New York also took second place in trophy sales behind Hong Kong, with seven sales above $50 million, and seven of 24 penthouse sales. The top 10 trophy sales worldwide totaled $1.24 billion, down slightly from $1.32 billion in 2016. New York City's contribution to the list was the the $91 million purchase of the penthouse at 432 Park Avenue which was fifth most expensive sale globally. The No. 1 sale was a property in Hong Kong, called the Peak, which sold for a stratospheric $360 million.

In 2017, the wealth of the world's billionaires grew to $9.1 trillion, according to Forbes, with more than 2,200 billionaires worldwide. If you include those with $500 million or more, that number increases to $11.7 trillion, said Conn. This means there is an incredible amount of capital to be deployed, he added.

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One feature of the market in 2017, and continuing into 2018, is the degree to which it is a buyer's market, said Dan Conn, CEO of Christie's, particularly uber-luxury buyers. "They don't have to go the dance," he said. It's up to sellers to woo them.

... marketing materials for MNC Lido City refer to the theme park and Trump properties as flagship elements of the development, and corporate filings and internal documents show the Trump Organisation and the president's sons have been directly involved in various stages of its planning.

Negotiations on the Lido deal began before Trump's November 2016 election and subsequent pledge that his family business would not engage in new transactions with foreign governments during his presidency.

Still, "even if this deal is completely and entirely above board, it simply furthers the perception of impropriety" surrounding Trump's business dealings, said Christopher Balding, an economics professor at Shenzhen's HSBC Business School. "Especially with the potential trade war, this is not a good look ... Critics will be entirely right to demand answers."

"They were all discounted," Extell President Gary Barnett said in an interview. "That definitely has something to do with convincing people that it's time to buy and that they're getting a good value."

...

At One57, Extell gave discounts in the quarter ranging from "single digit" percentages to bigger deals higher up in the tower, where the units are pricier, Barnett said. In some cases the developer covered the closing costs. Barnett said the two biggest sales were for about $24 million each. Not all the deals and their exact prices have been filed publicly yet with the city.

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The pain threshold for the US housing market is at 6% (average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, as measured by the MBA, conforming, with 20% down)... There may well be a cold-shower effect at around 5% that will sober up some home buyers. But pain will set in at around 6%. People have forgotten what a 6% mortgage feels like though that's still a historically low rate. And they've never had to finance homes at these sky-high prices at 6%. That'll be the new thing. And something will have to give.

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The office-leasing startup WeWork plans to raise more funding through a $500 million bond sale, according to the Financial Times. It's the first time the company is raising money from debt investors after it raised billions in venture capital from backers such as SoftBank.

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The framing of homes, or putting up roofs and walls, accounts for 15 percent of the cost of construction. A composite measure of the cost of lumber for framing rose 16 percent from December to March ... and it's not just lumber. A Labor Department gauge of prices paid at the producer level for construction inputs -- everything from particleboard and plumbing to concrete and insulation -- was up 5.1 percent in March from a year earlier, the biggest annual advance in nearly eight years.

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So far, neither higher home prices or a four-year high in mortgage costs have been enough to dissuade buyers. Results of the Conference Board's consumer confidence index on Tuesday showed 1.7 percent of the group's respondents in April planned to purchase a new home in the next six months, matching the highest share in this expansion.

...

At some point, affordability will become a bigger issue for those wanting to own a home. So far though, consumers are taking higher home prices in stride and builders remain relatively upbeat about the market's prospects.

Now, 23.9% of the shrunken mortgage-interest deduction is projected to go to households making more than $500,000 with 28.9% of the benefit going to households between $100,000 and $200,000.

Other changes in policy also curb the mortgage-interest deduction, including the cut in marginal tax rates, which reduces the value of every deduction. Homeowners can now deduct interest on up to $750,000 in loans, down from $1m...

Today, 247,977 units -- equivalent to more than 11% of all rental apartments in New York City -- sit either empty or scarcely occupied, even as many New Yorkers struggle to find an apartment they can afford.

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But that still leaves more than 100,000 units -- 74,945 occupied temporarily or seasonally, and 27,009 held off the market for unexplained reasons.

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Additionally, many of the 75,000 temporary apartments are pied-à-terres, weekend or vacation crash pads for the rich, up from just 9,282 in 1987.

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Rewind again to 1987. The city, still recovering from decades of arson and abandonment, had 6,241 apartments that were vacant because they were too dilapidated to inhabit -- down from nearly 23,000 in 1975. The median asking rent for someone looking for an apartment to move into that year was $450 -- just 14% higher than median rent existing tenants paid.

Given the apparent benefits of bringing busted-up apartments back into use, it was possible to argue that encouraging more renovation and construction would be good for the city.

In 2017, the Census Bureau couldn't even locate enough dilapidated apartments to count -- but did find a median asking rent of $1,875, 30% higher than what a typical existing tenant pays. What's more, the vacancy rate for those expensive units is huge. Almost half the apartments available for rent in New York cost more than $2,000 a month -- and the vacancy rate for them is above 7%.

