Clockwise from top left: Eastern Consolidated set to close (credit: Eastern Consolidated, Facebook, and iStock), Cushman & Wakefield files for IPO (credit: Vornado Realty Trust), LaSalle Hotel Properties sticks with Blackstone bid (credit: Booking), and EXp Realty doubles its broker count (credit: Eastern Consolidated, Facebook, and iStock).
Cushman & Wakefield officially files for an initial public offering
Last month, sources told The Real Deal that Cushman & Wakefield planned to file for an initial public offering, and this week, the global commercial brokerage made it official by filing its paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Cushman didn’t say how many shares it plans to offer — or at what price. In December, the brokerage’s competitor, Newmark Knight Frank, had its own $615 million initial public offering, which garnered lukewarm results initially. JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, UBS Investment Bank and Morgan Stanley will be the book-runners for Cushman’s offering. [TRD]
Eastern Consolidated’s closing puts its brokers back on the market
Eastern Consolidated’s founding couple Peter Hauspurg and Daun Paris announced last week that the commercial brokerage would be closing, after they’d made a failed attempt at finding a buyer. The firm follows in the footsteps of Town Residential, which announced its closing back in April. Its closure is putting around 100 brokers back on the market, sparking a recruitment frenzy, according to sources. [TRD]
Nearly 40 million American households are cost-burdened, according to a report
Almost a third of American households, or nearly 40 million households, spent more than 30 percent of their incomes on housing in 2016, according to a new Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies report. That number decreased since 2015, but the market hasn’t improved much for renters since the recession, the report found. The share of renters who are cost burdened is at about 47 percent, according to the findings. [TRD]
LaSalle sticks with Blackstone despite increased Pebblebrook offer
Pebblebrook Hotel Trust’s increased offer to acquire LaSalle Hotel Properties wasn’t enough to derail Blackstone Group’s bid for the real estate investment trust company. LaSalle is standing by its preference for Blackstone, saying that Pebblebrook’s new offer “does not constitute, and could not reasonably be expected to lead to, a ‘superior proposal.’” Nevertheless, Pebblebrook has increased its stake in LaSalle to 10 million shares. Pebblebrook chairman and CEO Jon Bortz has claimed LaSalle shareholders support an acquisition by his company. The Blackstone deal values LaSalle at $4.8 billion. [TRD]
‘Cloud brokerage’ EXp Realty doubles the number of brokers it employs
A “cloud brokerage” where agents navigate a virtual office and use avatars to make deals has doubled the number of agents it employs. EXp Realty now has 12,000 agents, Inman reported. Last month, it crossed a $1 billion market cap on the first day it started trading on the Nasdaq. The brokerage has grown by 85 percent since the beginning of the year, according to its founder Glenn Sanford, and recently expanded into Canada. [Inman]
MAJOR MARKET HIGHLIGHTS
Related Companies hopes to secure DOT loan for New York Hudson Yards project
The developer behind the Hudson Yards development on Manhattan’s west side is hoping to secure a $1 billion low-interest loan from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Railroad Rehabilitation & Improvement Financing federal loan program, Politico first reported. Related Companies would use the loan to complete Hudson Yards’ next phase. The money would come from the same source from which the Gateway project has tried to secure funding. Related will have to team up with a railroad partner to access the funds. [TRD]
Buyers with ties to Russia spent millions on Trump properties in Florida and NYC
Buyers with ties to Russia or former Soviet republics have shelled out millions of dollars in cash for Trump properties in Sunny Isles, Florida and New York City, according to a McLatchy analysis reported by the Miami Herald. The buyers spent $109 million on 86 properties in the two areas, and many of the deals used shell companies. “The millions of dollars in previously unreported, all-cash real estate deals we discovered raise troubling questions about who is funding [Trump’s] businesses, why, and what they’re getting in return,” the communications director for the Trump War Room at American Bridge told McClatchy. [TRD]
Amoeba Music co-owners hope to sell recreational weed at new LA store
The co-owners of iconic Sunset Boulevard music store Amoeba Music say they want to snag a marijuana dispensary permit and sell recreational pot when they move to their new, yet-to-be-determined location nearby. Marc Weinstein and Dave Prinz sold the store to a developer for $34 million several years ago and plan to move to a new location next year. If the store gets a permit, it will follow in the footsteps of Amoeba Music’s Berkeley branch, which started selling pot from a “boutique dispensary” called Hi-Fidelity next to its store in May. [TRD]
CNBC star Marcus Lemonis sells Chicago condo for $3.25M
Marcus Lemonis, the star of CNBC’s “The Profit,” has sold his Gold Coast condo for $3.25 million — turning a profit on the three-bedroom home, which he bought for $3 million in August 2016. The home, which has more than two dozen floor-to-ceiling windows, took only took about a month to sell to its unidentified buyer. It’s adjacent to the Tremont Chicago Hotel and near a historic mansion that’s currently on the market. [TRD]
39 San Fran high-rises could collapse during an earthquake, study finds
Thirty-nine high-rises in San Francisco were built using a “defective construction method” and could end up collapsing if the city experiences an 8-magnitude earthquake, according to a new government study. Builders reportedly started using the method in the 1980s. An earthquake engineering expert told the New York Times the problem should have been addressed years ago. “This is an issue that structural engineers should have been dealing with continuously since the mid-1990s and we just dropped it,” he said. [TRD]
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