NEW YORK, May 25 (Reuters) – New commercial real estate brokerages are launching in the United States, in what may be a sign that the market’s recovery is durable.

Australia’s UGL Ltd, a huge property manager, plans to expand in the Americas. BGC Partners Inc, which brokers bonds among investment banks, built real estate brokerage Newmark Grubb Knight Frank from acquiring and combining smaller companies.

These players offer a range of services for offices, shopping centers, and hotels, from helping clients buy, sell, or lease property to appraising to managing real estate globally.

The newcomers hope to rival the biggest real estate services companies such as Jones Lang LaSalle Inc and CBRE Group Inc. Often upstarts hope to grow by acquiring smaller competitors in the highly fragmented industry, and hiring away established players.

But they could trip over their own growth plans if they overpay for acquisitions or hires, analysts said. They may also get hurt if the current economic recovery fizzles out.

“These companies that are making acquisitions will have some stumbling blocks,” JMP Securities analyst Will Marks said.

The companies say U.S. commercial property brokerage is a good business now because the market is recovering, and the pace of recovery could quicken. The United States has already moved past the pain that halved property values, even as markets in Europe and Asia are struggling.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc, one of three owners of Archstone, has reached a deal to buy the last portion of the apartment company it does not own for $1.58 billion, said a source familiar with the deal on Thursday.

Lehman will buy the 26.5 percent of Archstone that it already does not own from Bank of America Corp (BAC.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Barclays Plc (BARC.L: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz).

In January, Lehman bought half the banks’ stake, or 26.5 percent of the Archstone, for $1.325 billion. That came after Barclays and Bank of America agreed to sell the 26.5 percent stake to Equity Residential (EQR.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), whose chairman is Sam Zell. However Archstone’s ownership structure gave Lehman the right to match the offer.

The last slice of Archstone was critical to Lehman because under the ownership structure a unanimous vote was required for all important decisions regarding Archstone.

The deal the banks and Equity Residential struck in December also allowed Zell’s company to bid for the last slice of Archstone should it not get the first slice. The second 26.5 percent stake carried a price tag of at least $1.325 billion but that was later raised to $1.5 billion.

The original deal with Equity Residential included a break-up fee for Zell’s company of at least $80 million. Under the deal for the final slice, the break up fee will rise by $70 million for a total of $150 million, the source said.

Representatives from Archstone and Lehman did not return phone calls seeking comment.

NEW YORK, May 23 (Reuters) – Commercial real estate owner Vornado Realty Trust has put interests in two of its malls and one shopping center on the block, according to a person familiar with the deal.

The move comes after Vornado Chairman Steven Roth said last month that the company was too complex and might sell some of its businesses to get its share price moving.

According to the source, Vornado is putting Green Acres Mall, in Long Island New York up for sale; and shopping its interest in Monmouth Mall, in Eatontown, New Jersey; and Kings Plaza Regional Shopping Center in Brooklyn.

Vornado owns 100 percent of the 1.83 million square Green Acres mall according to its annual report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Vornado owns half the 1.47 million square-foot Monmouth Mall and 32.4 percent of the 1.2 million square foot Kings Plaza Shopping Center, according the annual report. Vornado also manages the locations.

A representative from Vornado declined to comment.

Vornado chiefly owns office buildings in New York and Washington, D.C., plus strip and regional malls throughout the country and showrooms. Additionally, it often acts like a hedge fund, taking stakes in other companies such as Toys R Us Inc, J C Penney Co Inc, mortgage servicer and property manager LNR Property Corp, and Lexington Realty Trust.

LAS VEGAS, May 21 (Reuters) – The first shops could throw open their doors in the redeveloped World Trade Center by March 2015, Australian mall operator Westfield said on Monday, 13-and-a-half years after the New York landmark was destroyed in the Sept. 11 attacks.

The redevelopment of the World Trade Center is years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget.

After years of negotiation, Westfield last week signed a deal with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey for a $1.25 billion joint venture to lease the retail space at the World Trade Center.

Westfield, one of the world’s biggest mall owners, said the first retailers for the redeveloped site could be announced by the first half of 2013, with an opening date set for March 2015.

Potential tenants of the rebuilt World Trade Center got a peak at what the new shopping area may look like during a trade conference in Las Vegas on Monday.

Westfield Co-Chief Executive Peter Lowy said 352,000 sq feet of shopping would be spread over three above-ground levels and two below ground.

Westfield is also entitled to operate another 90,000 sq feet of retail space among the 8.8 million sq feet of office space under construction.

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) – The first shops could throw open their doors in the redeveloped World Trade Center by March 2015, Australian mall operator Westfield said on Monday, 13-and-a-half years after the New York landmark was destroyed in the September 11 attacks.

The redevelopment of the World Trade Center is years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget.

After years of negotiation, Westfield last week signed a deal with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey for a $1.25 billion joint venture to lease the retail space at the World Trade Center.

Westfield, one of the world’s biggest mall owners, said the first retailers for the redeveloped site could be announced by the first half of 2013, with an opening date set for March 2015.

Potential tenants of the rebuilt World Trade Center got a peak at what the new shopping area may look like during a trade conference in Las Vegas on Monday.

Westfield Co-Chief Executive Peter Lowy said 352,000 sq feet of shopping would be spread over three above-ground levels and two below ground.

Westfield is also entitled to operate another 90,000 sq feet of retail space among the 8.8 million sq feet of office space under construction.

NEW YORK, May 18 (Reuters) – The price for staking ground on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue jumped 22 percent in the past year, spurred by a record number of tourists spending their dollars at top U.S. and international retailers on America’s most coveted shopping ground.

