Deutsche Bank agreed to pay a $202.3 million penalty to settle the government’s civil lawsuit accusing it of mortgage fraud, U.S Attorney Preet Bharara announced today. The suit was filed last week. The bank admitted to government allegations that its MortgageIT unit defrauded the Federal Housing Administration and the Department of Housing and Urban Development for more than a decade. [more]

From left: 4 MetroTech Center and Peter Riguardi, president at Jones Lang LaSalle

Deutsche Bank, the Frankfurt-based investment and financial services institution, will take 50,000 square feet of space at 4 MetroTech Center in Downtown Brooklyn, the New York Observer reported.

The bank will house its operations and other less-than-vital staff at the building, owned by JPMorgan Chase, which was chosen for its proximity to Deutsche’s Financial District office, at 60 Wall Street.

Deutsche’s offices in Manhattan are at 120 West 45th Street, 1251 Sixth Avenue, 345 Park Avenue, 622 Broadway and 885 Third Avenue, the Observer said.
[more]

From left: Sheldon Solow and 9 West 57th StreetDeveloper Sheldon Solow has obtained a $625 million loan on 9 West 57th Street from Deutsche Bank, which beat out AIG and JPMorgan Chase to provide financing for the trophy property, Bloomberg News reported.

The loan refinances debt set to mature in February that Solow took out at the height of the bubble in 2007. About $55 billion of property loans are set to come due in 2012, and $19 billion of them were originated at the height of the bubble. But most of them will struggle to refinance, Standard & Poor’s predicted, as property values have decreased about 42 percent from the peak.

In this case, several parties competed for Solow’s refinancing because of the location and prestige of the building, exemplifying the demand for prime buildings, Bloomberg said. [more]

From left: SL Green CEO Marc Holliday, 280 Park Avenue (building photo source: PropertyShark), and Vornado Chairman Steven Roth

Vornado Realty Trust and SL Green Realty each has its own large management team charged with day-to-day operations of its portfolio of assets. But the Wall Street Journal reported that when the two firms teamed to take control of 280 Park Avenue, they made the unusual move of hiring an outside firm, CBRE Group, to manage the Midtown office tower, rather than pick between one of its own divisions.

The move to hire CBRE quelled concerns over how the two huge real estate firms would work together on a single asset. Though the Journal said leases at the building do still take longer to close, and the companies reportedly disagreed over which architect to hire for the $100 million renovation of the building, SL Green executives said the partnership has worked well. [more]

Trump’s new book[Updated 11:55 a.m. on Dec. 6, 2011] The Donald has a lot to say in his latest book, out today. In between moderating debates for Fox News, taking gold bars as a deposit at 40 Wall Street, mulling a run for office and meeting with Republican presidential nominee hopefuls (as he did today with Newt Gingrich), Trump penned another political book: “Time to Get Tough: Making America #1 Again.”

In the latest advice volume, the developer of real estate from Israel to Florida, suggests that America’s problems are the result of President Barack Obama not loving America enough, that the only way to fix the deficit is to take Iraqi oil by force, and that Trump himself is worth a total of $7 billion, a disputed figure. [more]

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase

From the October issue: Wall Street is a place, but it’s also a state of mind. And that’s true now more than ever, as the headquarters of New York’s most powerful banks are no longer clustered on one particular Financial District thoroughfare.
Likewise, the homes belonging to the bosses of Wall Street’s biggest firms aren’t concentrated in any one place either. While there’s still some historic bias toward Uptown over Downtown, not every Wall Street titan gravitates toward the most exclusive white-glove co-ops. In addition, the success that these high-finance wizards have had with their NYC residential real estate investments is also all over the map.
What follows is The Real Deal’s rundown of who, where, and how they’ve done. First up is Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, whose address is 1185 Park Avenue. Click here for more. [more]

New York judges are beginning to take a stricter interpretation of the “good faith effort” banks are required to make under a 2009 state law passed to offer support to distressed homeowners, according to the New York Daily News.

The law states that banks must try to negotiate with distressed homeowners so that they can modify the loans and keep their property. But those homeowners are increasingly complaining that they can’t get modifications. Since November, 2009 judges have found at least seven cases where banks, including Wells Fargo, HSBC, Bank of America and Deutsche Bank, failed to act in good faith, and in one case the judge ordered the mortgage debt wiped out (although that was later reversed by an appeals court). [more]

The Federal Housing Finance Agency plans to sue Bank of America,
JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank, accusing them of
misrepresenting the quality of mortgage securities they assembled and
sold at the height of the housing bubble, and seeking billions of
dollars in compensation, the New York Times reported. The lawsuits
follow subpoenas the FHFA issued a year ago. The timing of the suits
is related to a statute of limitations that expires next Wednesday.The
lawsuits will allege that the banks did not fulfill their duties under
securities law, and didn’t pay attention to the fact that borrowers’
incomes were infalted or falsified. [more]

JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo are two of the banks among the final candidates that bid for parts of $9.65 billion in
U.S. property loans owned by Anglo Irish Bank, Bloomberg News
reported. The lenders are interested in acquiring pieces of the $4.52
billion of performing loans. Investor groups led by private-equity
firms Blackstone Group, together with Deutsche Bank, and Lone
Star Funds also submitted offers for parts of the portfolio, which
includes $5.13 billion of subperforming and non-performing debt,
according to Bloomberg News. Anglo Irish aims to sell off its loans after it was seized by the Irish government in January 2009 during a surge in souring debt. [more]

From left: Attorney Sam Himmelstein, Stuyvesant Town and 56 Seventh Avenue (source: PropertyShark)

[Updated 2:47 p.m.] A New York state appellate court ruled yesterday that the landmark decision to protect rent-stabilized
tenants in the Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village case should be applied retroactively, a move
that could open the floodgates to millions of dollars in rent overcharges at other developments.
The new case, in which the court actually upheld the landlord’s lower court victory, involved a
Manhattan couple looking to overturn a prior rent-decontrol ruling at 56 Seventh Avenue in the West
Village. The tenants argued that the Stuy Town case, called Roberts vs Tishman Speyer, where Roberts was a tenant, should allow them to have their market-rate apartment rents refunded in the form of overcharges.

“The Court of Appeals, when they decided Roberts , specifically left open the question of retroactivity,”
said attorney Sam Himmelstein, who represented the tenants in the new case. “Landlords have been
making motions to dismiss these cases saying that it shouldn’t be applied retroactively. Even though we
lost the case, it’s a massive victory for tenants at large.” [more]