Matchmaker, Matchmaker Find Me a Building

2014 witnessed an eye-popping boom in real estate. In Times Square, an office building changed hands at almost double the price paid for it only one year earlier. The number of transactions is up even as the average price paid per square foot has soared.

And this is where Adelaide Polsinelli comes in: Her job is to meet investors’ seemingly bottomless demand for New York real estate. She’s a broker at Eastern Consolidated, working with clients who are opinionated, ambitious, and rich.

One strategy, she said, is to look outside Manhattan and Brooklyn for deals.

“This is the new Frontier. Third Avenue in the Bronx is going to be where all the action is,” Polsinelli said, pointing at a map of the South Bronx. The area has two new hotels, an Old Navy, a Gap, and a Planet Fitness.

Another strategy is to go tall. Polsinelli recently brokered a deal for a Manhattan rental building, in which the buyer paid $1,300 per square foot, a figure Polsinelli calls “insane.” However, by knocking down the building and replacing it with a 40-story tower, the buyer can effectively reduce his cost per square foot to $500 to $600. It’s a costly way to justify an already expensive purchase.