The asking rent for street-level stores on Fifth Avenue between 50th and 59th streets rose to $2,750 per square foot this spring, the Real Estate Board of New York said in a report released Friday.

The stretch is home to world-famous stores including the flagships of Saks Inc and Tiffany & Co, as well as Bergdorf Goodman and a top-grossing Apple Inc store instantly recognizable for its large glass cube entrance near Central Park.

It has also attracted foreign retailers, notably Fast Retailing Co Ltd’s Uniqlo and Inditex’s Zara which in the last year have each opened flagships on Fifth Avenue.

“What’s pushing Fifth Avenue is basically the tourism. All international brands want to be represented there,” said C. Bradley Mendelson, executive vice president of real estate services company Cushman & Wakefield.

Stores on the stretch have benefited from the constant stream of international shoppers who crowd the sidewalks.

According to New York City statistics, a record 50.6 million visitors came to the city last year, up 43.8 percent since 2001.

May 16 (Reuters) – A U.S. developer and a Canadian pension fund o n W ednesday announced plans to build a 45-story office tower in the West Loop in downtown Chicago, even though they have no tenants yet for the building, a $300 million project.

Ivanhoé Cambridge, the investment arm of Canadian pension fund Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, and Houston-based developer Hines unveiled plans for a 900,000 square-foot skyscraper, one of the rare speculative buildings planned in the United States.

It will be the largest real estate project in started in Chicago in the past five years.

The investment is expected to close by the end of the month with the construction of a 1.5 acre public park to begin by year end. Construction of the tower, to be called River Point, will begin in about a year and will be ready for occupancy by 2016.

“It’s a city and market that we have been monitoring for a long time,” said Rita-Rose Gagné, Senior vice president, strategy, for Ivanhoé Cambridge, one of the world’s 10 largest real estate companies, with assets of more than CAD30 billion.

The Chicago downtown office market has a vacancy rate of 13.4 percent, down from 14.4 percent in the first quarter 2010, according to CoStar Group Inc. That’s above equilibrium point of about 9 percent where tenants and landlords have about the same power during lease negotiations.

In the West Loop, office vacancy was 13.6 in the first quarter 2012, down from 16.9 two years ago, according to CoStar.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The controller of the Empire State Building has offered investors the opportunity to sell some of their shares and relieve some of the expected tax burden if a proposed initial public offering is approved before the end of the year, according to a federal filing on Tuesday.

But that may not be enough to help the 2,824 investors pay what could be a tax liability somewhere between $50,000 and more than $100,000 depending on the pricing of the IPO shares and where the investor lives.

Malkin Holdings LLC, which controls the U.S. skyscraper, has slightly bowed to pressure from investors by allowing them to sell between 19.5 percent and 17 percent of their shares if the IPO occurs before December 31, according to the amended IPO form filed on Tuesday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

They can sell another 30.5 percent to 33 percent after the first 180 days of trading for a total of 50 percent, according to one of two IPO-related documents filed with the SEC on Tuesday.

That’s up from a 180-day lock-up originally proposed, but it still may not be enough to persuade the investors to vote to allow the building to be part of a larger planned real estate investment trust, to be called Empire State Realty Trust Inc.

Some investors and their advisors said the tax bill on the investment made in 1961 for $10,000 per unit could be more than $100,000 a unit. Approval after October would not likely give them nearly enough cash to pay the taxes on the investment.

In addition, the price of REIT’s shares could fall between the offering and when the lock-up expires, as often they do when thousands of stockholders can sell their shares. That would leave less to use to satisfy the Internal Revenue Service.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Vornado Realty Trust (VNO.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), owner of U.S. office and retail properties, reported better-than-expected quarterly earnings on Monday, despite softness in its Washington, D.C. area operations.

The company said first-quarter funds from operations (FFO) attributable to common shareholders was $348.5 million, or $1.82 per share, compared with $505.9 million, or $2.64 per share, a year ago, when the company recorded one-time gains from debt extinguishment and mezzanine loan loss reversals.

Analysts, on average, had expected the company to post first-quarter FFO of $1.77 per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Excluding non-comparable items, FFO was $346.8 million, or $1.81 per share, versus $331.2 million, or $1.73 per share, a year ago.

FFO, a measure of performance at a real estate investment trust, removes the profit-reducing effect that depreciation has on earnings and gains or losses from property sales.

Vornado, with office and retail property in New York, Washington and Chicago, has seen its stock underperform its peers for years.

The company has said it is considering selling some of its assets, including its regional malls, its stake in retailer Toys R US, and even breaking up the company altogether.

May 3 (Reuters) – Private equity firm TPG Capital Management LP has agreed to take a 43 percent stake in Parkway Properties Inc, which will use the cash infusion to buy the Hearst Tower in Charlotte, North Carolina, from Bank of America Corp .

The bank, in turn, has agreed to rent back space in a 10-year lease.

The Florida-based real estate investment trust said that TPG’s $200 million equity stake in the company will enable it to take advantage of opportunities to buy more properties at good prices.

“This investment in Parkway by TPG allows us to take advantage of these prospects,” Jim Heistand, Parkway’s president and chief executive, said in a statement on Thursday.

Parkway will use the cash infusion to acquire the 972,000 square-foot Hearst Tower for $250 million, or $257 per square foot. The building is 94 percent leased, with no meaningful leases expiring until 2017.

Bank of America has agreed to a lease for 322,000 square feet at the bottom of the building.

Parkway will initially use the TPG cash for the building, but then expects to replace some of that investment with a mortgage.