Westchester County Business Journal 041519

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APRIL 15, 2019 VOL. 55, No. 15

westfaironline.com

One of Elk’s rental properties in Scarsdale.

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A UNIQUE PERSPECTIVE

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WOMEN MEET IN TARRYTOWN

Luxury rental market offers housing alternative

REPORTS SHOW WESTCHESTER OFFICE MARKET TRENDING UP

RENTS CAN REACH $20K PER MONTH FOR A LARGE HOUSE

pkatz@westfairinc.com

BY PETER KATZ pkatz@westfairinc.com

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lthough real estate developer and marketer Gary Hirsch, whose office is in Rye, is confident he could build 60-story apartment buildings if he wanted to, “It’s not what we choose to do,” he told the Business Journal. Nevertheless, Hirsch, who found a real estate niche

20 years ago and has been successfully serving that segment of the market in both Westchester and Fairfield, has been carefully branching out. “My wife Diane and I decided to start a business that had no real presence in the Westchester market or frankly throughout the country, which was to acquire and renovate and rent single-family homes for short-term rentals for as little as 30 days,”

BY PETER KATZ

Hirsch said. “We would buy a house in prime communities like Scarsdale and Rye. We would renovate it, furnish it and advertise it.” Far from being flippers who’d buy, renovate and sell, they targeted people who needed a place to live during their own house renovation, a place to live while waiting to close on their own house purchase and families of corporate executives, many with two or three » HOUSING

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TWO REPORTS ON THE WESTCHESTER OFFICE market put activity in a positive light. A report by commercial real estate services firm CBRE covering the first quarter of 2019 indicates that the market was trending in the right direction as space availability fell and absorption was positive. A first-quarter report by Cushman & Wakefield (C&W) included a finding that overall leasing activity in Westchester increased 2.8 percent from the same period in 2018.

The CBRE report said the first quarter saw just under 251,000 square feet leased, an improvement of 22.5 percent from the first quarter of last year. Although the average asking rent was down 4.3 percent year over year to $28.15 per square foot, CBRE said the dip in the average was because more expensive space had previously been leased or was removed from the market for some other reason. Leasing activity was down from the fourth quarter of 2018 and 12.6 percent » OFFICE MARKET

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