11 Times Square and 200 West Street

Ten large Manhattan office tenants have committed to lowering their energy consumption by 30 percent over the next ten years, Crain’s reported. The pledge will affect the efficiency of about 17 million square feet of office space.

Though new developments like 11 Times Square and One Bryant Park have energy-saving systems, the owners have had difficulty reigning in tenants’ high consumption. [more]

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit that accused banking giant JPMorgan Chase of tricking investors into buying troubled mortgage-backed securities, the New York Times reported.

The ruling is against only one of the lawsuit’s plaintiffs so JPMorgan is less vulnerable but not out of court. Another plaintiff, FSA Asset Management, can proceed with its claims, the Times reported. Dexia sued JPMorgan, Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual in United States District Court in Manhattan last year. [more]

The interior of the Beresford unit

The stately Beresford is not the sort of building you associate with foreclosure. Not only because the Upper West Side co-op has attracted the likes of Jerry Seinfeld, Glenn Close and the recently ousted Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit, but also because single-name pre-war co-ops in Manhattan tend to learn more about prospective buyers than the FBI does about terrorists. [more]

Discoveries of misconduct among the nation’s largest mortgage lenders, prior to and during the foreclosure crisis, are continuing to add up, with the revelation that the nation’s biggest banks wrongfully foreclosed on more than 700 members of the U.S. military, the New York Times reported. [more]

The record mortgage profits reported by big lenders like  Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase are drying up, as increased competition hold rates near all time lows. Profits made from mortgage backed securities are being undercut by falling bond prices, decreasing profits by as much as 40 percent from last quarter, according to Compass Point Research and Trading estimates cited by Bloomberg News. [more]

Chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke

The Federal Reserve’s housing policies have helped steer the four largest home loan lenders back to recovery, Bloomberg News reported. Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and U.S. Bancorp reported $24.4 billion in revenues from home lending in 2012 and expenses of just over $21.7 billion for settlements and loan repurchases, according to Bloomberg News data. Total loan originations for the year were $1.75 trillion, the highest levels since 2009, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. The increased activity was spurred by the Fed’s policy of pressing interest rates down, which led to lower borrowing costs and a spur of refinancing activity. … [more]

The nation’s largest bank, JPMorgan Chase, has agreed to pay borrowers some $2 billion in mortgage relief and direct cash payments in order to settle foreclosure abuse claims with regulators, the Wall Street Journal reported. The settlement calls for some $753 million in cash payments and $1.2 billion for “foreclosure prevention actions.” The bank has said that it will book a $700 million pre-tax charge in the fourth quarter of 2012 to account for the cost of the settlement, which it will report on January 16. JPMorgan was one of 10 banks slapped with fines Monday, following a regulatory probe into abusive foreclosure practices in the aftermath of the financial and housing crisis…. [more]

From left: Stephen Ross and a rendering of Hudson Yards

Related Companies has reached a preliminary agreement to get roughly $400 million in construction financing for a Hudson Yards office tower, Crain’s reported. The lenders include Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase.

The loan is considered the last hurdle in developing the 1.7 million-square-foot tower, which will kick off the Hudson Yards project with luxury goods retailer Coach as an anchor tenant. The building does not have an address yet, but it will be located at 30th Street and 10th Avenue. [more]

Robert O’Brien

More lenders are allowing write-downs for outstanding loans that were given to commercial real estate investors. Analysts attribute the trend to improving rental and vacancy rates, among other factors, the New York Observer reported.

“First of all, the banks’ balance sheets are a lot stronger today than they were in 2009 and that gives them a lot more capacity for doing this,” Robert O’Brien, Vice Chairman and U.S. Real Estate Services Leader at Deloitte, told the Observer. “And, besides that, we’re just seeing better fundamentals.” [more]

Eric Schneiderman

More Wall Street banks could soon be served with lawsuits, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said Tuesday. His warning came on the heels of his office’s lawsuit against Bear Stearns, now a unit of JPMorgan Chase, for alleged misrepresentation of the quality and risks associated with the mortgage-backed securities that the company sold to investors.

“There are more cases to come,” said Schneiderman at a press conference, reported on by CNN. “We’re investigating the misconduct of folks… that brought about the crash of 2008.” [more]