From left: Dan Fasulo, Jahn Brodwin, Simon Ziff and Daniel Alpert

From the April issue: While those in the industry have been relieved to see the New York City commercial real estate market bounce back over the past year, the resulting price increases have prompted many investors and developers to look elsewhere for deals.

Instead of searching for properties to buy in the Big Apple, they are, in many cases, turning to other markets — from prime locations like San Francisco and Los Angeles to secondary markets like Austin, Tex.

“People need to realize that the number of assets truly available for a sales price that makes sense is very few in New York City,” said Daniel Alpert, managing partner of Westwood Capital, a Manhattan-based real estate investment bank. [more]

Ofer YardeniFrom the December issue: At times, this city can seem like an ocean of distress without a drop to drink. Half-built or unsold condos abound. Office buildings dot marginal neighborhoods offering low rents to stay full. Loans secured by real estate are in trouble all over. Yet all this distressed commercial inventory can be elusive, kept off-limits by banks waiting for a full recovery and perhaps mindful that in the last downturn, in the early 1990s, they may have let go of valuable real estate too soon. Nonetheless, some are figuring out how to wrest control of these troubled properties, and this month The Real Deal compiled a scorecard of the big private equity funds clearly leading the way. [more]

From left: Wilbur Ross, Stuy Town and Peter Cooper Village, Bill Ackman

Wilbur Ross, the billionaire investor who has long been interested in a takeover of the foreclosed Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, said he has no plans to back out even after hedge funder Bill Ackman’s recent move to wrest control of the 11,227-unit complex. “My interest has not changed, nor has the interest of my partners,” he said in an e-mail to the Post. His partners are the LeFrak Orgniazation and Centerbridge Partners, and the trio had planned since January, when developer Tishman Speyer defaulted on its $3 billion mortgage on the property, to wait until the time was right to swoop in. On Monday, though, Ackman and Winthrop Realty Trust announced that they had purchased a piece of the $1.4 billion second mortgage that would allow them to foreclosure on Stuy Town’s current operator and become the de-facto owners. Ackman said he wants to convert the complex to co-ops through a bankruptcy plan, but Ross expressed doubt over whether such a plan would benefit tenants and lenders. He said that Ackman would need to raise $3 billion from tenant purchasers in order to satisfy lenders during a co-op conversion, but “it is not at all clear that tenants would find a total price in excess of $3 billion attractive. [Post]

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Starwood Capital Group’s bid for the bankrupt Extended Stay hotel chain, filed yesterday, was “better” than the bid from a competing group led by Centerbridge Partners and Paulson & Co, according to Jacqueline Marcus, a lawyer for Extended Stay. Yesterday marked the deadline to submit a bid on Extended Stay’s holdings, according to Bloomberg news, with an auction slated for May 27. The 680-property hotel chain hopes that by selling its assets it can exit bankruptcy protection, which it filed for in June 2009. Although Extended Stay would not comment on how much Starwood’s offer was, Marcus said that the hotel feels strongly about the bid. “In our view, it’s a bit better than the Centerbridge bid, and we’re hoping there will be vigorous bidding at the auction,” Marcus said. A competing bid from the Centerbridge group has been valued at $905 million. [Bloomberg]

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Private equity firm Blackstone Group is looking to buy a minority stake in Extended Stay, a now-distressed hotel chain it sold in 2007 for $8 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal. Blackstone’s approximately $100 million investment would be part of a larger, $905 million potential buy-up of the troubled hotel company, made by a group of investors led by Centerbridge Partners and Paulson & Co. The companies’ bid for the 680-property hotel chain, whose bankruptcy filing is the largest ever recorded in the hotel industry, is a direct challenge to a similar buy up proposed by Starwood Capital Group, the company whose hotel branch is best known for its line of W Hotels.

Richard Lefrak’s organization is a possible contender for Stuy Town

Tishman Speyer Properties and BlackRock Realty were pilloried for aggressively pushing out tenants and running afoul of the city’s J-51 tax abatement rules. But some of the firms that are being mentioned as possible replacements as owners or managers at Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village — such as developers LeFrak Organization and Rose Associates, and real estate firm Stonehenge Partners — come with their own skeletons in the closet. The New York City real estate world is bracing for a struggle among titans for management or ownership of the 11,200-unit housing complex on Manhattan’s East Side following the announcement  last month that the owners would cede control. Potential parties must negotiate with special servicer CWCapital Asset Management, the majority of which is owned by Canadian institutional fund Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec. The special servicer represents the interests of the bondholders of the securitized loans on Stuyvesant Town. Other firms being bandied about as possible investors or investors are WL Ross & Co., Centerbridge Partners, Related Companies, WinnCompanies and Prudential Douglas Elliman, according to media reports. The thorny city tax abatement program known as J-51 that contributed to the forfeiture of Stuy Town and Peter Cooper Village has dogged one of the leading contenders for the site, LeFrak. [more]