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More than 63,000 New Yorkers are living in homeless shelters (almost three times more than in 1987), and 30% of city households are shelling out more than half their income in rent. What they and all New Yorkers need is not simply the construction of more housing, but better means to keep rents within reach.

This is starting to be brought back in line by a price crash, now. Of course, that won't bring down the vacancy numbers for a while, as new supply is added even faster.

FBI agents on Monday raided Cohen's Manhattan office, home and hotel room as part of the investigation, seizing records about Cohen's clients and personal finances. Among the records taken were those related to a 2016 payment Cohen made to adult-film star Stormy Daniels, who claims to have had a sexual encounter with Trump, according to a fourth person familiar with the investigation.

Investigators took Cohen's computer, phone and personal financial records, including tax returns, as part of the search of his office at Rockefeller Center, that person said.

In a dramatic and broad seizure, federal prosecutors collected communications between Cohen and his clients -- including those between the lawyer and Trump, according to both people.

The raids -- part of an investigation referred by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III to federal prosecutors in New York -- point to escalating legal jeopardy for a longtime Trump confidant who is deeply intertwined in the president's business and personal matters.

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Two of the potential crimes being investigated -- bank fraud and wire fraud -- suggest prosecutors have some reason to think Cohen may have misled bankers about why he was using particular funds or may have improperly used banks in the transfer of funds.

Cohen has acknowledged facilitating a $130,000 payment in October 2016 to Daniels, who claims she had a sexual relationship with Trump in 2006.

Trump made his first comments about the payment last week, saying he did not know about the transaction.

Cohen has said he used a home-equity line of credit to finance the payment to Daniels and said that neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign reimbursed him for the payment.

Banks don't usually require much explanation from customers about how they use such credit lines. However, Cohen may have been asked to provide explanation for the large-dollar transfers he made when he moved the money to a shell company and then to a lawyer for Daniels.

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To serve a search warrant on a practicing attorney, federal prosecutors are required to obtain approval from top Justice Department officials. That means the acting U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Geoffrey S. Berman [A Trump supporter], who was appointed to his role by Sessions in January, as well as Justice Department officials in Washington, probably signed off.

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To pursue criminal charges against Cohen for breaking federal election law, prosecutors would have to prove that he made the payment to Daniels to influence the election, rather than for personal reasons -- to protect Trump's reputation, for example, or his marriage.

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At some point, Cohen's New York bank, First Republic, flagged the transaction to the Treasury Department as a suspicious payment, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Cohen used his Trump Organization email in negotiating the agreement with Davidson and in communicating with his bank about the funds.

In February, after a watchdog group filed a complaint about the payment with the Federal Election Commission, Cohen released a statement saying he "used my own personal funds to facilitate" the payment. He rejected the idea that the payment should have counted as a campaign contribution.

This article has very comprehensive background with all you need to understand the possible basis for RICO-type charges against Trump, Cohen, and associates.

The flexible office space startup led by Amol Sarva has now raised $100 million between two seed rounds, and is valued at $500 million, according to research firm Pitchbook.

Knotel, which in the past two years has leased more than 1.1 million square feet in New York, San Francisco and London, said the new funding will allow the company to double in size.

The Kushners' partner, the publicly traded Vornado Realty Trust, has indicated for months that it was interested in selling its stake in the building, and on Friday, Steven Roth, Vornado's chairman, said in the filing that it had reached a handshake deal "to sell our interest to our partner."

The Kushners have attracted enormous public attention because of their connection to President Trump. Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump's son-in-law, was chief executive of the company until he joined the White House last year as one of Mr. Trump's key advisers.

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It is unclear if the announcement from Vornado means the Kushners have found a new partner, or who might be providing the financing for such a deal.

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In 2011, the Kushners sought to restructure their debt. Vornado bought a 49.5 percent interest in the building's office space and agreed to invest up to $80 million and take responsibility for a portion of the mortgage. The mortgage was divided into a $1.1 billion note and a $115 million secondary loan.

But Vornado imposed stiff terms. It was getting 11 percent interest on money it actually invested in the building, and a 3 percent return on the remaining money, if any, according to a financial report from Trepp, a company that tracks real estate debt.

The mortgage has swelled to $1.4 billion with accrued interest. The partners have been forced to cover shortfalls on the mortgage payments. And Vornado subsequently bought much of the retail space along Fifth Avenue from Crown and Carlyle for $707 million, except for a portion owned by Zara, the Spanish clothing chain. Vornado is expected to hang onto the retail space.

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While just a few years ago, bidding wars were the norm, "there's nothing out there today that points to prices going up, and in many buyers' minds, they point to being flat," said Pamela Liebman, chief executive officer of brokerage Corcoran Group. "They're now aggressive in the opposite way: putting in very low offers and seeing what concessions they can get from the sellers."

Corcoran Group released its own Manhattan market report Tuesday, showing an 11 percent decrease in completed purchases and a 10 percent drop in sales that are pending.

