Word of Mouth

The average person performs at only about 50% of their capacity and the primary productivity drag is poor time management. Here are some tips to improve your efficiency.

•Be intentional. Success is predicated on making choices that provide control over time.  Plan. Be thoughtful about what activities to perform. Without proactively creating a time management protocol, you leave too much to chance.

•Prioritize. Make a list of all the activities you perform. Next, identify the activities that should be assigned to others and transition them. Now take the remaining tasks, list them in order of importance and estimate how much time each one takes each week or day.

•Schedule.  Plug your tasks into your work hours.  Schedule higher priority activities first so if you run out of time and cannot finish an activity, it will be a low priority. Second, input the schedule on an electronic (with reminders) calendar such as Outlook. Lastly, small tasks may not need to be scheduled as they can be done during idle time.

•Time block. I have found that creating hour-long "power blocks" of time is a great way to stay focused, be efficient and create an environment free of interruptions and distractions. For example, report/document review, making or returning calls/e-mails, employee meetings or cold calling can all be done in distinct time blocks. During the block, ignore incoming e-mails, phone calls or peers and stay solely focused on the task at hand. Amazingly, individual work interruptions can cause a 5-15 minute loss of productivity and that is why reducing interruptions is a great way to manage your time.

•Create boundaries. Set acceptable and manageable limits to relationships, projects and technology. Many people do not want to set boundaries because they have a hard time saying "no".Be honest with yourself and others and only commit to acceptable limits. This may mean closing your door, not answering a ringing phone or saying "no" to meetings or committees.

Remember, time management can provide you with a competitive advantage.

The Sixth Avenue El opened in June 1878 and ran from Rector Street and Trinity Place, going one block west on Murray Street, then up West Broadway to West 3rd Street and up Sixth Avenue (prior to it being named “Avenue of the Americas") and ending at 59th Street. It connected with the Ninth Avenue El with a shuttle stub to Eighth Avenue.   

From its beginning, the line was criticized for being noisey and for dropping oil and other debris on pedestrians walking below. In addition, the structure which was never reinforced, was in danger of sagging since it was not constructed to carry all the weight that it did and was beginning to suffer from metal fatigue.  With the support of commercial interests, the City finally dismantled it in 1938 and was replaced by the IND 6th Avenue subway line which opened between 1936 and 1940.

One of the greatest controversies surrounding the history of the Sixth Avenue El relates to what happened to the steel.  For many years, the story was that the scrap was sold to Japan and was used to build armaments  which were used against us in World War II. These rumors persisted since the metal was sold to a west coast exporter.  Although there were testimonies from both the Manhattan Borough President and from the Harris Structural Steel Company stating that none of the steel ever reached Japan, there are many who lived during this period and still believe that it did.

The midtown zoning which varies from an FAR of 10 to an FAR of 15 has always been favorable to developers of commercial buildings especially from 42nd Street to the East 50s especially in the Rockefeller Center area.  The residential properties in the Village have a low FAR of 3.44 which maintains the character of the neighborhood.

Next in The Changing City Series: The Ninth Avenue El


Marcia Rose Yawitz is Senior Director and Principal at Eastern Consolidated.  With over forty years of real estate experience, she has sold in excess of one billion dollars of investment grade real estate.

Want to be more successful?  Work on improving your emotional intelligence which is more critical to success than technical skills and intellectual horsepower.  Emotional intelligence requires a high degree of introspection and its four main tenets are:

• Self-awareness. Recognize your feelings and the causes.
• Self-management. Regulate your emotions, feelings and impulses. 
• Social awareness. Read situations and other people’s feelings and emotions. 
• Relationship management. Work effectively with others. 

Ok.  Now what?  Here are some tips for improving your emotional intelligence and the results you get in your career and life: 

The Third Avenue El which opened in 1878 ran from Lower Manhattan to the Bronx.  It was the last of the elevatored train lines to remain after the Second, Sixth and Ninth Avenue Els were demolished.  The original intention was to keep it operable until the Second Avenue Subway was completed.  The main portion of the line was finally torn down on May 12, 1955 due to pressures from the real estate industry especially after the opening of the Socony-Mobil Building at 150 East 42nd St. 


