Weekly News (Februray 20, 2019)

A Co-op apartment on 3008 Edwin Ave in Fort Lee got fire at 4pm on 2/14/2019

Total 90 households and 45 units burn down. 300 people evacuated (about 13 – 15 Korean family)
They will be homeless for several months. Near building (3001 Edwin Ave) got damaged by smokes and some residents are evacuated to temporary housing as well
KAAFL (Korean American Ass. in Fort Lee) is helping actively those people in need
Donations are being collected: KAAFL $2000, C Land $1000, P.I. Art Center $1000…

JooHyun Ban Is a nephew of KeeMoon Ban, former UN Secretary General
The charge is for bribing $500,000 to Middle East government executive to make a deal for sale of “Landmark 72” in Vietnam, which is worth of $800M against FCPA and Fraud
JooHyun was working as RE agent in Manhattan and the commission for the deal was a few Million dollars

Real Estate market Long Island City, NY got hurt due to Amazon HQ2 plan drop

Local brokerage house informed 4 developers might re-consider transactions
During 5 weeks after Amazon HQ2 announced, residential asking price went up by 18.8%
NYC Mayor blames Amazon for their abrupt decision to cancel the plan
Amazon got feeling of not-welcoming

NYC Council passed trial law for allowing legal basement rent in East New York area in Brooklyn on 2/13/2019
It will be effective 120 days after Mayor Bill de Blasio signs off.
NYC is making revision for building codes and fire code, construction codes for next 3 years accordingly
Also NYC provides funds to home owners with low interest rate for basement modifications according to the codes
NYC HPD used to prohibit basement as residential unit due to lack of sun light and heavy moisture

The city wants to investigate if they do illegal hotel business and asks to submit about 20,000 listing infomation
NYC law specifies that less than 30 day short terms stay is allowed only when owner lives together
Airbnb says that they also try to find out illegal business within their business

Bloomberg News announced richest 100 towns: #1 town is Atherton, CA which ranks #1 for 3 years. Google/Facebook top executives live in this town which is one of Silicon Valley towns
Average income in this town in 2017 is $450,696
Scarsdale’s average income is $417,335 which was raised by $30,000 from last year
#3 is Cherry Hills Village in Denver, where Peyton Manning who plays quarterback of Denver Broncos lives
Short Hills in Essex Co, NJ is #6
NY has 13 towns and NJ has 18 towns ( Bergen county has 7 towns)

4th Qt RGCP(Real Gross City Product) indicates 3.9% growth, biggest since 2nd Qt 2017 which was 1.4% higher than forecast of 2.5-2.7%
Strong fundamentals are job creation and historically low unemployment
The city created 35,300 jobs during 4th Qt which is Up by 3.2% from last year same period which is much higher than 2.1% nationwide
Type of job creation are healthcare job: 11,000 (Home care: 7000), Education servies:6,500. College/University employment:4300, Leisure/Hotel:4600(Bar and restaurant:2900), Other services: 3600
NYC unemployment rate is 4% while US rate is 3.8%( perfect employment) while Queens shows 3.3%, Manhattan is 3.4%, Staten Island is 3.8%, Brooklyn is 3.9% and Bronx shows 5.3%
Commercial lease rate rose 54.1% sharply from last year while downtown shows 85.6%, midtown south shows 61%, midtown shows 33.2% increase. Rent is up in midtown south and downtown while midtown is dropped
Residential sales is dropped-Manhattan dropped by 3.3%, Queens by 10%, Brooklyn by 5.8% while price went up (Manhattan shows 3.5% up, Queens by 2%, Brooklyn by 5.2%)

Usually raising IR triggers currency value because money flow are seeking for high IR
US Fed is slowing down IR increase which indicates US dollar value becomes weaker
The reality is contrary that UD dollar value raised 1.81 during last 2 weeks
Dollar index is 97.129 which shows dollar value among major 6 currencies in the world, while dollar index was 94.2 in July 2018
Slow economy elsewhere in the world triggers dollar value increase
CNN reported people deem US economy is better than elsewhere makes US dollar strong, considering safe asset protection

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