January 18, 2025

Trump

New York AG Letitia James Investigates Actual Estate Big Cushman & Wakefield for Supporting Donald Trump

New York AG Letitia James Investigates Actual Estate Big Cushman & Wakefield for Supporting Donald Trump

Inez Caron April 30, 2022

As the New York legal professional basic investigates the Trump Firm for cooking up fake assets values on official documents, attorneys uncovered Monday that just one of the world’s premier business genuine estate providers is also less than investigation for its role in the scheme: Cushman & Wakefield.

On Monday, attorneys with the office of AG Letitia James said the true estate agency is now a central player in its expanding probe into alleged bank fraud by the Trump spouse and children corporation.

“They’re appropriate in the middle of this,” assistant attorney typical Austin Thompson mentioned in court, noting what investigators uncovered as the firm’s critical purpose in the Trump company’s “decade-long historical past of creating fake statements about its attributes.”

Cushman & Wakefield, which is based in Chicago but operates globally, provided advisers who assisted former President Donald Trump’s business evaluate the value of its qualities in California and New York. The corporation suddenly slice its ties to the Trump Organization in the days after the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.

The AG’s place of work has now taken the posture that the company’s choice to distance itself from Trump is itself a suspicious go akin to the the latest choice by world-wide accounting organization Mazars United states of america to dump Trump—and disavow their work for him.

“We assume that the noisy exit from Cushman and Wakefield… is yet another red flag. And we would like to learn more about it,” Thompson said.

The serious estate firm’s law firm, Sawnie A. McEntire, painted a various picture. He claimed the business has performed alongside with the AG’s a long time-extended investigation, turning more than paperwork immediately after receiving 4 subpoenas and getting half a dozen staff present witness testimony to investigators.

“We have not disregarded the lawyer general’s subpoenas, and we’ve never ever held ourselves over the law,” McEntire explained.

At problem now is no matter whether the legal professional general’s office environment can get even additional proof, specifically now that its investigation would seem to be heating up and nearing the issue exactly where the place of work can sue the Trump Organization and other individuals for allegedly violating New York’s company guidelines.

“The proof exhibits that Cushman was as wrapped up in misstatements by Donald J. Trump and the Trump Firm as almost any other entity,” Thompson explained to the choose on Monday.

The AG’s business office has been quietly communicating with the serious estate company since June 2019, according to a human being acquainted with their interactions. Nonetheless, the regulation enforcement agency has ratcheted up the stress on the firm in the latest weeks.

On April 8, investigators asked a state court choose to intervene and power the firm to turn about data that replicate how its staff have appraised properties other than Trump real estate. Lawyers at the AG’s business office spelled out that they want to see how they look at in get to far better evaluate how and why Cushman & Wakefield gave Trump this kind of rosy appraisals.

But on Monday, Cushman & Wakefield’s legal workforce tried to portray this as an unwarranted and unfair deep dive into the company’s “intensely proprietary, non-public, confidential info.”

“The general public curiosity has to be well balanced with the invasion that will acquire position below, forcing my shopper to go via... hundreds of its shoppers and hundreds of appraisals,” mentioned McEntire, a Texas attorney.

Choose Arthur F. Engoron countered that this was not a typical lawsuit. “The attorney standard is empowered to investigate how enterprises function in this point out,” he explained.

The choose finished the hearing by buying Cushman & Wakefield to switch around the records sought by investigators, providing the firm until May 27 to do so.

Two Years After Trump And Mar-A-Lago, Palm Beach Real Estate Is Still On Fire

Two Years After Trump And Mar-A-Lago, Palm Beach Real Estate Is Still On Fire

Inez Caron April 28, 2022

Contrary to various public misconceptions, Mar-a-Lago—the exclusive Atlantic oceanfront resort that frequently served as former President Donald Trump’s “Winter White House”—didn’t make Palm Beach, Florida’s lavish real estate and lifestyle famous for the first time around.

The Sunshine State’s “Playground For The Wealthy” long has been uber-posh, dating back to the late 1880s when oil tycoon Henry Flagler first built The Breakers and The Royal Poinciana Hotel which eventually became the centerpieces of his luxury, southern hospitality empire catering to northern old money and spawning the now infamous “Billionaire’s Row”.

So it shouldn’t come as a surprise either that even after Trump’s 2020 Oval Office departure, Palm Beach’s luxury real estate market isn’t showing any signs of decelerating even if Air Force One isn’t landing in town anymore.

Writ large, part of the froth is because South Florida in general has been on a bull market run since even before the pandemic.

Low taxes, warm weather, business friendly regulations, and burgeoning innovation ecosystems were already luring finance firms, tech start-ups, and executives to Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach, Tampa, and Orlando before 2020 as fast as California and New York could shed them. COVID-19 just widened the highways and threw away the speed limits.

The compounding in-migration over past few years, however, has resulted in one of the most unsubtle real estate ironies here in decades: after years of booms, busts, and frequently tumbling prices, South Florida now has a big-time housing and inflation crisis that few people were anticipating.

