Although One World Trade Center's steel structure officially topped out in August of 2012, the last piece of its spire was put in place this year. The spire reaches a height of 1,776 ft. 

Then, in November, the structure was officially recognized by Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat as the tallest building in the United States.

In other big news for the complex, Westfield struck a deal to take complete ownership of the World Trade Center retail center when the project comes online in 2015.

Westfield agreed to pay the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey $800 million for a 50 percent stake in the 365,000-sq.-ft. property. 

In June, Glenn Rufrano shocked everyone with his sudden resignation as CEO of brokerage giant Cushman & Wakefield. The move sparked speculation as to whether it meant more was brewing for the firm.

Carlo Barel di Sant’Albano stepped in as interim CEO at the time. Rufrano had been CEO of the company since early 2010 and will remain with the company for a transitional period to assist the board and the senior management team in ensuring a smooth transition. His departure had not been discussed prior to the announcement.

In November, Rufrano resurfaced and was named chairman and CEO of O'Connor Capital Partners.  Rufrano was a founding partner of predecessor The O'Connor Group and who has served as a board member since 2010. In addition, he acquired a full partnership stake in the firm. 

In December, the firm named a replacement when it hired Edward Forst, onetime global co-head of Goldman, Sachs & Co.’s Investment Management Division, to serve as the new president & CEO of the global commercial real estate services firm.

In late June, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke outlined a plan for the Federal Reserve Bank to begin scaling back its monthly bond purchases--so-called quantitative easing. The monthly purchases had help keep long-term interest rates surpressed. And in the aftermath of the announcement rates spiked about 100 basis points. 

The shift in interest rates led to an adjustment in capital markets and contributed to a temporary slowdown in commercial real estate investment sales. But by and large, commercial real estate investment activity continued unabated. Markets have now adjusted to the new conditions and investors and lenders are poised to see rates rise further in 2014. 

In July, NREI spoke with Brian Bailey, a senior financial policy analyst in the supervision and regulation division at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, to get a sense of the Fed's take on commercial real estate. 

After a series of high-profile flameouts at various retail firms, Bill Ackman disclosed in a letter to investors of Pershing Square Capital that he was throwing in the towel on the sector.

Ackman referred to his involvement with the Borders Group, Target and J.C. Penney as “failures,” adding that “retail has not been our strong suit, and this is duly noted.” Ackman showed he was serious by selling off his entire stake in J.C. Penney, at a reported loss of approximately $500 million.

Retail consultants hope his example will serve as a cautionary tale to other investors with no previous experience in retail management who may be tempted to step in and “save” struggling chains.

“The message is that if you have the idea that you are going to swoop into a retail company and make easy money, it just isn’t going to happen,” says Bob Phibbs, The Retail Doctor, a retail consultant based in Coxsackie, N.Y. Phibbs brings up Sears’ Eddie Lampert as another example of a hedge fund tycoon whose forays into retail have had disastrous results.

In October, Ivanhoé Cambridge announced the acquisition from an affiliate of Beacon Capital Partners LLC of a 51 percent managing member interest in 1211 Avenue of the Americas, a 2-million-sq.-ft. office building in New York City, the transaction represents an investment of more than $850 million.

The transaction puts the total value of the tower at about $1.68 billion according to Real Capital Analytics, which makes it highest valued asset to trade hands in 2013. It's one of seven transactions that took place in 2013 where the assets were valued at more than $1 billion. All seven took place in New York City.

American Realty Capital Properties Inc. and Cole Real Estate Investments Inc. signed a definitive agreement to merge the two companies in a deal valued at $11.2 billion. The merger will create the largest net lease REIT in the country, with an enterprise value of $21.5 billion.

Under the terms of the deal, Cole will become a wholly owned subsidiary of ARCP. 

The deal came just months after Cole had rebuffed a series of offers from ARCP. 

Sources who closely follow the REIT sector note the terms of the deal were not drastically different from those offered for CCPT III back in March. At an estimated $14.59 per share, ARCP is paying full price for Cole’s shares, says Barry Vinocur, editor of REIT Zone Publications, which focuses on REIT coverage. ARCP originally offered $12 per share for CCPT III. It then raised the price to $12.50 per share in cash or $13.59 per share in stock. (After rejecting the offer, CCPT III completed its acquisition of Cole Holdings Corp., its property management company, and ended up undergoing an IPO in June of this year. Its shares started trading at $11.50 apiece).

But, “if you wanted to be cynical, you might say that Chris Cole wasn’t interested in the deal until he merged Cole Holdings into the entity. These things are always hard to figure out. There are a lot of social issues involved in these kinds of transactions.”

In November, Blackstone Group put together a securitization backed exclusively by income from single-family rental properties—Invitation Homes 2013-SFR-1. The $500 million deal bundles rental homes into securities where the rental payments will be passed through to investors.

Blackstone has invested heavily in the sector and acquired the largest single-family portfolio in the country, some 30,000 to 40,000 homes and invested $7 billion in the sector. The homes it acquires are offered for rent through a venture called Invitation Homes.

Other institutional investors that have amassed portfolios of single-family homes are expected to follow suit with their own securitizations. IPOs are another popular strategy for the sector.

A UBS AG fund acquired a joint venture stake in Water Tower Place in Chicago in a deal that values the Michigan Avenue mall at about $810 million. It ranks with Westfield's acquisition of the retail portion of the World Trade Center as the biggest single asset retail deal of the year.

The bank's Trumbull Property Fund acquired a 50 percent interest in the shopping center from an Alcatel-Lucent pension fund. General Growth Properties Inc. owns the rest of the property.

Westfield agreed to pay the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey $800 million for a 50 percent stake in the 365,000-sq.-ft. property. The company already owns half the interest in the 99-year lease for the site through a deal it struck with the Port Authority last May. Westfield’s total investment in WTC retail now comes to $1.4 billion. It will pay the Port Authority a one-time additional sum if the property exceeds certain return thresholds within the next five years.

“As far as single property retail deals, if it’s not the biggest [of the year], it’s certainly right there,” after Trumbull Property Fund’s $810 million purchase of a 50 percent stake in Chicago’s Water Tower Place, says Dan Fasulo, managing director with Real Capital Analytics, a New York City-based research firm. When the entire $1.4 billion price tag is considered, “this is probably going to be the biggest single property deal of the year.”

In the biggest ever hotel IPO, Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. raised more than $2.3 billion in early December. 

Blackstone Group purchased the chain in 2007 and had held it since. During the IPO, the Hilton offered 112.8 million shares. Blackstone maintained its ownership stake. The shares rose 7.5 percent in the first day of trading. Hilton plans to use the proceeds to help repay $1.25 billion of debt.