Everyone Owns Stuyvesant Town Now @9:40 AM
The single greatest real estate transaction failure came to pass overnight, with Tishman Speyer actually giving up crazy purchase Stuyvesant Town instead of filing for bankruptcy. Now, the property was entirely a lended and borrowed deal, though everyone talks "Speyer this" and "Speyer that." Of the $5.4 billion raised, Tishman Speyer only put up $112 million, and for some reason I don't understand, there was also $56 million as well from Mr. Jerry Speyer and his goodlookin' son. (Why bother? They clearly weren't good for much more.) Their pals in the real estate wing at BlackRock, the immense investment management services, scraped together $3 billion in secured debt and another $1.4 billion in mezzanine loans from everyone around the world pretty much. Everyone wanted in on this trough! Reading the Times, Reuters and the Post this morning, however, no one actually names pretty much any of the huge number of creditors who were defaulted on earlier this month and who, yes, now own Stuyvesant town. Hey, who's your landlord? The creditors include basically everyone everywhere: Winthrop Realty Trust, SL Green Realty Corp and/or Gramercy Capital Corp… and around the world it goes! Deutsche Genossenschafts-Hypothekenbank AG! Hartford Financial Services Group! Allied Irish Banks Plc! Oh right: you know, those suckers that are the state of Florida. 1
How To Get A Cheaper Rent In Stuyvesant Town @10:57 AM
Signs of the Recession:
So a guy walks into the Stuyvesant Town leasing offices and asks about a specific line of apartments. (Stuy Town, for those who might not know, is a massive apartment complex just north of the East Village in Manhattan; it is 80 acres and has 35 enormous brick buildings and lots of squirrels. For many years, it was affordable middle-class housing, with a years-long waiting list to get in; then it was sold a couple years ago for almost $6 billion, and rents got raised, perhaps illegally.) So! The leasing office quotes this guy a price. And the guy says, that's funny, I already live in an identical apartment here and now not only am I definitely not paying the rent increase you just gave me on my new lease here (although, by the way, the gang at Curbed hears new leases aren't getting price increases), I'm going to pay 12% less in rent, because that's how much less of a price you just quoted me as a new tenant. Do try this at home! Because that is awesome. And yes this was just overheard at my local coffeeshop. 8
