Morgan Stanley Handing Back 1.2M Square Feet of SF Assets
December 9, 2009
As we indicated last month, Morgan Stanley is handing back the keys on billions of dollars worth (former worth, that is) of Class A San Francisco property. The properties are going back to the mezzanine lender, AREA Property Partners. The question now is what is AREA going to do with the assets considering that they [...]
Read More >>Clock Ticking For Morgan Stanley Fund V
December 3, 2009
We had covered Morgan Stanley’s troubles in the recent past, including its walking away from its massive Crescent deal, and the looming troubles it is facing on the CNL deal (think Maui Prince), and the Blackstone/Equity Office assets it acquired at the top of the market.
WSJ has a piece on the CNL deal and Fund [...]
HNN Compiling List of Funds Targeting Hotels
November 19, 2009
HNN has begun to compile a list of funds seeking to invest in hospitality assets. The list compiled so far indicates that there is about $38B out there chasing hotels, though some $20B of that comes out of of Blackstone and Lone Star. Click the link before to go to the list.
Given that hotels have [...]
WSJ Roundup: Blackstone, Germans, and a Tenant’s Market
October 30, 2009
Blackstone’s Hilton Deal
The LBO market was torrid during 2006-2007. So was commercial real estate. Combine the two, and you have the Blackstone/Hilton deal.
In the Hilton negotiations, Blackstone is considering contributing $800 million of new equity to buy back debt at a discount. It also is seeking to extend debt maturing in 2013 to 2016, while [...]
Tishman Loses Stuyvesant Town Ruling
October 22, 2009
A court of appeals today ruled that Tishman unlawfully raised rents at Stuyvesant Town and could be forced to pay back millions. The massive Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village project is a huge project that we previously posted about. This project was originally acquired for some $5.4B. Estimates at the time of our post were about [...]
Read More >>Who Do Foreigners Give Their Money To When Investing In US Real Estate? Here’s The Top 10
October 21, 2009
We’ve heard about and are beginning to see an increase in foreign money coming into the US real estate market, particularly on the residential and multi-family side as the prospect of a recovery happening is expected to occur in this sector first. So want to know who these foreign individuals, pension funds, investment firms, and [...]
Read More >>CRE Dominoes: Stuyvesant Town About To Go
October 14, 2009
Tishman and Blackstone teamed up to acquire Stuyvesant Town in New York back in 2006 for a whopping $5.4B. The project encompasses some 11,000 apartments across 54-buildings. The acquisition strategy included efforts to convert rent-controlled units to market-rate units, but a lawsuit has put the ice on that (sounds like Page Mill Properties and East [...]
Read More >>Chinese Sovereign Wealth Funds Look to US
September 9, 2009
The WSJ is reporting that China’s SWF, China Investment Corporation, is seeking to place bets on the US Real Estate market. To that end, they’ve held discussions with managers BlackRock, Invesco, and others.
The estimates in the article peg allocation in the range of $4-20B, but that is just a drop in the bucket of the [...]
Yes, Even Sand Hill Is Not Immune
April 1, 2009
Sand Hill Road is a unique place. It’s regarded by many as the place where many of the Valley’s top shelf venture capitalists, investors, hedge funds, and other financiers congregate. The membership fee to join this exclusive club is paid in the form of office rents that are four times the Silicon Valley average.
But now [...]
EOP Cuts Redwood Shores Office Rents Again
March 6, 2009
Back in January we had a post about falling rents in Redwood Shores. Less than two months later and Equity Office has cut the rates again. On February 19th, EOP cut rates at its 201-203 Redwood Shores buildings to $3.35 FS from $3.65 (-8%), and today EOP cut its asking rents at 255 & 275 [...]
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