Oliver Haydock

Citi Habitats released its November rental market report today (PDF here), showing a continued rise in vacancy rates across all Manhattan neighborhoods, and, while rents continue to soften, there hasn’t been a very significant decline.

In October, the Financial District/Battery Park City was the only area to report a vacancy rate of over 2 percent; but, in November, Chelsea, Gramercy, Midtown East, Midtown West and Murray Hill all had vacancy rates of 2 percent or higher. In November, the vacancy rate for all of Manhattan was 2.04 percent, the first time the island’s vacancy rate crossed the 2 percent threshold in over 12 months and a noteworthy rise from last November’s vacancy rate of a meager 1.21 percent.  read more »

There were 258 first-time home foreclosure auctions scheduled in New York City in November, according to the latest foreclosure report released today by PropertyShark. That is a significant decline from the monthly foreclosure totals of recent months, when there were as many as 397.

In fact, the November tally is identical to the number of foreclosures from last November, and represents the lowest number since December 2007, when there were 129.

So is this the end of New York’s unfortunate foreclosure boom?

Not quite, and it actually might be getting much, much worse.  read more »

Earlier today, the Federal Reserve issued their eighth and final Beige Book report of 2008 (PDF here), finding, as you might expect, that economic conditions are weakening across the nation in virtually all sectors of the economy. Here is a quick recap of the dreary news in District II, which includes all of New York, a tiny sliver of Connecticut and northern New Jersey.

- Same store retail sales in October and early November are down 5 to 10 percent from last year, and may have been worse had it not been for unseasonably cold weather in November that boosted winter apparel sales.

- In October, hotel revenues fell 10 percent on the year, indicative of drops in both occupancy rates and room rates.

- Manhattan co-op and condo sales have fallen 15 to 20 percent since mid-summer, which doesn’t sound too bad. But, as the report notes, “much of the recent activity is reportedly from desperate sellers.”  read more »

"We are dealing with a much different market than the same time as last year,” said John Parsegian, a senior vice president at Halstead Property who specializes in the luxury rental market.

Indeed. As rental market reports heap seemingly endless piles of bad news on an already jittery industry, it’s becoming clear that the economic woes of the past several months are going to affect every segment of what was, not all that long ago, a resilient and unstoppable Manhattan rental market.

The very nature of this financial crisis, with its origins in the well-heeled corridors of Wall Street investment banks, is likely to drive down rents across the board, but particularly in the ritzy doorman palaces around Central Park and other highly sought-after neighborhoods throughout Manhattan.  read more »

“People aren’t going to stop living, and dining out is one of the most therapeutic things people can do,” said Tracy Nieporent, marketing director and partner in the Myriad Restaurant Group, which owns Tribeca Grill, Nobu and other pricey eateries around the city.

Yes, this economy is quite depressing, but people still have to eat (and live) in New York, and the million-dollar question is whether everyone’s going to forgo the metaphorical strip steak in favor of the frozen ravioli at home.

What’s the big worry?

In a word: bonuses. Year-end Wall Street bonuses are likely to fall by more than 50 percent in 2008, down from $28.  read more »

Hold on to your hats, ladies and gentlemen, Wall Street bonuses are headed for an epochal fall. According to estimates from the city Comptroller’s office provided to The Observer today, year-end bonuses will total $14.5 billion for 2008, an over 50 percent drop from 2007, when $28.9 billion was paid out to Wall Streeters.

Of course, the figures are merely an estimate for now, but the low projection jibes with the bleak year in finance, one that saw the collapse of the financial sector and the dissolution of two of the biggest investment houses: Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers.  read more »

So much for that narrative! Counter to the stories upon stories of an economy in freefall, people are still working; at least they are according to October jobs statistics released today by the New York State Department of Labor.

Unemployment actually fell, albeit marginally, in New York State, dropping from 5.6 percent in September to 5.5 percent in October, while it remained unchanged in New York City at 5.7 percent (the national unemployment rate was 6.1 percent). The point is, it’s not climbing, and that seems weird, considering all that’s happened in the past month and a half.  read more »

Rents these days! For all this chatter about a recession, it’s still awfully expensive to live in Manhattan.

Taking a quick gander at the average rents for Manhattan neighborhoods in Citi Habitats’ October rental report, two things become abundantly clear: Most people can’t afford to live in Soho/Tribeca and all spendthrift renters need to move up to Harlem.

There, you can live still live in a studio and pay less than $1,200 a month. The Lower East Side is the cheapest place to rent a studio south of 110th Street, but even that will set you back just over $1,600 a month.