For sellers, to reach a deal in the first quarter was to accept a lower offer. Fifty-two percent of all sales that closed in the period were for less than the last asking price, according to Miller Samuel and Douglas Elliman. Buyers agreed to pay the asking price in 38 percent of deals, but often that figure had already been reduced. Combined, the share of deals without a premium was the biggest since the end of 2012.

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The median price of all sales that closed in the quarter was $1.095 million, down 5.2 percent from a year earlier, brokerage Town Residential said in its own report. Three-bedroom apartments saw the biggest drop, with a decline of 7 percent to a median of $3.82 million, the firm said.

Neither new developments nor resales were spared from buyer apathy. Purchases of newly constructed condos, which continue to proliferate on the market, plummeted 54 percent in the quarter to 259, Miller Samuel and Douglas Elliman said. Sales of previously owned apartments dropped 18 percent to 1,921.

Ruh-roh!

Property experts claim sellers have been forced to accept GFC-level price declines due to a weakening market which makes it difficult to achieve the inflated sums properties were fetching six months or even a year ago.

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Sydney's median home price fell 1.3 per cent over the three months to December and by another 2.5 per cent in the following three months to March, according to property research group CoreLogic.

The latest three-month decline was the largest since August 2008, near the height of the GFC, and helped push the typical price of a home back down to $880,743.

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Median prices of the apartments that sold fell slightly, by 1.5%, from the same quarter in 2017. But average prices dropped by 10% in the same period.

The Journal's analysis, based on sale documents filed with the city's Department of Finance as of March 23, put the median price of a Manhattan apartment at $1.095 million, about 8% below the all-time peak price recorded in the second quarter last year.

The median price for a condominium in the first quarter was $1.625 million, down 4.6% from the year-earlier quarter. The median price of a co-op was $810,000, up 7.3% during the same period. Sales of co-ops above $4 million rose by more than 30%, while sales below $1 million were down 7.4%.

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The top sale in the first quarter to date--a red-brick-and-limestone mansion on East 69th Street near Central Park--illustrates this pattern of price cutting. The house sold for $39 million in mid-March. It was listed for as much as $55 million in 2016, before several price cuts. It had previously sold for $48 million in 2011.

Sales inventory is also increasing. A new report by Brown Harris Stevens found that inventory in Manhattan is up 14% in March, compared with a year earlier. The biggest increase in supply is among studio and one-bedroom apartments.

Eichner, who has notoriously gone bust in each of the past three decades but bounces back each time, is now battling with his joint-venture partners Fortress Investment Group and Dune Real Estate Partners over financing at his glassy Flatiron District condominium tower at 45 East 22nd Street.

The head of the Continuum Company is accusing Fortress and Dune of stymying his efforts to refinance the struggling project in an effort to protect their returns, thus edging him toward default and putting him on the hook for personal guarantees, according to a lawsuit Eichner filed in Manhattan Supreme Court Wednesday.

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The condo project, like many across the city, is struggling to move units amid a slow sales market. Eichner claims that more than 70 percent of the units are sold, but when the $343 million construction loan Goldman Sachs provided for the project came due last fall, the partners had to seek additional financing to complete construction.

Now the pendulum is swinging back in the other direction. One reason: the sheer accumulation of wealth in the hands of corporate behemoths. Cash and liquid investments held by U.S. non-financial firms rose by 5 percent in 2017 to $1.9 trillion, according to a November report by ratings agency Moody's. The report projected Google's parent company Alphabet would hold $103 billion in cash by the end of last year. Apple's cash reserves were projected at a staggering $265 billion.

Companies need to store all that wealth somewhere, and low interest rates make bank accounts and bonds somewhat less appealing. Real estate offers an alternative. Meanwhile, the recently passed federal tax reform allows firms to repatriate their offshore wealth at a lower tax rate for a limited time, adding an incentive to move funds from overseas into the New York property market.

Another big change concerns accounting rules. In the past, companies weren't required to list leases as liabilities on their balance sheets, even though that's exactly what they are. But starting in 2019, that will change. Public companies that sign leases will have to include their present value as liabilities, making them look worse on paper. Companies that buy buildings may add liabilities in the form of a mortgage, but they also add a valuable property to their balance sheet.

The decision is a blow to Trump, who has long claimed that his business arrangements are legal and do not pose a conflict of interest. 

Critics say that Trump is violating the emoluments clause, which bans presidents from receiving gifts or payments from foreign governments without Congress's explicit approval.

After the 2016 election, Trump broke with precedent by refusing to divest in his businesses. The then-president elect instead placed his assets in a trust controlled by his two adult sons.

Ethics watchdogs say the president is violating the clause every time his hotels or golf courses receive payments from foreign governments because Trump still owns his stake in them.

The Trump Organization has said it would donate all profits from foreign governments to the U.S. Treasury. Last month, the Treasury Department said it received a check from the business meant to cover last year, but would not confirm the check's amount or date.

Messitte sided with attorneys general in Washington, D.C., and Maryland who argued they have standing to sue because other hotels in the region must compete with the Trump International Hotel for business. 

It's still a conflict of interest even if Trump returns every penny of profits.