At the highest ends in places like Palm Beach—a.k.a. “Wall Street South”—where billionaires, CEOs, sports stars, and celebrities like Tiger Woods, Sylvester Stallone, Michael Jordan, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Steve Wynn, Jon Bon Jovi, and Ken Griffin have been digging in for years, the supply crunch is even more acute.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Palm Beach County’s luxury, single-family homes sales—including Palm Beach, Palm Beach Gardens, West Palm Beach, and Palm Beach Islands—have increased by 53.5% year-over-year while the average time on market has plummeted to 58 days in the first quarter of 2022, a 57.2% year-over-year drop. In North Palm Beach and Palm Beach Gardens specifically, where only 89 active single-family listings are currently active, home sales are up 68% year-over-year with total volume jumping from $678 million to $1.34 billion.

Similarly eye-popping, the numbers for Palm Beach County’s mid- and high-rise condo sub-market aren’t far behind: average days on market decreased by 41% in 2021 over the same period in 2020, while first quarter 2022 luxury condo closings are up 54% from 2020.

Developers and real estate investors are rightly trying to keep up.

Related Group recently announced plans to bring a new Ritz-Carlton Residences high rise to West Palm Beach, while South Flagler House, a $400 million luxury condominium, is on track to become one of the most expensive residential developments in the U.S.

Meanwhile, multi-million dollar condo projects that have been under construction for years are well-timed to start absorbing buyers starting in the next few months, like Amrit Ocean Resort & Residences, SeaGlass, Nautilus 220, Icon, La Clara, Forte, and Alba.

Notwithstanding all of this new inventory, however, a lot of the long-term drivers behind Palm Beach’s supply crisis aren’t easily tractable—which other similarly tight and tony zip codes in Silicon Valley, Long Island, and Los Angeles could learn from. Many of the buildings about open up were sold out months ago or pre-sold pre-pandemic so they’re not even putting a dent in existing or future demand.

Land is also scarce, sprawling, multi-generational estates are common, and most residents who have lived here for years whether full or part-time roundly agree that if you already own one of the few waterfront properties available why not hold onto it, especially when price appreciation is outpacing the bull stock market?

Each of these factors individually is an incentive for developers to build. But for locals collectively, they’re a glaring red light not to sell, particularly when it comes to single-family homes and estates. There’s also no small bit of NIMBYism (“Not In My Back Yard”) invisibly at work here when it comes to the prospect of denser, more overtly visible developments.

All of which means that every new Palm Beach luxury real estate project which adds new inventory while simultaneously satisfying the increasing demand for larger floor plans, hotel-style amenities, and waterfront views at scale is great for prospective buyers and companies looking to relocate here—and even better for the developers building them.

This fundamental shift—from South Florida’s historically dense condo model to full-floor, all-glass, single-family, high-tech, high- and mid-rise “residences”—a.k.a. “homes in the sky”—is no small turning point. Developers will need to change their design, technology, and financing paradigms. Buyers will need to be patient.

What is clear to anyone paying attention, however, is that these trends for more space, more resort-level, work-from-home luxuries, better, high-touch service, deeper experiences, and longer horizon investing on the part of buyers are here to stay.

Given this context, the announcement by long-time Palm Beach-based developer Catalfumo Companies that it’s just launched the Landing at PGA Waterway is huge news for one of America’s most inventory starved cities.

“Palm Beach Gardens has become the ultimate, luxury real estate enclave in South Florida,” says founder Dan Catalfumo. “It’s now attracting even more refined and notable individuals relocating to the area. And from this came the inspiration for Landing at just the right time.”

The Landing will offer 98 flow-through three, four, and five-bedroom residences ranging from 3,100 to 5,000 square feet spread out over three, 6-story buildings on the last remaining 11 contiguous acres of open land in Palm Beach Gardens directly on the Intracoastal Waterway with yacht access to Lake Worth, Palm Beach Inlet, and Jupiter Inlet.

The development will also include a private, 26-slip marina for power and sailboats up to 75’, 100-foot infinity-edge swimming pool, resort-style cabanas, a clubhouse, spa, guesthouse suites, high-tech in-unit features and finishes, and an on-site concierge.

If anything about the Landing at PGA Waterway sounds over-amenitized given Palm Beach’s supply crunch, it’s not.

“This is what today’s market and buyer demands,” says Kevin Spina, Sales Director of The Spina Team of Landing’s luxury “sky villa” approach to merging single-family home space and design with the amenities and service of a 5-star resort.

“Palm Beach County is now a flourishing hub as major companies are migrating to the ‘Wall Street of the South’. We are excited to bring Landing at PGA Waterway to this thriving market and anticipate that it will transform the way we understand and experience luxury waterfront living.”

Residences at Landing at PGA Waterway start at $3.9M with pre-sales to commence June 1st. The project is slated to break ground in the third quarter of 2022.

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