With studio rents at $2,400 a month and one-bedroom apartments at $3,653, Soho/Tribeca tops out as the island’s most expensive enclave, although the West Village and Chelsea aren’t far behind.

The worm is finally turning in Manhattan’s winner-take-all apartment universe. According to the Manhattan-specific October rental market report released today by Citi Habitats (PDF here), vacancies are up and rents are down, all of which is playing to the advantage of renters who have been at the mercy of not terribly merciful brokers and landlords since, oh, forever.

Vacancies in Manhattan apartments increased from 1.46 in September to 1.71 percent in October, a 12-month high. While Battery Park led all neighborhoods with a vacancy rate of 2.02 percent, vacancies were up in each of the other 10 neighborhoods tracked by Citi Habitats, including always popular neighborhoods like the East Village and the Upper West Side.

There is also some downward pressure on rents, perhaps due to the uptick in idle apartments. Average rents for studios, one-bedrooms, two-bedrooms and three-bedrooms all fell modestly from September to October. Some neighborhoods are falling faster than others, however, and some of the most severe drops are in surprising locales.  read more »

Thanks to the collapse on Wall Street, the Brooklyn sales market took a dip, but not a dive, according to a third quarter market report from real estate consulting firm HMS Associates. The third quarter average sales price of $695,285 marked a 2 percent reduction from the third quarter of 2007, creating a modestly improved market for buyers that could only turn more advantageous as the financial crisis reverberates.

Quarterly sales prices jumped annually in chi-chi neighborhoods like Brooklyn Heights and Prospect Heights, but fell in far away Sheepshead Bay and the emerging neighborhood of Greenpoint, suggesting a flight toward quality properties in an uncertain market. In the third quarter, sales increased by a meager 1 percent on the year, climbing from 988 last year to 999 this quarter. Home sales were up in Carroll Gardens and Williamsburg, but down Greenpoint and Fort Greene.  read more »

This much we know: In Manhattan, there is a growing supply of empty apartments that, due to a combination of overpricing, bad timing and lack of demand, cannot find tenants willing to sign the dotted line. This is unfamiliar territory for landlords, who have conducted business in an environment that, for the past several years, has been defined by escalating rents; insatiable consumer demand driven by a robust local economy; and ever shrinking vacancy rates.

Yes, it’s not as easy to find renters as it used to be, but brokers and other industry professionals are still confident that the Manhattan rental market will steady itself in the near future.  read more »

Michael Stoler, one of New York’s most recognizable real estate pundits, is out as a senior principal at Apollo Real Estate Advisors, an investment firm he joined in 2006. The Observer on Monday received a tip that Mr. Stoler had been fired, but efforts to reach him have been unsuccessful and Apollo has not responded to phone calls from earlier today. A call to Mr. Stoler was answered by someone at Apollo who told The Observer that Mr. Stoler is, “no longer affiliated with Apollo.”  read more »

It appears the national housing slump has thoroughly caught up to the city of Rocky and the Word Series Champion Philies. Home sales and prices declined in 2008, according to a comprehensive market report (PDF here) published by Wharton economist Kevin Gillen, and it's not likely either will rebound soon.

The report includes data through the second quarter of 2008 that ended June 30, and found that median home prices had declined by 6.6 percent since the second quarter of 2007.  read more »

According to two experts consulted by the Wall Street Journal, year-end bonuses for Wall Street employees will fall this winter between 20 and 50 percent from last year, when the big investment houses awarded $33.2 billion in bonuses. That would put the total payouts somewhere between $16.6 billion on the low end of the spectrum and $26.5 billion on the high end. Bonus cuts will vary depending on the job description, with bankers and traders in hard-hit branches like structured credit taking the hardest hit.  read more »

Massey Knakal chairman Bob Knakal has one word for New York property investors post-boom: Transportation.

“The closer your property is to a major transportation system, the better,” Mr. Knakal said Monday. “Any areas that are in or around transportation hubs in the boroughs will be good investments in the future.”

As the epochal financial crisis shakes the chaff from the wheat, it will leave in its wake opportunities for property investors with the foresight to capitalize, literally and figuratively. Purchase prices on manifold smaller properties citywide will likely drop and the sorts of buildings that may not seem the soundest investment now could pay in spades later on—just like in the boom that recently passed.  read more »

The day after the Department of Transportation released a report showing a modest increase in city cyclists (PDFs here and here), a federal judge blocked the city's plan to enforce strict emission standards on taxis that would have taken effect this Saturday. The two developments are indicative of the city's stop-and-start progress in its effort to "green" transportation in the five boroughs.

