New York Giants

After a disappointing 2014 season, the New York Giants are hoping to bounce back strong this year. Last year, the G-Men took a big step in the right direction drafting Odell Beckham Jr. Let’s hope that they can build on that! Draft is tomorrow night! Here are some of the top NFL draft prospects according to CBSsports: http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/draft/prospectrankings

Big Real Estate Deals Coming to NYC

The Real Deal wrote an article last week about the “10 Biggest Real Estate Deals Coming to NYC”. From 70 story office buildings to 167 key hotels, they speak about the biggest projects hitting the big apple in the next few years. Find it here: http://therealdeal.com/blog/2015/04/15/top-10-biggest-real-estate-projects-coming-to-nyc-6/ 

United Realty Updates

United Realty recently made a couple of important hires that we are very excited about.  Steven Reed, who brings 30 years of experience in financial services, is the company’s new Western U.S. Divisional Head of Sales, while Edward Frederick, a former Business Development Specialist for TD Ameritrade will  be the Assistant Vice President of Sales. These hires reflect the continued build-out of our national sales team. Find the Yahoo article on our new hires here: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/united-realty-adds-national-sales-180200277.html    

The NBA Playoffs started this past weekend. As a Knicks fan, my playoff hopes ended the day the season started. But as a basketball fan, there is a lot to be excited about!

In the East, I think the Cavaliers will make it to the Finals. LeBron is the best player in the world and they are really starting to click. His supporting staff, which includes a few former Knicks players, is loaded with talent that can really win

In the West, my pick is the Rockets. Though most people are picking Golden State, I think James Harden and crew are too much to handle. Dwight Howard has been playing well and is healthy after sitting out most of the season. He will be the difference. As much as I hate to pick another team out of the East, the Cavaliers are my pick for NBA champs.

Boston Marathon

Congrats to all those out there who ran the Boston Marathon! Give yourself a pat on the back :)

+Wall Street Journal put out an article on Sunday, April 12^th with some recent news on New York area real estate. In the article, I gave some insight on investor sentiment, how exchange rates affect United Realty’s holdings, and observations on the wider real estate market. The Wall Street Journal also released the results of the United Realty/Zogby Real Estate Confidence Index, which is a survey of 113 institutional real-estate professionals on the nature of the current investment landscape as well as expectations for future opportunities and risks. You can find the original article here: http://www.wsj.com/articles/whats-the-deal-1428887802

New York International Auto Show

The New York International Auto show is going on right now here in NYC. Some of my favorites? McLaren unveiled their new sports car, the 570s, and it stole the show. It reaches 124 miles per hour in under 10 seconds. Looking forward to seeing some of these awesome cars on the road sometime soon.

FINRA Rule Changes

In July of last year, globest.com wrote an article on a regulatory change that the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority is putting into place, FINRA Rule 2014-006. This change will require non-traded REITs to report per share NAVs calculated on a periodic basis. I am glad to see that FINRA is taking steps to improve transparency for companies and their investors. The original article can be found at http://www.globest.com/news/12_1049/national/reit/New-Rule-Means-Closer-Look-at-Non-Traded-REITs-355444-1.html 

I did an interview with Bloomberg back in May of last year where host Alix Steel had asked me where I thought there were some good spaces for real estate investments. Some of the things we discussed were inflation protected leases, triple net leases, and overall attractiveness of the US real estate market. Since the interview, the overall real estate market has done well.  

At that time, we released something called the United Realty/Zogby Real Estate Confidence Index. This index is a real estate confidence index based on the aggregate attitudinal responses of elite and institutional commercial real estate investors who take part in polling conducted by the world-renowned Zogby Analytics organization. We will be releasing the Realty/Zogby Real Estate Confidence Index after this quarter. If you would like to see the interview itself, you can find it here: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/b/4d4c7bb2-25f9-4326-bc8b-e0950b40b468