There was something both exotic and terrifying walking under the El on Third Avenue with shops of every kind and beggars lurking on the streets.  A major hangout for college students of my generation was Joe King’s Rathskeller near the 18th Street station.  There was no checking of ages then and we spent our evenings drinking beer and carving our initials into the wooden tables and walls.  How different and innocent were the times.


Third Avenue’s zoning has always appealed to developers with the lowest FAR in the downtown areas from Cooper Square to East 13th Street and increasing to a 10 FAR.  The midtown areas enjoy a 15 FAR from East 39th Street to East 55th Street.  All of the areas permit both commercial and residential development, except for East 72nd and East 79th Streets which are residentially zoned.  The construction boom began in the 60s, with both tall commercial and residential towers along the avenue, many with plaza bonuses and air rights transfers which allowed for the additional height.  The Bowery and the area north of 96th Street have remained somewhat unchanged.  However, after 2000, The Bowery itself began to gentrify and attract new development.


Next in The Changing City: The Sixth Avenue El

Many of us are far too young to remember the elevatored train lines which traversed Manhattan, though we are all familiar with the above ground lines in Brooklyn, Queens and The Bronx.  In Manhattan, there were four major lines which ran on Second, Third, Sixth and Ninth Avenues in addition to the shuttle routes on 34th and 42nd Streets.  In November 1886, the lines carried more than three million passengers.  Initially, the routes were steam powered and the fare was five cents.  The five-cent fare remained in place on all New York City bus and train lines until 1948 when it was increased to ten cents.  

The completion of the electrification of the lines was done in 1903 and in the same year, the system was leased to the Interborough Rapid Transit System (IRT) for 999 years.  The stations were generally of wooden construction with pot belly stoves which heated the buildings.  Most of the stations had stained glass windows and the stairways from the street were in the Victorian style and made of ornately crafted wrought iron.


The Second Avenue El

The New York City skyline was primarily composed of church steeples until the invention of the passenger elevator and the use of steel skeleton construction in buildings.  Land values, which were based on how much you could build area-wise in a five- or six-story building, were now being valued on how high you could build on, as small as, a 20-foot wide plot.  The zoning laws of 1916 eventually changed that as did the Sliver Laws (prohibiting construction of tall buildings which are on lots of 45’ wide or less).  


The invention of the elevator (and the later developed safety devices preventing the elevator from falling by Elisha Otis in 1852) made it possible to carry passengers.   The original  elevator was steam powered, but in 1880, the German inventor, Werner von Siemens, applied electric power to elevators and in 1903 the use of the gearless traction elevator allowed the elevator to serve commercial buildings of 100 stories or more.


The second major invention was  the use of steel for the structure.  Prior to that stone and brick were the choice in construction.  However, the higher you wanted to go, the thicker the walls would have to be on the lower levels in order to support the upper levels, reducing the square footage of the lower levels.  The steel-skeleton structures were now able to maintain the support for the upper stories without the need for greater support from the lower stories.  The first “skyscrapers” were built around Park Row and were eight and nine stories high, small buildings by today’s standards, but remarkable in those early days.

Few topics draw the ire of landlords, coop and condo owners more than property taxes.  One would readily assume that in New York City real estate-related taxes rose in 2006 and 2007 but then fell in 2008 through 2010.  A quick look at the tax collections data shows that indeed real property transfer taxes as well as mortgage recording taxes did just that in those years.  However, real property taxes along with commercial rent tax collections both increased steadily from 2006 through 2011 as shown in the chart below.

Given how well New York City’s economy has fared over the last two years in spite of the fact that Wall Street still does not seem able to shake off its hangover from the financial crisis, it should be easy to look into the crystal ball and forecast what will happen in 2013. But this is New York City and unpredictability seems to be the rule.  The unexpected Superstorm Sandy is just the latest.

That said, we maintain an optimistic outlook for the year.  To put the future in perspective, let’s recap the highlights of 2012.  First, New York City added close to 75,000 jobs in 2012 through November.  While December’s data could show a decline, the level of jobs in New York City is 70,000 jobs above the peak employment in 2008.  More importantly, nearly every industry is adding jobs. Wall Street employment has been flat, but even this is surprising given all of the notices of layoffs in the industry. The tourism numbers keep going up: more than 52 million visitors came to New York City in 2012.  These travelers have kept hoteliers, restaurants, retailers, Broadway producers and others very busy. Finally, commercial property sales ended the year on a banner note as nearly $12 billion in sales closed in Manhattan in the fourth quarter, the highest since 2007 when the second quarter neared $20 billion.