The cycling screenline count tracked bike traffic on 16 of the city's north-south arteries during three separate 18-hour intervals in May, August and September and found that cyclists increased from 53,003 in 2007 to 56,203 in 2008, a 6 percent increase of 3,200. Bike traffic slowed considerably on Broadway, dropping from 1,123 in September 2007 to 656 in September 2008, but it also increased sharply on Fifth Avenue, Sixth Avenue and Ninth Avenue, where a divided bike path was erected in the fall of 2007.  read more »

As the Hamptons housing market tumbled mightily in the third quarter, the North Fork's saw a mild price bounce. The North Fork median sales price was $575,000 in the third quarter, up 10 percent from last year, according to the new Miller Samuel-Douglas Elliman report.

The North Fork, home to a cluster of well-respected wineries and other tourist attractions, lacks the sandy dunes and social cachet of its southern neighbor; but the home price increase, at a time when the Hamptons' declined, could reflect a maturation of the North Fork as a second-home destination. Make no mistake, however: Despite a nearly 20 percent annual drop in the Hamptons' median sales price, to $830,000, it still dwarfed the North Fork's by $255,000.

It’s not all good news in the North Fork, however, though in this market that’s not really terribly startling. (The Miller Samuel numbers reflect deals closed in the three months ending Sept. 30, and therefore don't necessarily reflect the financial crisis.)  read more »

All is not well at the summer playground for America’s rich and famous, as home prices and sales in eastern Long Island tumbled to two-year lows in the third quarter, according to a new Hamptons/North Fork market report from real estate appraisal shop Miller Samuel and brokerage giant Prudential Douglas Elliman.

The quarterly median sales price in the tony vacation enclaves dropped to $729,000, which is the lowest since the fourth quarter of 2006 and 17.3 percent below last year’s median price of $882,000. Third-quarter sales fell from 427 last year to 355 this year, a 16.9 percent plunge, which brought East End market activity to its slowest quarterly pace since Miller Samuel began tracking the area in the second quarter of 2006.  read more »

Harlem condo sales plunged a staggering 76 percent annually in the third quarter of 2008, from 237 closed deals last year to just 57 for the three months ending Sept. 30. That’s according to an analysis of data, provided by research Web site PropertyShark, on Manhattan condo deals between roughly 110th and 155th streets.

Despite the anemic sales volume, accounting for the paltriest sales quarter since the start of 2007, Harlem condo prices increased 3 percent year over year in the third quarter, rising to a median sales price of $598,000.

The slowdown in buying activity is opening a window for an oversaturation in the Harlem condo market, as several upscale projects like 119th & Third and Graceline Court at 106 West 116th Street are scheduled to open in the coming months.  read more »

The Queens third-quarter housing numbers are in, and the borough has joined Brooklyn in a slide. Prices and sales dropped annually.

The $400,000 median home sales price was 11.4 percent less than it was a year ago, and was also down from the second quarter of 2008, according to the report by Miller Samuel and Prudential Douglas Elliman. The report covered closed deals in the three months before Sept. 30, so it doesn't necessarily reflect the financial crisis that started in mid-September.

No matter: Queens has suffered more than your average borough in the housing slowdown. For one, Queens has led the five boroughs in first-time foreclosure amounts for several months running now (more here on that). And the tightening mortgage-lending market as well has impacted the largely suburban borough.

Queens home sales fell 35.2 percent annually in the third quarter to 3,240. Brooklyn home sales were down over 38 percent annually; and prices dropped as well.  read more »

Location: About your new market report with PropertyShark, is this an attempt to challenge the Douglas Elliman-Miller Samuel juggernaut or to gain greater name recognition in the industry?

Ms. Liebman: The Corcoran Report, which we started in the ’80s, was actually the first report to ever come out in Manhattan, so we had a great head start in market reports. Our relationship with PropertyShark was more about getting as much data as possible, because to me, the market report should have as much clear information as possible for any buyers and sellers, so we want to put forward the best data that we can.  read more »

First, the entirely expected bad news for real estate developers and brokers: The Brooklyn condo market is slipping. According to the third-quarter Brooklyn market report from appraisal firm Miller Samuel, condo sales in the borough dropped from 979 in the third quarter of 2007 to 660 in the same period this year, and the median sales price fell from $529,490 in the third quarter of 2007 to $505,493 in the third quarter of 2008, a decline of 4.5 percent.

