The most valuable market in the world.
Also the hardest.
New York is the most valuable real estate market in the world and the hardest to execute in from abroad. The complexity is the moat, and L3 lives inside it.
The case the firm makes to family offices, private equity and corporations outside the United States, Asia first: why New York, why now, and why it takes a company on the ground.
An economy the size of a country.
New York is not a city market. Its metropolitan economy is larger than every economy in Asia except China and Japan, and it trades in the one currency every partner already holds.
New York–Newark–Jersey City metro, BEA, 2024 · countries, IMF World Economic Outlook estimates, 2026 · nominal US dollars
Income and residual value in the reserve currency, held in a building rather than a balance — with the partner's own low home-currency borrowing cost working for it.
Ownership is recorded, insurable and searchable. A foreign owner is an owner, with the same standing in court as anyone else.
Purchase contracts, venture agreements and construction contracts are enforced as written. Disputes have a forum and a timetable.
What a foreign buyer pays on top, city by city.
Most gateway cities now tax or bar the foreign buyer. New York does neither.
Additional Buyer's Stamp Duty on any residential purchase by a foreigner, since April 2023.
Purchase of residential property by non-Canadians prohibited under federal law through 1 January 2027.
Established homes off-limits to foreign persons from April 2025 to March 2027; new dwellings allowed with a 9% surcharge duty in New South Wales.
A 2% non-resident surcharge and a 5% additional-dwelling surcharge on top of standard rates, to a top band of 17%.
Buyer's Stamp Duty and the other surcharges on non-residents abolished in February 2024.
A foreign buyer pays what a New Yorker pays: the same transfer and mansion taxes, no surcharge, no restriction on what can be bought. Withholding applies on the eventual sale.
Singapore IRAS, April 2023 · Government of Canada, Prohibition on the Purchase of Residential Property by Non-Canadians, extended to 2027 · Australian Treasury and Revenue NSW, 2025 · HMRC SDLT rates from October 2024 · Hong Kong Inland Revenue, February 2024 · New York State and City transfer and mansion tax schedules. Rules change; verify at the time of a purchase.
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED): DGS10, SOFR, MORTGAGE30US, DEXTAUS, DEXJPUS, DEXHKUS, DEXSIUS, DEXKOUS, DEXCHUS. Snapshot in the prototype; updated daily in the build.
Twenty years of prices. Two crises. One direction.
The city adds jobs faster than homes and has for a decade. The result is a vacancy rate near one percent and a price index that recovered from both of the century's shocks.
S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller New York Home Price Index (NYXRSA), January of each year, via FRED; latest July 2026.
Four plays, three boroughs.
The firm does not buy the market. It buys four situations, each with a page that says how.
Re-rating
Brooklyn and Queens neighborhoods on the waterfront and the subway, priced below Manhattan and closing the gap. Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Astoria.
Track record →Enlargement
Existing buildings with unused development rights under zoning: add floors, keep the lot. The play behind KIBO Residences.
KIBO Residences →Conversion
Office, loft and industrial buildings turned residential, under zoning changes adopted in 2024 that widened what can be converted.
Entitlement →Condominium pipeline
Ground-up condominium development where land cost, zoning and the buyer pool line up. KORA Astoria is the current one.
KORA Astoria →The opportunity is real. The execution is the risk: an offering plan, a Department of Buildings, a lender, a contractor and a broker, each with its own rules and its own clock. Running them from seven thousand miles away is what goes wrong. Running them from one company in New York is the answer — see How We Work.
How We Work
Six stages, under one roof. Capital, acquisition, entitlement, construction, sales and asset management, carried by companies the firm controls.