The heavy activity in the fourth quarter was due to investors’ motivation to close deals before the capital gains tax went up. This flurry of activity the last few weeks will likely take away significant volume in 2013, but investors are still eager to invest in New York City.
 
Why? First, it’s clear that owners prefer owning well-located bricks to owning paper.   The stock market does not offer the cashflow that real estate does, and the uncertainty in the economy has created significant volatility in the Dow Jones over the last few years. Also, investors want to get capital into the real estate market and start projects in a low interest rate environment.  That said, the most active sector for investors seeking “high-powered yields” will be condominium development, particularly in the outer boroughs — a shift from the post-Lehman years, when investors rushed to buy up multi-family properties and trophy office assets. In Brooklyn, for example, the area around the new Barclay’s Center is buzzing with opportunity.

This means that investors and brokers have to do more homework, but the payoff could be huge given the growth in development in the boroughs. Even after Sandy, Brooklyn remains a sought-after market, and the desirability of its myriad neighborhoods keeps steadily expanding.

Peter Hauspurg is the Chairman and CEO of Eastern Consolidated, the nation’s largest single- office real estate commercial property sales firm in the U.S. with several billion in annual sales, primarily in the New York metropolitan and Tri-State area. Mr. Hauspurg and his partner, President Daun Paris, founded the firm in 1981 and have been creating some of the most significant deals to dot the New York City skyline ever since.

The mood was hectic--laced with cautious optimism.  Owners, tenants, developers and brokers were buzzing about with urgency as the year-end deadline for the lower capital gains rate filled the air.

This year there I received many more inquiries from retail tenants hoping to purchase property or retail condos rather than lease.  Many of the attendees were more eager to consider year-end deals in the hopes of securing a discount in price for the ability to close in less than the 15 business days left in 2012. 

It was a fast-paced show!

Adelaide Polsinelli is Senior Director at Eastern Consolidated and head of its new Retail Sales Group.  In her 26 years of extensive experience as one of New York City’s most active real estate brokers, she has sold over 880 properties, totaling more than $8 billion in sales.  Ms. Polsinelli is a regular columnist for the Commercial Observer and is frequently cited in the Press.

Following a quarter that saw the largest retail property sale in recent history – the retail at the World Trade Center – the volume of retail property sales declined from $778 million to $280 million in the third quarter.  Yet the number of transactions jumped from 18 to 29 in the quarter.  That said, the fourth quarter of 2012 will go down in history as the highest quarter for retail property sales.  Not only will the volume of retail property sales this quarter dwarf those of the last three or more years, but the average price paid will likely exceed $5,000 per square foot. 

Eastern has always had a strong retail sales focus, but given the demands of the marketplace we are now offering an additional level of service when many of our clients are looking for experienced advice.  We’ve appointed industry veteran Senior Director Adelaide Polsinelli to lead our new Retail Sales Group and have hired six new brokers to focus on new business opportunities in the retail arena.   The Group will provide sales brokerage, advisory, research, financial structuring and marketing services. 

Some of our current retail exclusives include the sale of the retail co-op at 237 Lafayette Street currently occupied by BLK-DNM, an international designer men’s and women’s apparel retailer; the master lease on the ground floor retail units at 301 East 64th Street currently occupied by Gourmet Garage and H&R Block; and the prime Tribeca retail condo occupied by MEGU Japanese Restaurant at 62-66 Thomas Street.  Our most recent sale was the 8,354 square foot retail condo at 57-63 Greene Street in Manhattan’s sought-after SoHo neighborhood currently occupied by Bang & Olufsen, the global audio systems retailer and by Cyrus Company and Raul Carrasco, two home furnishing companies. 

To hear more about our current retail deals, stop by our booth #563 at the upcoming ICSC convention in New York on December 3-4. 

Daun Paris is President of Eastern Consolidated.  Over the past three decades, she has served at the helm as a visionary who has helped the firm become the highly regarded investment services industry leader it is today, with over $4 billion in annual sales.