Developers can smile, however, knowing that prices aren’t down everywhere in the borough. The median sales price for condos in North Brooklyn, which includes the neighborhoods of Greenpoint and Williamsburg, jumped from $544,801 in the third quarter of 2007 to $617,049 this year, according to the same report, sponsored by brokerage Prudential Douglas Elliman.  read more »

From 1975 to 2005, New York City shrank as a regional job hub relative to 12 surrounding counties in Long Island, southern New York and northern New Jersey, according to a "New York by the Numbers" report (PDF) released today by local public policy group the Center for an Urban Future.

Back in 1975, New York City accounted for 53.1 percent of the 5,022,801 jobs in the New York region: a broad swath of territory encompassing Suffolk and Nassau counties in Long Island; the Bronx, Brooklyn, New York, Queens and Richmond counties in New York City; Rockland, Suffolk and Westchester counties in southern New York; and Bergen, Essex, Hudson, Middlesex, Morris and Passaic counties in northern New Jersey.

By 1980, the city’s share of regional jobs had diminished to 50.5 percent, and the 12 regional counties overtook New York City in 1985 and have had a majority of jobs ever since. In 2005 – the last year the figures were tallied – the 12 surrounding counties accounted for 52.8 percent of the 6,171,642 jobs in the New York region.  read more »

The city and state September unemployment rates showed little change from August, a surprising turn considering the troubling events in the local economy and suggesting that a rise in unemployment may occur in the near future as mass layoffs hit Wall Street. From August to September of this year the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate stayed at 5.8 percent in both the state and the city.

There has been, however, a substantial increase in the non-seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate from last September to this September, in the state and in each of the city’s five boroughs. The unadjusted state unemployment rate jumped from 4.  read more »

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday released their seventh and second-to-last Beige Book report of 2008 (PDF), finding depressing economic trends in virtually all of the Fed's 12 districts nationwide. But what about the Second District, which includes all of New York, northern New Jersey and southwestern Connecticut?  read more »

Brooklyn home sales plummeted 38.2 percent annually in the third quarter to 2,298, according to a new report from brokerage Prudential Douglas Elliman and appraisal firm Miller Samuel. Condo sales dropped especially sharply year over year.

The Miller Samuel numbers cover closed deals in the three months ending Sept. 30, so the fallout from the Wall Street crisis of mid-September isn't immediately reflected. Still, the steep drops, a continuation of the reality on the Brooklyn ground from the summer, offer clues to that market going forward: fewer sales and falling prices.

Condo sales fell by 32.6 percent annually in the third quarter to 660, while the median sales price for a Brooklyn condo fell 4.  read more »

Time to start updating your resume if you work on Wall Street, as major job cuts are likely to hit New York’s financial and insurance sectors in thecoming months, according to the Wall Street Journal. The state’s finance and insurance employment numbers have hovered close to 345,000 through August of this year, showing little change in spite of the ongoing meltdown in the financial markets.

But major job cuts loom: Global investment-banking fees have fallen by 23 percent in 2008 and equity capital markets have reverted to levels last seen in 2003. In the wake of the tech crash and 9/11, the city’s securities industry lost 18 percent of its jobs, according to figures from the state Department of Labor, and there is reason to think that the upcoming wave of layoffs will be worse.

So what does this mean for the average Wall Street bum? We’ll let the Journal have the last word on that: “In a global economy characterized by excess financial-services capacity and a deficit of energy sources, enrolling in an engineering course might not be a bad idea.”  read more »

European home buyers and investors used to be big in Manhattan. Buoyed by a strong euro and pound, embolde ned by a wide selection of new-development condos and verdant credit markets, the Europeans virtually invaded the borough to the point where their very presence became shorthand for the real estate market’s success.

“The Russians Are Coming” screamed a 2004 New York headline; “An Irish Taste for Real Estate in Manhattan” proclaimed a 2007 article in The New York Times.

Those days are over. On Oct. 10, the euro fell to $1.3579, its lowest level against the dollar in 14 months, according to the European Central Bank, and Europe’s economies have joined America’s in the muck.  read more »

Location: Can I get you to talk about the much discussed report on the middle class that you are working on?

Mr. Bowles: I think one of the things that I’m excited about is that we’re not talking strictly about how to save the middle class. We’re looking at New York’s historic role as a place that groomed a middle class and looking at whether that’s continuing to happen today. We’re going well beyond just the real estate price increases that you’ve seen—and obviously that adds quite a bit of a burden to the middle class in New York—but we’re also focusing on things like the economy, and one of the problems that we find is that there aren’t a lot of middle-income jobs being created in New York City like the ones that were before.  read more »

With atonement and repentance in the air today, the transit advocacy nonprofit Transportation Alternatives released a feature on the Web site rollingcarbon.org that calculates the carbon footprint of New York City commuters.

