Apartment sales by Israeli developers in New York have been hard-hit by the recent financial crunch, according to a study by the Globes business newspaper of sales data of Lev Leviev and Shaya Boymelgreen. The two have ventures both in partnership and separately, and neither are doing very well.
The largest project of Leviev's Africa-Israel and Boymelgreen Developers LLC joint venture is at 20 Pine Street in downtown Manhattan. The two bought the 38-story building in the heart of the financial district in late 2004, and converted it into 408 condominiums for young financiers who wanted to live adjacent to their jobs. The building had previously housed Chase Manhattan Bank
Though 319 apartments in the project were sold by the end of 2007, the remaining 20% are all but stuck. Only five have been sold in 2008, all in the first quarter, and five more are "being negotiated" - for the past several months.
Another downtown Manhattan project, at nearby 111 Fulton Street, has seen no sales in the past half-year. A total of 87 of the 163 Leviev-owned project's condominiums have been sold.
A Boymelgreen project in Brooklyn is having problems as well. Though most of the apartments in the Novo project have been sold, at substantial discounts, some have been on the market for over a year. The price for a top-floor apartment was reduced from $1.05 million this past June to $920,000 just two months later, but has still not yet found a buyer.