 50-foot wide living room with a 9′6″ tall hand-finished Venetian bronze sliding window wall

Two private attended parking spaces with direct elevator access
10′6″ ceilings
Two wood-burning fireplaces
Glass-enclosed balcony off master bedroom
Hand-oiled 4″ quater sawn Oak floors
Lutron HomeWorks diming and shade package
Crestron audio/video system
Bulthaup-designed performance kitchen:
Side-by-side SubZero refrigerators
2 Fisher-Paykel dishwashers
Meile cooktop and wall oven
SubZero wine cooler
SubZero ice-maker
Stainless countertops
Garbage disposal
Walnut & aluminum cabinet faces
Self-closing drawers
Bathroom features include:
Limestone-tiled master spa with Agape soaking spoon tub and steam shower
Floor-to-ceiling limestone tiled bathrooms and powder room
Lualdi Porte frosted glass & lacquered doors
Laundry room
Power & plumbing for master bedroom mini/wet bar
HVAC management control system with remote monitoring capability
Simultaneous heating and cooling capability
Touch-screen video intercom
Wireless internet-ready
New York Condo NOHO

Building Highlights

New Construction
8 floors / 9 units
Hand-finished bronze elevators open directly into apartment
Individual security card access
3,000 Sq. ft. fully landscaped garden with outdoor grill
John Houshmand-designed bronze & Walnut slab lobby desk
Individual, ground floor storage lockers
Dedicated service entrances and elevators
Emergency generator
Hand-chiseled Egyptian limestone facade
Hand-carved granite slab sidewalks by sculputor Ken Hiratsuka

New York Condo NOHO

 Other Posts on 25 Bond

25 Bond Minting Money 

25 Bond NY

Schrager & Goldman Dance
Want to Buy this – Email us (experience@condoDomain.com) and we will hook you up!