Visitors to the site can choose one of seven transportation options (bus, car, hybrid car, taxi, subway/train, bike, walk) and calculate the daily carbon emissions of their commute. According to the site, a 10-mile train ride emits 5 pounds of carbon dioxide, while a car commute of the same distance emits 24.4 pounds.

In addition to calculating daily emissions, the site also has a few transportation factoids (did you know that one out of four transit trips in the U.  read more »

“This is Manhattan—people have always done whatever it takes to live here,” said Daniel Baum, co-founder and chief operating officer of the Real Estate Group New York.

Sacrificing comfort and personal space is an old exercise for most people living in Manhattan, especially for creative-class types or aspiring artists. For the past few years, living with any degree of comfort in Manhattan required one of two things: good family connections or a well-paying, white-collar job. But what will happen when even successful young professionals in fields like I-banking and corporate law lack the job security to pay monthly rent on a basic apartment?

 read more »

This is the final of three articles today on the Manhattan housing market since last autumn. Read about the apartment rental market and the condo sales market.

Median prices for new-development luxury condos in three of Manhattan’s glitziest neighborhoods dropped substantially during the third quarter, according to a new report from research outfit StreetEasy (PDF here). From trendy downtown Manhattan all the way through the glamorous Upper West Side (and even midtown in between), median prices for top-tier newer condos declined quarterly by 29.1 percent, 31 percent, and 32.4 percent, respectively.

The Upper East Side was the only neighborhood with a median sales price increase among new luxury developments (nearly all condos), with a jump of 145 percent. (StreetEasy defines the luxury market as the top 10 percent of the condo and co-op sales marke; for this quarter, it included all apartments sold at $3.1 million and above.)  read more »

This is the second in a three-part series today covering the Manhattan housing market since autumn 2007. The first was on the condo sales tumble.

Apartment rents in Manhattan's two biggest neighborhoods by area, the Upper East and West Sides, either dropped or stayed relatively flat from September 2007 to September 2008, harbingering a further cooling off in the rental market (just like the ice cubes tossed this summer on the for-sale market), according to the latest report from The Real Estate Group New York (PDF here).

The apartment market and the local economy have a nearly real-time relationship, and the flat rents the last 12 months in these two neighborhoods could become the norm through the winter as the financial crisis worsens. Certainly, Manhattan's beyond the recent era of sharp rent jumps.  read more »

This is the first in a three-part series today covering the Manhattan housing market since autumn 2007.

Manhattan condo sales dropped 22.6 percent annually in the third quarter of 2008, according to a new report from appraisal firm Miller Samuel and brokerage giant Prudential Douglas Elliman. At the same time, the 12 months from September 2007 to now, the median sales price, the average sales price and the average sales price per square foot for a Manhattan condo increased.

With lower downpayments and no co-op board process, condos are the gateway buy for many New York homeowners; and therefore a solid barometer of where the borough's housing market has been and where it may be going in tougher economic times.  read more »

There were 665 new foreclosures in Queens during the third quarter of 2008, according to PropertyShark's new report (PDF here), which accounted for half of the new foreclosure auctions in New York City and helped push New York’s quarterly foreclosures to a two-year high of 1,118.

In general, first-time foreclosures were higher in the outer boroughs and relatively non-existent in Manhattan, where there were only 35 in the three months ending Sept. 30. Staten Island had the second-highest number, with 174, followed by Brooklyn (165) and the Bronx (79).  read more »

Manhattan apartment rents stayed flat in September, on par with average rents in the summer and substantially lower than those from early autumn 2007. Rents are down by around $200 across the board since September 2007, in fact, for both doorman and non-doorman buildings, according to a new report from The Real Estate Group New York (PDF). (The report analyzes rents south of Washington Heights.)

The average rent for a doorman one-bedroom, for instance, dropped from $3,881 in September 2007 to $3,692 in July, and then dropped further through September. For two-bedrooms in doorman buildings, the September average was $5,529, down from the summer and down from the same month last year.

The report's analysis alludes to the effects the financial crisis could have on the Manhattan apartment market.  read more »

Laurie Silverman, a Halstead Property executive, has noticed a peculiar shift in the demographics of her apartment-buying clientele: More and more young married couples, some pregnant or with young children, searching for larger, family-friendly living space.

