The prewar office tower at 315 Park Avenue South is up for grabs with owner Craig Nassi seeking either a buyer or a joint venture partner to recapitalize the property for roughly $350 million. According to the Post, Nassi, of BCN Development, has tapped the Carlton Group to market the building, which has a Staples store in the retail portion and is also home to Credit Suisse, at around $1,000 per square foot. [more]

JPMorgan Chase has been subpoenaed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over mortgages issued before the real estate collapse that have since soured, Bloomberg News reported. The move comes amid an SEC probe into the mortgage practices of several U.S. banks, including Credit Suisse, which was subpoenaed last week. The JPMorgan subpoena is seeking information related to Bear Stearns mortgage practices, after bond insurers alleged that the bank, which JPMorgan acquired in 2008, had demanded refunds from originators but then failed to share those refunds with sellers. [more]

Home insurer Allstate has sued Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch unit over claims it fraudulently sold the insurer about $167 million of residential mortgage-backed securities, Crain’s reported. In a complaint filed yesterday in New York Supreme Court, Allstate asked for damages, including the lost market value of the securities and principal and interest payments. “Because of the systemic abandonment of underwriting standards and the resulting inclusion of toxic, highly risky mortgage loans to back the certificates, most of Allstate’s certificates have been downgraded from the highest possible ratings to junk-bond ratings,” Allstate said in the complaint. [more]

Mary Ann Tighe and 4 East 72nd Street (building photo credit: CityRealty)Aaron Tighe, the son of CB RIchard Ellis CEO and Real Estate Board of New York Chair Mary Ann Tighe, has just nabbed a four-bedroom, four-and-a-half-bathroom apartment at the tony 4 East 72nd Street for $5.83 million, according to the New York Observer. Aaron, a managing director at Credit Suisse, landed the co-op at a steep discount — the apartment was first listed in May 2009 by Sotheby’s International Realty brokers Meredith Smyth and Serena Boardman for $7.75 million. The apartment, sold by John Bartlett Coleman, best known for his development of the Ritz-Carlton hotel on Central Park South, was later listed by Key-Ventures broker A. Laurance Kaiser. [more]

As expected, lenders foreclosed on the $2 billion stalled Xanadu project in the Meadowlands yesterday, and they’re already in talks with Stephen Ross’ the Related Companies for a partnership that would restart construction on the unfinished complex. The creditors in control now include Credit Suisse, Capmark Financial and an affiliate of Fortress Investment Group. Ross has said if it was up to him, he would “rebrand, rename and re-skin” the blue-and-white checkerboard retail and entertainment center, which is slated to have an 800-foot indoor ski slope, skydiving wind tunnels and the largest Ferris Wheel in North America. It will take an estimated $875 million to finish the project, so the $180 million in financing recently proposed by a state panel isn’t going to be enough for Related. Gov. Chris Christie yesterday told the Post through a spokesperson that “this is a project worth saving… but the circumstances have to be right.” Christie is now asking private equity firms to take stakes in Xanadu, which he says will be finished by 2014, when the nearby Jets-Giants stadium will host the Super Bowl. [Post]

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If misery loves company, embattled investment bank Goldman Sachs should be feeling better with each passing day. Yesterday, it was revealed that U.S. prosecutors are investigating Morgan Stanley over whether the bank misled investors in mortgage-derivatives deals it was simultaneously betting against. Today, sources told the New York Times that New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has launched a probe into whether eight banks duped rating agencies into inflating the grades of mortgage securities in the years before the housing market’s collapse. UBS, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Crédit Agricole and Merrill Lynch are targets of the probe, in addition to Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.  [more]

The office building 417 Fifth Avenue, purchased by the Moinian Group and Goldman Sachs for $250 million three years ago, is in contract to a foreign buyer for $140 million, a report released yesterday by Cushman & Wakefield said.

The 408,000-square-foot building is 96 percent leased, but 25 percent of the leases expire in the next two years, the first quarter 2010 New York Capital Markets Group report said.

The sale price would equate to $343 per square foot, a staggering loss for the buyers.

Cushman, which represented the seller, declined to comment. Goldman Sachs did not immediately respond to a request for comment. [more]

By the close of 2010, the country may be looking at more than $60 billion in distressed loans that are tied up in commercial mortgage-backed securities, according to a new Credit Suisse Group report released yesterday. Troubled loans are increasing by $2.7 billion a month, as of the fourth quarter of 2009, up from $1.4 billion a month during the first quarter, and the buildup could prevent a larger economic recovery. About 5 percent of loans are at least two months overdue, a more than 10-fold increase over the end of 2008 and an overwhelming caseload for special servicers. Discounting the loans that are not yet in distress, it would take such companies five and a half years to resolve the $28.8 billion in delinquent loans. “The transfer of distressed loans into the hands of stronger operators to create value at the property level where in turn they contribute to local economies is a vital step in any recovery,” according to the report. [Reuters]

From the February issue: It’s been a sort of parlor game in New York’s real estate community for
some time: speculating on whether peak-market buyers will hold on to
their highly leveraged properties.
Then, in a move that shook the industry last month, Tishman Speyer
Properties and BlackRock Realty decided to turn over the keys to the
$5.4 billion Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village.
But not everyone has gone this route. Other overextended borrowers
have kept control of their properties following a debt restructuring,
including developers Lev Leviev and Joseph Moinian.
As part of a workout — the complex process that’s often decided by
the leverage each party has in the development — the bank or private
equity firm must weigh its options.  [more]

Joseph Moinian and Dwell95

Developer Joe Moinian filed a lawsuit on Monday to block the scheduled auction of Dwell95, his luxury rental building at 95 Wall Street, however a last minute bankruptcy filing by the mezzanine lender has postponed the proceeding. Monian’s Moinian Group, one of the city’s biggest real estate development companies, filed suit in New York State Supreme Court against Rubicon Finance America, which held a $42 million mezzanine loan on the 507-unit property in the Financial District. Moinian had a $227 million construction loan on the building from Credit Suisse-unit Column Financial, but the value of the property fell below the loan balance due to the 2008 economic downturn, which put the mezzanine loan into default, according to the complaint. Moinian alleges he reached an agreement with Rubicon and Credit Suisse to buy the $42 million mezzanine loan for $1 million, but he says on Dec. 10 that Rubicon agreed to sell $1.4 billion in loans, including the Dwell95 loan , to a joint venture firm that included FBE Limited and Lane Capital Management. Right after the sale, Moinian alleges that FBE and Lane Capital scheduled a Dec. 30 auction to foreclose on 95 Wall Street and basically deprive him of the chance to buy back the defaulted mezzanine loan. [more]