Would A Shabbos Goy Still Get Five Percent?

This actually sounds a lot like a premise for a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode:

Jerry Seinfeld may have to pay more money to be the master of his domain.

The comic owes about $100,000 to the broker who helped him find a Manhattan townhouse last year, a judge ruled last week. Seinfeld refused to pay broker Tamara Cohen a full commission after she failed to meet him for a house tour on the Jewish sabbath.

Seinfeld — referred to in court documents by his given name, Jerome — and his wife, Jessica, bought the home at 155 W. 82nd St. in February 2005 for $3.95 million. The Seinfelds struck the deal themselves after they were unable to reach Cohen, according to trial testimony. Cohen testified she told the Seinfelds she was an observant Jew and couldn’t work on Friday evening and before sundown Saturday.

Jerry Seinfeld was never told Cohen couldn’t work on the sabbath, said his attorney, Richard Menaker, who is seeking to have the decision overturned.

Fallen Angel

Arthur Wood plans to raise the money to preserve the code violation/sculptural element atop his Clinton Hill building by working with developers to turn the property into condos:

Broken angel will soar again, even higher than before, provided Brooklyn’s real estate prices stay in the stratosphere.

Artist Arthur Wood has cut a deal to save his eccentric Clinton Hill creation — one that envisions condos under a rebuilt rooftop sculpture.

“It will be taller, more majestic. We may even light it up at night, and it will be nicer,” Wood, 75, said yesterday.

He rejected offers of as much as $1.8 million that would have destroyed the 108-foot building in favor of one that will preserve it, he said.

He may even lose money, depending on how the condos sell, he added.

“It was tempting to take the money and leave, but I couldn’t do that,” Wood said. “The building is a living entity, and I wasn’t about to abandon it.”

Local developer Shahn Andersen agreed Saturday to buy a 50% stake in the structure, financing the rebuilding of Wood’s creation with potential profits from condos.

“I told Arthur that even if he wasn’t going to partner with me, he needed to do whatever it was going to take to save Broken Angel,” Andersen said.

Chris Wood, Arthur’s son, said his family’s first preference had not been condos — which he called “the nasty C-word” — but rather to create a museum. However, no benefactor had stepped forward.

The deal will allow Wood to meet the city’s deadlines to demolish the parts of Broken Angel that pose a fire hazard, Andersen said, estimating that resurrecting Broken Angel will cost a few million dollars.

(Don’t believe their lies!)

Pfft!

Real Estate Observers note that there is no goddamned bubble in Manhattan, period:

The average sales price for a Manhattan apartment rested higher in the fourth quarter of last year than in all but one of the quarters of 2005 or 2004, the peak years of the supposed housing boom.

The median, a better market barometer, was just shy of $800,000, according to appraisal firm Miller Samuel in its report for brokerage Prudential Douglas Elliman. And the average price per square foot still tickled the $1,000 mark, something it’s done since late 2005.

Not only did the Manhattan market continue to be prohibitively expensive, but sales actually picked up in the fourth quarter as inventory dropped, meaning that there’s plenty of hearty, moneyed folk among us (or from well outside the five boroughs) willing to plunk down an average of $1,554,645 for a two-bedroom spread, to use one example from the Miller Samuel report.

“The only bubbles bursting are in somebody’s bathtub,” said Darren Sukenik, a top Elliman broker. He cut short a Christmas week getaway to Argentina, hustling back to the city three days early because his assistant kept getting requests for apartment showings. “It’s never busy Christmas week, ever. The buyers are definitely there.”

Ew.

Worth A Shot

Apparently stealing real estate is harder than we thought:

A Brooklyn man was arrested yesterday on charges that he fraudulently tried to claim ownership of the SoHo Grand Hotel, one of the premier inns in Lower Manhattan and the scene of oh-so-many gossip items about celebrities in illicit entanglements.

The man, Kouadio Kouassi, 46, filed a deed with the city showing himself as the hotel’s owner, but it was not processed because it lacked signatures, officials said.

When Mr. Kouassi returned to see if he had been declared the rightful owner, a Department of Finance employee believed something suspicious was afoot and notified the city Department of Investigation.

But, apparently undaunted and bent on claiming the prized property, Mr. Kouassi returned several more times to get his deed processed, officials said.

City investigators contacted the hotel’s true owners, the Hartz Group, which said it had never heard of Mr. Kouassi and had no intention of giving him the hotel, valued at $76 million, according to city records.

“We think that since we bought the land, built the hotel and have run it for 12 years that we actually own the hotel,” said Ron Simoncini, a spokesman for Hartz.

. . .

Mr. Kouassi was charged with attempted grand larceny and offering a false instrument for filing. The authorities said he was in custody last night and had not yet hired a lawyer. If convicted, he will face up to 15 years in jail.

How About A Niketown With Sweatshops Above?

The only problem with 1 Times Square is that there isn’t much in the way of natural light:

It’s the most famous building in the world on New Year’s Eve, but it’s also the emptiest — so the owners of 1 Times Square, where the ball comes down, are making a daring offer:

Rent the vacant, three-story store at the bottom for $4.5 million a year and they’ll throw in 19 floors of empty offices for free.

“You rent the retail, you basically get the building upstairs for free,” said Newmark Knight Frank real-estate broker Jeffrey Roseman, who represents the owners.

The 23-story tower, originally built for The New York Times in 1904, has not housed any office tenants for years. The base was home to a Time Warner studio store until it closed in 2001.

Ever since then, owners Jamestown and Sherwood Equities have made up to $30 million a year renting the building’s exteriors to giant electronic displays and painted ads.

Retailers have balked at the location in the middle of an island between Broadway and Seventh Avenue at 43rd Street, even as the area around it thrives.

. . .

The upper floors are small, and the interior is in disrepair. And they don’t offer much in the way of views — nearly all the windows are covered by signs.