There’s a shared sense of urgency amongst all her clients. “What we are seeing walking through the door these days,” Ms. Silverman said, “are people who really have to move.”

The rush of space-hungry families comes at an uncertain time. The chaotic economy has tossed the local real estate market into an unfamiliar limbo, as buyers and sellers stand on either side of the proverbial junior-high dance, hoping the gulf between them narrows.  read more »

More bad news for New York City area homeowners: Foreclosures are up, prices are down, and sales are slow, according to a report released by First American CoreLogic. In New York City and several surrounding counties in northern New Jersey and southern New York the rate of foreclosure on outstanding mortgage loans was 1.81 percent in July 2008, up 0.77 percentage points from July 2007’s rate of 1.05 percent.

Home prices in the area are also down; according to the report, prices fell 7.68 percent from July 2007 to July 2008. The decrease in home prices may have something to do with a significant decrease in home buyers and slower demand, as home sales in July 2008 were dramatically lower than the same period last year.  read more »

Wall Street is dead. So says The Wall Street Journal, which declared on the front page of the Sept. 22 edition that the longtime epicenter of American capitalism “will cease to exist” as we know it. With the demise of the investment banks and the collapse of the financial services industry, so died the gilded dreams of so many aspiring Gordon Gekkos, who believed conquering Wall Street (or at least climbing to middle management) would be the shortest path to that New York version of the American Dream—a non-infested place in a not-awful building.

But with Mr. Gekko and his Learjet for now relegated to the sidelines, is it time for an updated map to that dream? A man, perhaps, like Mad Men’s Don Draper? It’s difficult to say what the New York economy will look like in two years, but it’s certainly permissible to speculate on which industries in the city can still fund the envy-producing lifestyles that provide the ambitious young worker bee enough liquid cash for a one-bedroom apartment or a no-frills condo in Brooklyn.  read more »

If you’ve ever wanted to take an afternoon siesta on a patch of green grass right by Columbus Circle, today is your day, New Yorkers! Thank the fourth annual Park(ing) Day, a one-day global event where city parking spaces are transformed into oases.

The event, first held in San Francisco in 2005, was celebrated by 70 cities across the country. Transportation Alternatives, a reform-minded pedestrian advocacy group, sponsored the event in the city, and helped over 50 community groups, artists and businesses access permits for the festivities.

In the West Village, Community Boards 2 and 4 commandeered a parking space outside the gourmet supermarket Balducci’s, and were visited by virtually all of the area’s politicians, including City Council Speaker Christine Quinn.  read more »

Contrary to a steady national unemployment rate, state and city joblessness increased substantially in August, according to statistics from the New York State Department of Labor. The national unemployment rate held firm at just over 6 percent, while the state rate jumped from 5.3 percent in July to 5.6 in August. New York City fared worse, seeing its unemployment rate jump to 5.9 percent in August, up from 5.4 percent in July and 5.3 percent in August 2007.

The Bronx outpaced the city’s boroughs with an 8 percent unemployment rate; Brooklyn was a distant second with 6.4 percent, up from 5.  read more »

Pretty gosh darned rich, according to Forbes magazine.

Twelve of New York’s celebrated real estate titans bought, sold and leveraged their way onto or up Forbes' 2008 list of the 400 wealthiest Americans. While the vast sums of wealth are truly staggering, New York’s wealthy real estate developers still lag far behind the big players on Wall Street; in fact, no real estate developer was rich enough to crack America’s top 50–-Paul Milstein and family were closest at No. 68.

The list: wealth (in billions) and ranking

• Paul Milstein and family: $5 (68)
• Richard LeFrak and family: $4.5 (78)
• Stephen Ross: $4.5 (78)
• Leonard Stern: $3.7 (97)
• Donald Trump: $3 (134)
• Mort Zuckerman: $2.8 (147)
• John Catsimatidis: $2.1 (215)
• Sheldon Solow: $2 (227)
• Jerry Speyer: $2 (227)
• Tamir Sapir: $1.9 (246)
• Leon Charney: $1.5 (321)
• Steve Roth: $1.3 (377)

The Forbes 400 capped a rather unpleasant year for Harry Macklowe. Last year, Mr. Macklowe was the 239th wealthiest American, with an estimated fortune of $2 billion and an impressive portfolio of some of New York's finest real estate (the GM Building!). This year: unranked.

More bad news today, this time from the Department of Commerce. New home construction is way down this year, falling well short of last year's numbers and, more troubling, way b