This week brought a big shakeup in the New York City brokerage world.
Hall Willkie announced he would be stepping down as president of Brown Harris Stevens, effective July 1, the company said in an internal email on Monday. Willkie will start a six-year contract as a consultant with BHS residential sales.
Willkie has been with the firm for 37 years. BHS finished fourth in The Real Deal’s most recent ranking of Manhattan brokerages after reporting $2 billion in sell-side closed sales volume in 2024.
Taking over for Willkie as co-presidents will be sales managers Kevin Kovesci and Itzy Garay.
Brookfield is closing in on a deal for a stake in a Midtown South office building at a valuation around $400 million, another sign of how big-ticket office deals are returning to New York.
The Canadian private equity giant reached an agreement to buy a 49 percent stake in 63 Madison Avenue from a joint venture of George Comfort and Sons, Jamestown and Loeb Partners Realty, TRD learned.
After the pandemic, technology companies scaled back office leasing and put millions of square feet on the sublet market. Thanks to stabilizing interest rates and venture capital funding’s revival, however, these businesses are growing and signing large leases again.
The sector kicked off 2025 with its strongest start in 25 years, according to a CBRE report on tech leasing in Manhattan. Tech tenants inked deals for 1.2 million square feet in the first quarter and added another 441,000 square feet in April. That was almost the total for the entire year in 2023.
Elected officials and members of the advocacy group BrooklynSpeaks gathered in Brooklyn on Tuesday afternoon to demand the state hold developers of Pacific Park — formerly known as Atlantic Yards — responsible for missing a May 31 deadline to build 876 affordable housing units above the rail yard between Pacific Street and Atlantic Avenue. The group indicated it may bring a lawsuit to force the state’s hand.
While that deadline was missed, a critical date is only days away from a notorious figure in the industry.
The 36-year-old Boruch Drillman pleaded guilty in 2023 for his role in a $165 million mortgage fraud scheme. His sentencing date was initially in April 2024 but was postponed to June 16, 2025. He faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison.
His lawyer is taking great pains to paint his client in the best possible light as Drillman maintains he had a good reason for not filing tax returns.
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Brookfield nears $400M deal for Midtown South office building
Tech companies are back in the Manhattan office market
Brooklyn group mulls suing state over Pacific Park housing fines