First comes word that the penthouses at One Hanson Place are set to fetch $1,200 a foot; now word that an ex-Goldman Sachs banker has plunked down $5.8 million for two lofts at One Main Street in Dumbo that add up to a combined 4,790 square feet. Jokes about how this is the end of the neighborhood aside, this is serious stuff. $1,200 a foot? The sellers bought one of the units in 1999 and then picked up the other one in 2004; the combined price of the two units when the building went condo in 1998 was $1.55 million. As David Walentas, the building’s developer, and current resident of the iconic 6,000-square-foot clock tower apartment, said with characteristic modesty: “I made a lot of people rich. I’m happy for everybody.” Hard to argue with that.

Elsewhere in William Neuman’s weekly column, follow-up news on the Harlem real estate deal worthy of a Wall Street derivatives desk. The Times had already reported on that Yale prof John Geanakoplos had created an unorthodox structure for his purchase of a Harlem townhouse earlier this year. Now more details: He paid a minimum amount at closing at which time he also escrowed some more cash; if the price of homes in the area rose over a pre-determined period of time, the seller would get paid more; if not, the buyer would get the escrow returned. As another Yale professor, Robert Schiller. put it: “People don’t want to buy a house at the peak. They feel bad about that.”

Lastly, Neuman touches on last week’s rumors that Lev Leviev and Shaya Boymelgreen had had some kind of falling out. Officially, this is not the case. Their five-year exclusive relationship is just drawing to a close so they’re branching out.
Dumbo Is Humble No More [NY Times]